New Zealand’s billion dollar pork industry has vowed to prove consumers can have confidence in its farming practices by telling them how the products are grown.

Pig farmers faced a storm of controversy this year following media coverage of pigs growing in sow crates – small cages that restrict their movement.

But now, the industry has revealed a plan that will inform consumers how the product they are considering buying was produced.

New Zealand Pork chief executive Sam McIvor said that confidence is vital to ensure the continued success of the New Zealand pork industry.

“Especially when record levels of inferior imported product has arrived on our shores.”

At the industry’s annual conference this week agriculture minister David Carter said that pig farmers should treat animal welfare issues as an opportunity or a challenge.

This came after the industry was hit with a wave of negative publicity after a report on TVNZ’s Sunday programme earlier this year, which featured former pork industry promoter, comedian Mike King, breaking into a pig farm and revealing animals contained in sow crates.

“The Mike King Sunday programme fixed public concern on your industry like never before. From the Prime Minister down, it was clear that most of New Zealand was not comfortable with the conditions shown in the footage,” Mr Carter said.

Since then, Mr McIvor announced the new regime, which would see retailers and wholesalers provided with information about the farming system the pork was sourced from with links to further explanations.

“Providing accurate descriptions of farming systems for the market place to use will allow consumer to purchase with confidence, in the knowledge these descriptors accurately reflect the farming practices used in New Zealand,” he said.

How this would work is yet to be determined, but Mr McIvor told NBR that it would probably be a combination of wording with details of the farming system used to grow the product.

This would be alongside the 100% New Zealand pork label already used by the industry to provide a point of difference with imported pork products.

“The key thing here is that consumers have clarity and choice,” Mr McIvor said.

Code of Practice
Mr McIvor said consumer confidence in the industry is based on three key elements – product quality, information and choice.

“There needs to be more work to ensure consumers have accurate information about our pork and are able to make appropriate purchasing decisions based on this.”

As well as New Zealand’s focus on a review of the Pig Welfare Code, Mr McIvor announced an industry-wide animal welfare audit of every commercial pig farm in New Zealand – around 230.

The audit scheme will be based around an independent annual review of compliance with the Pig Welfare Code and will dovetail into regular vet visits as part of animal health and care programmes.

“We believe this is the last plant in the pork industry’s 10 year welfare improvement programme started in 2005,” Mr McIvor said.

The programme includes farmer training and education, monitoring of changes in sow housing methods, the problem piggery reporting scheme and a research programme targeted at testing new housing methods.”

Research
Mr McIvor said $200,000 has been earmarked to spend on animal welfare research over the next two years. Some of this funding is come by way of government grants with the rest funded by the industry.

New Zealand Pork would be looking at international best practice and is soon to begin trials of new housing methods that don’t use sow crates.

Imports
While negative media coverage dogged the industry this year that did impact on sales, briefly, Mr McIvor the biggest issue facing producers here are imports.

April and May posed particular challenges to the industry this year. April saw record level of port imports and May was third highest.

Mr McIvor said it seemed speculators imported the products and couldn’t find any substantial market here which resulted in cheap prices. He said this shaved about 50 cents a kilo off the pork schedule costing producers about $25,000, on average.

In addition, the North American pork market has declined due to swine flu fears, which has led to a surplus of product hitting other markets, including New Zealand. Combined with that is the release of subsidised pork in storage in the EU.

“Some of that has come out and it’s had to go somewhere,” Mr McIvor said.

Imported pork is not required to meet any animal welfare standards.

“We believe that a focus on the way we produce New Zealand pork will also help show the consumer that the 700,000kg of imported pork and pork products arriving in New Zealand every week are produced under farming systems that are not as animal friendly as ours.”

The New Zealand pork industry is worth about $1 billion each year. About 80% of that is produced within New Zealand and imports make up the rest.

Up until September last year, 51,399 tonnes of pork was produced in New Zealand compared with 36,657 tonnes imported.

Since then, a number of producers have left the industry.

Mr McIvor said there is also a strategic push occurring in line with all other activity to ensure the industry remains attractive to investors.