On Wednesday 15th March I was delighted to attend the Crate Escape reception in Parliament. The Crate Escape is a campaign led by the Conservative Animal Welfare Foundation (CAWF), Humane Society International/UK and Compassion in World Farming. It calls on the UK Government to end the use of farrowing crates.
Farrowing crates are one of the most severe forms of confinement experienced by farmed animals in any system. Every year over 200,000 mother pigs are kept in these small cages on UK farms, where they are confined for up to five weeks at a time. Sows suffer when they are forced to spend much of their lives behind bars and a typical sow spends almost a quarter (22%) of her adult breeding life in a crate only slightly larger than she is.
New polling data shows that less than one in five people (19.8%) support the use of farrowing crates and only 15.5% would presently oppose a ban. The Survation poll, carried out in March 2023, also found that two-thirds of those polled would support the Government providing financial support to farmers to move to free-farrowing methods.
Several indoor free-farrowing systems that permit freedom of movement for the sow, whilst protecting piglets, are commercially available and in use in a number of countries, including the UK. Systems designed and produced in Britain are being used in the UK, USA and Canada.
This is an important campaign and one that my friend Sir David Amess MP believed in passionately.
More information on the Crate Escape campaign can be found here.
