Day 25: Enjoy your Parma Ham

Today the 700th-kilometer video was made in Italian and addressed the consortium of Parma Ham. In Italy, there are about 13 million pigs that live in intensive farming and about 75% of all Italian pig legs are produced for Parma ham. The consortium prides itself on the fact that they control the quality of the entire process from the moment the piglet is born, till the moment it reaches the supermarkets. In order to qualify for 'parma pig', they have to be reared in one of 10 Italian regions. This is in theory, as various reports state that there are cases where pigs were imported from countries in Northern Europe, their tattoos removed to then be sold as Italian Parma Ham. To the consortium, traceability is very important and they have strict controls in place to monitor the 'production system'. 

What they don't manage to control, or probably they simply don't care, is animal welfare. More than 1 billion Euro in revenue at the cost of millions of pigs that are subject to systematic abuse,  

In a large scale undercover investigation, conducted by the Dutch organisation Wakker Dier, investigators reported the following animal welfare problems:

• Overcrowding
• Bad conditions and evidence of poor inspection regime
• Floors were damp, dirty, bare and slatted 
• Obvious signs of fighting/biting (this is a sign of stress and frustration)
• No continuous access to drinking water (this is a violation of animal welfare regulation)
• Docked tails (pigs are mutilated, to prevent them from biting each other's tails, due to stress and frustration)
• Sows in sow stalls for a very long time (the sow stall is a stall with metal bars that enables the sow to stand up so that she can't accidentally squash her piglets because she is too big and she has an unnatural amount of piglets due to 'reproduction policy' that is aimed at maximising production. 

Sow in a sow stall with metal bars. Picture of a Dutch sow stall. (Source: Meat the Victims)

• Castration (and this often happens without anesthesia). 
• Lack of enrichment materials. (Pigs are intelligent animals and are mentally very active, they need to explore their environment, and when that can't do that, they get frustrated). 

These, ladies and gentlemen, are the fine ingredients, quality controlled from A-Z by the proud Consortium of Parma Ham, who proudly presents their products as high-quality Parma Ham. Enjoy your food!

I dedicated my video question to the consortium of Parma ham. The video is in Italian in which I ask how the consortium believes it can produce quality ham, from animals that never move, because they live on a 1 m2 space. Animals that can never breathe fresh air, that show signs of stress, frustration, and fear and who are subject to mutilation and other systematic abuse and cruelty. 

Only through education, we can put an end to this abuse and together we will!!! We are raising 10 euros for every kilometer we ski, that will be used to make a documentary about pigs. Please help us to realise this documentary and make the world a place without intensive farming!

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