The Animal Equality Foundation has sent a letter to the National Association of Porcine Veterinarians requesting their involvement to put an end to the practice of “tail-tapping” on Spanish farms.
The EU ban on routinely tail docking is now included in Directive 120/2008 / EC (Pig Directive). However, it first came into force almost 27 years ago.
Despite this, the vast majority of piglets are still routinely mutilated.
A presentation by the European Commission last year reported on the audits they carried out in nine Member States in 2017-19.
The Commission said that 99.5-100% of pigs still have their tails docked. This constitutes a violation of the specific provisions of the Directive.
In the letter, Animal Equality also states that the European Commission has recently confirmed that the enforcement measures adopted by the Member States in relation to the requirements of the Pig Directive for the prevention of tail biting are unsatisfactory.
In particular, even the action plans submitted to date by most Member States do not address one or more known risk factors for tail biting.
In such a bleak context, their role as pig veterinarians becomes even more vital in educating, mentoring and providing solutions to avoid routine tail docking.
Animal Equality demands the involvement of the National Association of Swine Veterinarians to put an end to this cruel practice.
This practice causes suffering to the animals and infections derived from its execution, often carried out by untrained workers.
It is done because due to the crowded conditions that the pigs endure, bite each other.
Animal Equality denounces that it is carried out routinely and that the focus should be on the extreme hygienic-sanitary and overcrowded conditions that animals endure, which cause them to attack each other.
The pigs’ tails are docked so that they do not bite each other due to the stress caused by living in these difficult conditions.
Before mutilating the animals, what they have to do is worry about improving those conditions that are the cause of them reaching the extreme of attacking each other.
Text: Silvia Barquero, Director of Animal Equality
And I mean…It would cost six euros per piglet if a veterinarian cut off their tail professionally and with anesthesia.
But the companies are not willing to pay that.
For the first seven days, the males are castrated by cutting out their testicles without anesthesia, which is a terrible pain.
And on top of that this absurd situation: Nineteen years after the protection of animals was included as a national goal in the Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany, a thousand pig farmers demonstrated for the right to continue to cut the testicles of newborn piglets without anesthesia.
With success! The government in Germany has postponed the long-planned ban on castration without anesthesia!!
The question is: how seriously can these politicians be taken if they cannot even push through the approved bills and bow to the pig industry?
That sows are locked in a crate, that is, in a cage the size of their body, and that they bump into the metal bars everywhere and cannot even lie down properly or lie flat, otherwise they will stick out into the other animal’s cage. … this has been banned across the EU since 2012.
On paper!
Every law sounds beautiful on paper.
Killing piglets with their heads banging on the ground is also forbidden.
Castration without anesthesia is also not constitutional.
And yet common practice.
This anachronistic brutality is the result of years of lobbying strategy by politicians and associations, the victims of which are millions of tortured piglets.
Following the recent undercover investigations, we are seeing shocking conditions in pig farms.
We have seen staff stub out cigarettes on animals being dragged to the killing site. That they beat them and shock them with electric batons.
In the absence of control and punishment, the situation is brutal.
Which is irrelevant to corrupt lobbyists in politics or to pig farmers, because this is part of a business
My best regards to all, Venus
World Animals Voice 