The truth about where our pork comes from

Sunday, 9 November 2025

Pig welfare billboards appeared in Auckland as MPs heard pleas from the NZ pork industry and animal welfare activists over farrowing crate rules.

ANALYSIS: Feelings run high about the use of farrowing crates to confine New Zealand sows during the days after they give birth.

Under current rules sows can be confined for up to 33 days in restrictive metal farrowing crates while suckling piglets, which reduce piglet crushing deaths and foster piglet killings by sows, as well as keeping costs down for pig farmers.

However, the regulations were ruled unlawful in 2020 under the Animal Welfare Act, and the Government plans a law change to limit farrowing crate use to a maximum of seven days per sow, with pork farmers having 10 years to get ready for the change.

Late last month the Primary Production Select Committee heard from both animal welfare activists, who want farrowing crates banned, and NZ Pork, the industry lobbying body for the remaining 65 or so commercial pig farmers, which had privileged access during the consultation.

But those hearings raised an uncomfortable truth about the pork Kiwi households consume: More than 50,000 tonnes of pork sold in New Zealand each year comes from countries that use farrowing crates, and have no current limits on their use.

And in some, like the US and Canada, it is not even against the law to castrate young pigs without anaesthetic, as it is in New Zealand.

Confusing labels

The recipe for Cameron Harrison’s honey cured streaky bacon has been perfected over 12 years.

A trip down the deli aisle in the supermarket reveals to the eagle-eyed shopper willing to read food label small print roughly, but not precisely, where much of the pork for bacon, salami and luncheon meat comes from, even for brands professing how quintessentially Kiwi they are.

Woolworths luncheon meat is “made in New Zealand from imported and local ingredients”.

The supermarket giant’s Manuka Honey Ham is also vague, saying: “Pork butchered in the following countries may have been used in the production of this product: Australia, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, New Zealand, Poland, Spain, Sweden, United States of America. These countries may not always reflect the countries the animal has been raised in.”

Labels on Woolworths' luncheon meat do not tell you where the pork it was made from came, just the list of countries where the pigs were butchered.

NZ Pork has campaigned for accurate labelling, but has not secured government backing.

50,000-plus tonnes of pork imported

Surveys suggest around eight in 10 consumers care about pig welfare standards, but shopping habits suggest that’s not making much difference to buying patterns.

As one pig welfare proponent told MPs on Wednesday: “We are becoming a culture and a country which doesn’t actually get where our bacon comes from. People are pretty much buying things under plastic and not understanding it.”

Brent Kleiss, chief executive of NZ Pork, says: “People are voting to buy cheaper imported pork because it’s not labelled well, and because they assume that anything being sold [on] the shelves in New Zealand meets New Zealand consumer expectations. It does not.”

Pig welfare and farrowing crate laws and regulations are in flux in Nordic and the European Union.

But currently, on a legal front at least, there is no limit on the time sows can be confined to farrowing crates in many of the countries that send over 50,000 tonnes of pork to New Zealand every year, around 60% of the pork eaten by households.

The countries sending the most pork to New Zealand are Germany, Spain, the US, Canada, Finland, Australia, Poland, Denmark, Sweden, Ireland, Italy, The Netherlands, and China.

However, the EU has an ambition to ban the use of cages for all farmed animals, and proposals are expected in 2026, a move that appears to be sparking a wave of investment in technological innovation by agri-tech companies hoping to cash in on a transition.

Given the changes taking place in Europe it is possible that by the time New Zealand’s proposed new farrowing crate restrictions are in place in New Zealand in 10 years’ time, EU and Nordic pork will have very different pig welfare laws, assisted by generous taxpayer-funded grants, perhaps even in advance of New Zealand’s.

But it is also possible that in 10 years’ time a coalition with the Greens might be elected, and farrowing crates banned, Green MP Steve Abel suggested to farmers in the select committee hearings.

No welfare restrictions on imported pork

Lower welfare standards can be a cost competitive advantage for pig-raisers overseas supplying pork to New Zealand.

Even bacon that carries prominent New Zealand branding may well not be made from pigs raised in New Zealand. Pictured: a label of Henderson's New Zealand's Original Proper Bacon.

That import competition is something NZ Pork thinks is strategically ignored by many of those who want to see farrowing crates banned here, preferring to have the farrowing crate debate engaged with reference only to a minority of the pork eaten in New Zealand.

“There is no country in the world that has gone and banned temporary controlled confinement. The only country that is planning on doing that is Norway and they are doing that in 2028,” Brent Kleiss, of NZ Pork, said.

“Now Norway has 50%-plus of their income for farmers come from government subsidisation, and they place a 100% to 400% tariff on imported pork products. They are a completely closed and protected market, so they don’t have the problem of imports,” he said.

“If they make it so unviable for farmers to keep going in face of the unfair application of these regulations to imports, then suddenly you won’t necessarily have fresh pork on your shelves at all,” he warns.

How bad are welfare standards overseas?

Green MP Steve Abel is alive to overseas welfare standards, and has proposed banning pork imports from countries where welfare standards are lower than in New Zealand.

Abel’s Animal Products (Closing the Welfare Gap) Amendment bill says: “A significant proportion of the animal products that we import are produced under standards that would not be legally or socially acceptable in New Zealand.

“For example, over 90% of pork imported to New Zealand in 2022 came from countries that allow the use of sow stalls, which were prohibited in New Zealand in 2016.”

Sow stalls are small cages in which pregnant pigs are confined for weeks at a time.

The Compassion in World Farming organisation says most indoor female breeding pigs in Europe farrow in crates, which are used to restrain sows from approximately five to seven days before they are due to give birth (pre-farrowing) until their piglets are weaned at approximately 21 to 28 days of age.

It is not only farrowing crates where there are pig welfare practices overseas that would not meet New Zealand’s standards, or those the Government has planned.

In Finland, for example, MPs in its Eduskunta Parliament have passed a new animal welfare act that felt the need to ban pig castration without anaesthetic, though that ban does not take place until 2027, according to the Finnish Animalia activist organisation.

Canada and the US does not have a ban on castration without anaesthetic.

But transparency is low for Kiwi consumers as the labelling does not tell them whether the bacon they are buying contains pork from Canada or the US, only whether it might, or whether the farmers who produced that pork engaged in castration of piglets without pain relief.

Is an import ban possible?

Pig farmers think Abel’s bill has little chance of ever becoming law as New Zealand is loathe to introduce anything other countries might see as a non-tariff barrier to trade, thereby legitimising similar action that might damage New Zealand dairy and beef exports.

Very little New Zealand pork is exported, NZ Pork says.

But, it said in its submission, the pig welfare benefits of the Government’s plans would only be realised if New Zealand pig farmers were not undermined by unfair competition from imported pork produced to less stringent welfare standards.

“This is a source of great frustration for New Zealand pig farmers who will be expected to meet even more stringent welfare standards,” it said.

Time in farrowing crates is money to pig farmers.

Ministry for Primary Industries estimated a 350-sow farm would need to invest $507,000 in capital equipment to cope with the proposed rules. There would be an added $34,000 in annual costs, and a 3% revenue drop.

If every pig farmer whose products hit New Zealand shelves had to meet the same welfare standards, they would all bear the extra costs, and they could be passed on to consumers.

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