You might think your ham is from New Zealand. But it’s likely imported, and from a country with lower standards of animal welfare.
This story is part of The Spinoff’s What’s Eating Aotearoa project, made possible by the generous support of our readers.
When your bacon is sizzling in the pan, you might, if you give a thought to its origin in an animal at all, think about the life of the pig it was before it was meat wrapped in plastic. Vaguely, you might picture a pig curled up in a pile of hay in the corner of a warm barn, or bouncing through green fields somewhere in the country, before being killed quickly and humanely, having lots of salt and preservatives added, and becoming the flesh you are frying.
Perhaps you bought your meat from Hellers, with a label proclaiming it as “NZ’s butcher”, or Woolworths, where the packaging proclaims that it was “cured with NZ Honeydew Honey”. Skim reading the back of your pancetta, you might see the words “New Zealand” and assume the pigs lived here too. Maybe you have a vague memory of reading about New Zealand’s relatively high animal welfare standards, and think that this vision of piglets happily cuddling up to their mothers under the stars reflects the life of the animal you’re eating – or assume that at least, since your product is New Zealand-made, the pigs lived in a practical concrete barn where they could eat when they liked and move freely.
If the bacon you are eating is from New Zealand, vaguely imagined ideas of the animals’ lives aren’t completely distant from the truth. Most people in the pork industry consider New Zealand to have some of the highest standards for animal welfare in the world. New Zealand has a “C” grade on the World Animal Protection Index, as does most of Western Europe, while the US and Canada have a D. Brent Kleiss, the CEO of NZ Pork, has said that Sweden is the only country New Zealand imports pork from that has higher animal welfare standards.
About half the pigs in New Zealand have partially outdoor environments, which is unusual internationally. “Once the pigs are weaned, they are free farmed in barns with straw bases. The only country that has a similar proportion of outdoor systems is the UK,” says Kirsty Chidgey, a researcher from Massey who advises NZ Pork on animal welfare standards and their Pigcare programme to train farmworkers. It’s not exactly skipping through the fields, but the pigs can mostly move freely and interact in groups. A video on NZ Pork’s YouTube channel shows the pigs in barns with open walls, getting covered in fresh straw while a tractor takes the old straw away, oinking gently as they come forward to check out the camera. The straw helps enrich their environment, giving them something to play with and investigate until they are slaughtered at about 19 weeks old. More conventional indoor systems, where the other half of pigs in New Zealand are raised, are rooms with plastic slats on the floor for dung to drop through, with big feeding troughs the focus of the space.
But if you’re eating bacon or ham or pancetta, chances are it didn’t come from Aotearoa at all. About 60% of pork eaten here, especially processed meat like ham and bacon, comes from overseas. If you look at the fine print on your Heller’s bacon you will see that it is in fact “made in New Zealand with pork raised in the USA and/or Canada plus other local and imported ingredients”, while Woolworths bacon is made with pork in “any one or more of the following countries: Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Netherlands, Poland, Spain plus other local and imported ingredients.” Despite a change in legislation requiring better labelling, this information is still relegated to the fine print.
What won’t be on the packet, even in 0.5 size font, is the reason that pork is usually imported: other countries can produce pork more cheaply, for the most part, because they have lower standards for animal welfare. That has a direct consequence for farmers. “It is a fact that pig farming is more expensive and less efficient when done this way [in New Zealand],” Kleiss told Rural News earlier this year, upon the publication of a report highlighting differences from Animal Policy International, a think tank operating at the intersection of animal rights and trade. (Heller’s did not respond to a request for comment on the conditions at their farms by the deadline for this piece.)
“We banned sow stalls in 2016, those awful cages where mother pigs can’t turn around and are there for weeks on end,” says Mandy Carter, the co-director of Animal Policy International. “However, they are still often used overseas, where our pork comes from.”
Sow stalls are banned in the UK and partially in the EU (they can only be used for four weeks), but are still widespread in North America, with Canada’s pork industry pushing out a ban that was supposed to begin in 2024 to 2029. Confined to the cages for their entire pregnancy, the pigs can lie down and take one step forward or back, but can’t demonstrate any of their other natural behaviours, like interacting in groups, investigating new things in their environments or getting exercise.
“Pigs are intelligent and social animals, it is important they are kept in a social environment and they have distinct species specific exploratory behaviours,” says Chidgey. Pigs are curious and want to interact with their environments. Instead of stalls, pregnant pigs in New Zealand can mostly interact in groups and move freely.
New Zealand still allows use of farrowing crates, a cage where the mother pig can only lie down but there is also space for the piglets to feed from her teats. They are allowed to be used from just before the pig gives birth and for the first few weeks of the piglet’s short lives. In New Zealand, these crates are used for a maximum of 28 days, although many would like the crates to be fully outlawed, which the Supreme Court agrees with. In the EU and US, there is no limit on the amount of time sows can be kept in these environments. Other animal welfare issues come up too: piglets are often castrated in Europe, Australia, the US and Canada, with many countries not using pain relief, while in New Zealand, piglets aren’t castrated at all.
Animal welfare laws can make it hard for New Zealand producers to compete on cost, Chidgey says. “We have high costs of production in general … [pork] is imported because it’s cheaper.” This particularly applies to processed meat products like bacon and ham, while fresh meat like chops are more likely to be from New Zealand. “Farmers support an even playing field – we become reliant on products that don’t meet our animal welfare standards, it is tough and frustrating for domestic producers who have committed to these standards.”
To the pork industry, creating a rule that imported pork must meet the same animal welfare standards as that produced in New Zealand would make sense. Chidgey says that raising the importing standards would be on the agenda, as well as supporting farmers in other ways. “A guaranteed minimum price for their product, and protected markets – many of the countries we import from have this already.” Freedom Farms, a brand that sells New Zealand pork products from certified high-welfare producers, would support this too. “If we are going to allow the importation of pork from countries with lower standards than New Zealand, farmers need support – this may be financial, and it is certainly the time needed to plan this transition,” says Gregor Fyfe, Freedom Farms co-founder.
It’s a relatively unusual case where Animal Policy International and other animal rights groups are actually aligned with the meat industry. “It’s like we don’t want the cruelty in our backyard,” says Mandy Carter. “When we banned these cruel practices, we didn’t just want them to be shifted overseas.” Animal Policy International has a few ideas to improve the “welfare gap” created by the discrepancy between New Zealand laws and international ones. One option is to include welfare standards in free trade agreement negotiations, although that runs the risk of being negotiated away. “We want [animal welfare] to be a bottom line we have to have with every country that wants to trade with New Zealand, the same way we safeguard biosecurity.” That would require specific legislation. Improving labelling, so it’s clear that what you’re eating is imported, would help too – NZ Pork already has a “100% NZ Pork” label on products that have been produced here.
There’s some support for this in the Labour Party, which banned live exports of animals while in government. “There are animal welfare requirements under our trade agreements with both the UK and EU, that place an obligation not to lower our country’s specific standards for any trade advantage,” trade spokesperson Damien O’Connor said, via email. “Standards for pork and poultry in particular are evolving… any future changes would have to follow proper process and negotiation. Things like the National government’s work to bring back live animal exports takes us backwards and risks our annual $55 billion primary export industry.”
This doesn’t just apply to meat. “We’ve banned battery cages, but we still import eggs from countries that continue this practice,” Carter says. Imported eggs are often in powdered or liquid form, where they’re used in catering – in products like the cabinet food you order at cafes or a pavlova you pile with cream at Christmastime. New Zealand’s imports of wool come from Australia, where mulesing is common practice – a process whereby lambs have parts of their hindquarters cut off without anaesthetic to prevent flystrike, although its efficacy has been debated.
“People don’t want to buy meat that has been produced in cruel conditions – that’s why it’s banned,” says Carter. In fact, 83% of people, according to polling commissioned by her organisation, agree that imported products should have the same animal welfare laws as those applied in New Zealand. To Carter, legislation enforcing this would make sense. “It’s good for the public who want this, it’s good for farmers, and it’s good for the animals – right now, we’re just privileging imports.”
Andrew Hoggard, who holds the animal welfare portfolio as the associate minister for agriculture, did not respond to a request for comment.