Pity the poor little piggies!
First luvvies forced themselves on fish in the name of animal rights. Now they’ve pounced on porkers
PLUCKED from obscurity, posing under studio lights and cuddling up to the likes of Jeremy Irons... i t’s no life for a pig.
Not that these poor little fellows had any say in the matter.
They are mere accessories in the latest celebrity animal welfare campaign.
But at least this time the luvvies kept their clothes on – unlike Helena Bonham Carter and other stars who posed naked with fish last year to protest at the plunder of our seas.
The piglets posed with celebrities including Dominic West, Rupert Everett, Helen McCrory, Leslie Ash, Sadie Frost, Dame Vivienne Westwood and Jon Snow to highlight conditions on some factory farms.
Others supporting the Turn Your Nose Up campaign against intensive pig farming include Sting, Trudie Styler, Stephen Fry, Jamie Oliver and Hugh Grant.
They do not want families to stop eating chops, sausages or bacon but want them to buy pork produced by high-welfare farms. The group Farms Not Factories is calling on shoppers to buy meat that is either organic or that is certified as high welfare by groups such as the RSPCA.
Three-quarters of British pork comes from intensive units where the pigs are kept in pens or cages and rarely, if ever, go outside. Critics say the antibiotics needed to keep such pigs disease-free help to create superbugs that pose a threat to human health.
While Britain has higher welfare standards than on the Continent, animal rights groups claim to have filmed appalling suffering, including cannibalism.
West said most people are in the dark about the ‘not only shame- ful but also unsustainable’ way many pigs are reared. ‘It is the antithesis of what people want the British countryside and farming to be,’ he said.
Irons added: ‘For me, eating the meat of animals that have been raised and killed inhumanely and cruelly taints my own humanity.’
The National Pig Association said: ‘The footage taken on farms is not representative of pig farming practices. The UK has some of the most stringent animal health and welfare legislation in the world. The pig sector takes its responsibility regarding antibiotic use very seriously. Antibioticresistant organisms in humans are primarily the result of antibiotic use in people, rather than the veterinary use of antibiotics.’