the big issue
A
ustralian Pork Limited (APL) is
an industry organisation that
describes itself as “the producer-
owned organisation supporting and
promoting the Australian pork industry”.
Despite potential bias, the organisation
is seemingly permitted to supply
“educational” material to kindergartens
and schools as part of its “Pigs in Schools”
program.
In February 2016, APL published a
video, The APL Pigs in Schools Program- A Teachers Perspective, of teacher Kiara
Edwards from Mt Compass Area School in
South Australia, praising the APL material.
In this video, Ms Edwards comes across
as a committed and enthusiastic teacher,
seemingly with a strong background in
certain aspects of animal agriculture.
However, with respect to pigs, she may be
over-reliant on material supplied by APL.
Despite admitting to having almost no
knowledge of pigs before receiving the APL
material, Ms Edwards appears convinced,
after watching another APL promotional
video contained within the package, Aussie
Pig Farmers; Nothing to Hide, that material
produced by animal activist groups was
inaccurate.
“One [resource] that stood out to me just
allowed the kids to be able to see it from a
different point of view, that not everything
they see on TV and read in the newspaper
is true and correct. There was a really good
video that was in the package where I set
it up with the kids. They had the video that
was put up by an animal activist group.
I played that video. I got the kids to go
through that video and say right, what do
we think about pig farming, and this was
the start of my lesson, and they said, you
know, they just listened to that video, and
then in the resource pack, they actually
had the farmer’s point of view,” she says.
“And our eyes were just amazed to think
that, you know, wow... what you hear
isn’t happening in the pork industry and
they are so proactive in what they’re doing,
so they’re really, really good resources. I’d
recommend them to anybody.”
She is also clearly impressed with
industry personnel. “They’re the only
industry that have really got their resources
spot on...”.
It seems Ms Edwards is comfortable
with the idea of the students using marking
paint on live piglets to demonstrate the
“main cuts”. “So they [the kids] do art in
terms of they go and we learn the parts of
a pig and then when they get big enough
we go out and we get some marking paint
and they do the main cuts and all that.”
That activity helps to support her focus
on a cross-curricular approach to studying
pigs, including art.
She seems similarly comfortable with
the practice of naming the piglets, then
sending them to slaughter and selling and
eating the end “product”. “And what we do
is we actually sell the meat.”
“We get it processed at an abattoir, then
it goes to our local butcher, and then we
sell the fresh pork to the staff, and there’s a
waiting list so we can’t get enough of it and
it’s delicious and it’s great because the kids
set up – we do a cost analogy [sic] on how
much, like, the input costs. They work out
how much profit they would like to make,
which sometimes is a lot because they
think it buys them all sorts of good things
but, and then we scale it down and work
out that, hang on, this is actually going
home to parents and all that, and yeah,
they sell the pork. They actually go to
the, um, when the pork is getting sold.”
“We bring it here. The customer or
consumer comes direct here and we let
them know about the pork, what the pigs
were like, they name them and that sort of
stuff, so it’s a bit of paddock to plate all
the way through and the kids absolutely
love it so it’s really good.”
I’d like to have seen some empathy for
the piglets who are in the school’s carefor 10 weeks at a time, but it was not
apparent.
In the second video, Aussie Pig Farmers;
Nothing to Hide, which is included in the
kit supplied to schools, pig farmer Ean
Pollard concludes the video with these
words: “If we can’t produce pork in God’s
country, God knows where we’re gonna get
it from”.
The keeper of the “maternity ward” in
this video says, “And did you know over a
million piglets Australia-wide are saved by
having these farrowing crates?”.
That’s the annual figure according to
the APL educational material and a
separate “fact sheet“. No verification has
been supplied in either document. It may
be an adventurous claim in the context of
around five million pigs born in Australia
each year. In nature, the problem is almost
non-existent, as described by author Jeffrey
Masson in his book, The Pig Who Sang to
the Moon.
“In the wild,... sows getting ready to
give birth will often construct protective
nests as high as three feet. They line these
farrowing nests with mouthfuls of grass
and sometimes even manage to construct
a roof made of sticks – a safe and
comfortable home-like structure. On modern
pig farms, where the mother is forced to
give birth on concrete floors, her babies
are often crushed when she rolls over. This
never happens in the wild because the
baby simply slips through the nest and
finds her way back to her own teat.”
A video from Animal Liberation ACT,
reported to be of Mr Pollard’s Lansdowne
piggery, was prepared in response to
the APL video. The video focused on the
farrowing crate area of the piggery (with
plenty of steel and concrete but no hay).
Images were also released, including the
group housing area.
The “Educational Unit” booklet contains
the following rhetorical teacher’s question,
“I don’t know much about pork productionRSLQLRQ
Australian Pork Limited (APL) has recently supplied material to kindergartens and
schools as part of its “Pigs in Schools” program. The following article comments
on the videos and booklets provided to teachers. By Paul Mahony (terrastendo).
The pork industry
in the classroom