Prigs for pigs

When maltastar.com journalists showed me the photos, frankly I was appalled. They had had the same reaction on first seeing them. But the photos only featured pigs, some might argue. There exists much prejudice against pigs. Exceptionally, a movie released a few years back starred a pig and he made many fans. I remember when I was a teenager spending much of my working holiday on a farm at Sevelen, in Germany, close to the Dutch border, having to clean pig sties and it was not a savoury activity. A few of the pigs in those sties had little patience with humans who stepped into their "space" and dared remove their dung. Even so, most of the Sevelen swine came across as separate individuals in their own right, as they snorted and shoved.

The maltastar photos I viewed featured pigs on their way to execution. (This happened in the same period that we were regaled from Baghdad with video featuring Saddam Hussein on the scaffold.)

Now, along with colleagues I visited the government abattoir not so very long ago. We viewed how it worked. We saw the relay by which swine entered the main hall of the abattoir, were stunned, had their throats cut, were slung up, ripped open, then disembowelled, cleaned and quartered. Not a pretty sight, but it is work that must be done. However then, it was like we were looking at an activity happening front stage.

What I was viewing this time round was what happened as the action moved from back stage to the "operations" area. The photos showed how pigs on their way to execution were treated and the tools used to line them up for death. The facilities available and the techniques deployed are primitive and cruel. They give minimal attention to the need not to cause unnecessary harm to a being which, like us, can feel pain, can smell blood, can see, hear and understand the pain inflicted on fellow creatures, can panic with despair - all this during the final moments of its life.

The documentation about what pigs undergo as they file into the abattoir formed part of a report written by Austrian veterinarians commissioned to look into animal welfare practices in Malta and check about their conformity with EU rules. Acting like an audit committee, the vets were given the freedom of the abattoir zone in September of last year, and they could take photos of all the situations they encountered. Their reports - which remained "secret" - reveal amazing and unacceptable bad practices. Pigs are sometimes driven to their final destination in overcrowded trucks, under conditions of confusion and stress. On occasions, they end up dehydrated. Ramps which should ease their passage down from the trucks and then onto the killing area are inexistent or deficient. So frequently, large animals are forced to jump down what for them are big heights, at the risk of breaking legs... this on the way to being killed.

Recalcitrant pigs, frightened by what they are undergoing, can get goaded forward towards the killing area by prongs and iron bars. The available stun guns to incapacitate an animal are not always adapted to the size of the pig. It may happen that the shot it gets to the head leaves the pig still conscious, even as its throat is being slit. Moreover, the abattoir lacks the equipment by which to pen an animal's head in a certain way, so as to minimise the time needed to fire the stun gun effectively. The manipulations necessary to find "the right place" continue to heighten hugely the stress experienced by the animal and could lead to serious accidents and injuries among those handling it.

Reacting to the publication of the Austrian vets' report and photos, the government said they knew about the problems, which was why their exercise was commissioned in the first place. Action is being taken to remedy the deficiencies found by the Austrians to bring Malta in line with best European animal welfare practice.

That at least was the official position. Information I have - not to be discarded lightly - actually indicates that the powers that be have done their best to postpone taking action. As far as I can see, the government's Financial Estimates for 2007 provide no substantive funds for improvements to the abattoir.

And to date, slaughtering practices are what they were back in September last year.

There will be people to say: Malta has bigger priorities than to waste effort and resources, as of now, on giving swine a better deal at slaughter time; let prigs worry about that concern. Others might imply that all this is part of a campaign to get people off meat consumption.

If it is priggish to insist on humane treatment of animals that are being executed for our "good" I align myself firmly with the prigs... while remaining a card-carrying eater of meat. I am sure most people would do likewise.

It is a shame that the authorities continue to pretend that this is another problem that will eventually take care of itself.

As a matter of top priority, cruelty, no matter to whom or by whom, should be allowed no place in our society.