Campaigners have staged a screening of Pig Business in the European parliament to call for an end to factory farming of pigs.

Pig Business highlights the animal welfare, health and environmental issues caused by factory farms in Poland and elsewhere. The film focuses on US based Smithfields, the world’s largest producer and processor of pigs.

This informative documentary was a real labour of love for director Tracey Worcester as four years of research and filming were followed by numerous legal problems.

The Parliament.com report “Worcester told the audience that she had agreed to screen her film in the parliament “to show MEPs that the cheap food that they are delivering for constituents isn’t cheap at all.

“If factory scale farming was made to pay the true costs of its production systems, then small family run farms would actually be more competitive in the market place.

“We need to stop subsidising factory farming and give our food economy back to more healthy, sustainable, bio-diverse and humane scale farming”.

Following the screening, she spoke about her ’six big asks’ which are based on recommendations from farming groups across the EU.

The six asks are:

Recognise that the profitability of factory farming depends on externalising its true costs onto the broader community.

Ensure the Common Agricultural Policy post 2013 moves European agriculture away from industrial livestock production to sustainable, humane and autonomous forms of animal husbandry. So make more money available and make it mandatory for member states to take up the subsidies to move farmers from intensive to extensive farming methods.

Ensure better enforcement and strengthening of the existing EU Directive on the welfare of pigs.

Introduce mandatory method of production labelling.

Introduce a ban on routine prophylactic use of antibiotics.

Ensure local, national and EU public bodies only source locally or nationally produced high welfare pork.

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