Dear Advocate,

Further to the email sent about Coles phasing out the sale of pork at its in-house butcheries, pork that is sourced from piggeries using sow stalls, and their aim to be fully "sow-stall free" by 2014, we wanted to provide you with the background of the pig campaign in Australia. It was Animal Liberation who began the fight for pigs over 3 decades ago.

Starting with the founder of Animal Liberation, Christine Townend, alerting Australians to the travesty of intensive piggeries in her book, “A Voice For The Animals” (published 1981), having witnessed dozens of intensive piggeries she exposed this cruelty to media including “Sixty Minutes.”

For 3 decades we have been at the forefront exposing cruelty to pigs in factory farms.

Animal Liberation has been involved in numerous investigations, protests and sit-ins that have exposed the Australian public to the cruelty of intensive piggeries in a way that no other organization had ever done and we continue to do so.

One of the largest exposes of cruelty was at former Prime Minister Paul Keating’s piggery in Scone when 33 people did a sit-in with Professor Peter Singer and tethered themselves opposite tethered sows.  Two days after the sit-in the then Minister for Primary Industries, Richard Amery, banned the use of tethering in direct response to our action.  In 1996 The Hon. Richard Jones MLC and 34 activists did a sit-in at BUNGE piggery, the largest in the Southern Hemisphere – this led to the company investing millions of dollars into eco shelters where sows can wallow in rice hulls.  Two years later Animal Liberation took “A Current Affair” to Boen Boe piggery in NSW – that story was the 5^th highest rating for the year.  The RSPCA eventually successfully prosecuted management for keeping breeding sows in stalls which “caused distress and suffering” – an important precedent.

Another 2 year campaign resulted in Kootingal piggery being closed down by police because sow stalls there were even smaller than those regulated.

These are just some of the highlights of the unrelenting campaigns undertaken by Animal Liberation on behalf of pigs in Australia.  Please help us to continue this fight and ensure that other Supermarkets follow suit and lead to industry having to concede to the will of the people and relegate factory farms to the past.