Manor Farm, Elsham, South Humberside

Posted on the 23rd January 2009

(Filmed August 2008 and January 2009)

John Godfrey – as well as being a BPEX director – is the current Chair of Pig Industry Development Scheme, the purpose of which is to make financial provision for the purpose of developing the pig industry. He is also a former Chairman of: the National Pig Association, British Pig Association and FABPigs (Farm Assured British Pigs – the farm assurance scheme that superseded the MAFF assurance scheme in 1996). He is also former Vice Chairman of Yorkshire Farmers Livestock Marketing Ltd (a company dedicated to marketing livestock).

August 2008:

Farrowing crates are used. At the rear of one new mother lies a pile of dead piglets. A live one struggles over the top of the bodies and bloody placenta.
Dead piglets litter the aisles. Some have been swept up with the litter. One stillborn lies dead inside the caul.
In another pen, a piglet sits in a corner shaking uncontrollably.
The young ‘weaners’ are housed in utterly barren units on slatted floors. For the pigs we filmed, there appears to be no enrichment at all and their tails are docked. There is no bedding.
In the fattening area, pigs jostle one another to feed. Many are sporting bite marks.
Breeding sows, when not incarcerated in the crates, are kept in small groups in small pens on straw. A radio blasts out.

January 2009:

Once again, when we returned, we found some changes had been made at Manor Farm. Fewer dead piglets litter the aisles in the farrowing unit, although the crates remain oppressive and barren.
The weaners – while still living in small pens on slatted floors – have now been given a ball on a chain to manipulate.