ADVERTISEMENT
Bristol-based animal welfare charity, Viva! Campaigns, have discovered that Tesco is being supplied by Hogwood Pig ‘Horror’ Farm, recently exposed in Bristol and nationwide media.
Viva! Campaigns’ undercover investigation made national headlines in June when horrifying scenes were revealed – extreme overcrowding, filthy and waterlogged floors, sick and dying pigs, piles of decaying and maggot-infested piglets as well as skulls and bones dumped in a nearby wood. Hogwood Farm houses over 15,000 pigs and, say Viva! Campaigns, is a prime example of the how government and industry are failing to protect the welfare of farmed animals in Britain.
Despite the supermarket’s claims of high animal welfare, Viva! Campaigns was later able to establish that Hogwood Farm is a Tesco supplier (as confirmed by the Sunday Mirror). The full investigation video can be viewed here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeJemNLPAwI
Viva! Campaigns are so outraged by this failure to protect animals that they have organised a nationwide Day of Action against Tesco, with demonstrations outside stores across Britain asking them to dump Hogwood Farm as a supplier.
Demonstrators will assemble outside Tesco stores on Saturday, August 12, with placards and leaflets and petitions for the public to sign, asking Tesco to dump Hogwood Farm. Petitions will later be handed to the government’s Animal & Plant Health Agency (APHA), asking them to close the farm down. This national Day of Action includes over 300 regional demonstrations across the UK – making it the biggest Viva! Campaigns’ Day of Action ever!
Despite the shocking footage obtained by Viva! Campaigns, Tesco say they are satisfied with conditions on the farm and are confident that the animals are treated well. Hogwood Farm has also been approved by the Red Tractor ‘assurance scheme’ and the APHA.
“Viva! has filmed in dozens of pig farms and Hogwood is one of the worst – I was honestly sickened by what I saw there”, says Juliet Gellatley, founder and director of Viva!.“Sadly, a profound abuse of animals takes place on all factory farms, which now produce over 90 per cent of all pig meat. Viva! Campaigns are taking this action because Tesco is condoning cruelty and suffering. To consumers who are shocked by this investigation we say – choose kind and try a vegan diet. To Tesco we say – dump Hogwood pig farm.”
There is an extraordinarily low number of prosecutions on British farms for animal cruelty and most of those involve animals kept outdoors where they can be seen. For the vast majority of animals kept in factory farms, it is a case of ‘out of sight, out of mind!’ It is this which makes Viva!’s undercover investigations so important. Consumers are constantly told that Britain has ‘the best animal welfare in the world’. Viva! shows them the reality.
Please visit www.viva.org.uk/hogwood for more information.
