Media Release

For Immediate Release – 16th May 2006

Photo Call: Giant Pig Kicks Off ‘Cruel Britannia’ Campaign in Lincoln

Lincoln – Viva!, the UK’s largest vegetarian campaigns group, will kick off their national ‘Cruel Britannia’ tour in Lincoln on Thursday. Using a body-worn TV screen to air shocking footage taken on British pig farms, and accompanied by a giant Piggles mascot – complete with plane and flying helmet – the campaigners will urge shoppers to ‘Join the fight for pig freedom – don’t eat ‘em!’.

Date: Thursday, 18th May
Time: 12 noon
Place: Lincoln High Street, near the War Memorial

Over the past five months, Viva! has visited dozens of pig farms across Britain and documented cruel and unhealthy methods of production which, it says, will shock most consumers. Chosen entirely at random, the units exposed are typical of UK pig farms generally and reveal a picture of filth, overcrowding, dead and dying animals and widespread neglect.

Some of the scenes in Viva!’s video – filmed in Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Somerset and the West Midlands – require a strong stomach.  They include dead and rotting piglets alongside living siblings; skips full to overflowing with dead piglets; sows with open, festering sores imprisoned in metal crates; pigs coated in their own faeces with filthy, wet concrete on which to sleep; crippled piglets dragging themselves around, unable to walk.

“The British pig industry boasts of the best animal welfare in the world, yet everywhere we pointed the camera we saw filth, suffering and neglect”, says Toni Vernelli, Viva!’s campaigns manager.  “It’s time they stopped conning the public with meaningless quality assurance schemes and little red tractor symbols and owned up to the gruesome reality of pig production in the UK.”

Photos from Viva!’s investigation can be viewed and downloaded at: http://www.viva.org.uk/campaigns/pigs/cruel_britannia/

For more information contact Toni Vernelli on 0117 944 1000 or 0797 069 0468,
or visit www.piggles.org.uk