Compassion in World Farming Headquarters sponsored Animal Voice Editor, Louise van der Merwe to travel to the UK in June this year, to see the new face of farming. 

Image: Louise at Sparsholt Agricultural College. Notice that the piglets all have curly tails.

Sow stalls have been banned in the UK since 1999 and the whole of Europe will be sow-stall-free (except for the first four weeks of pregnancy) by 2013.

Sparsholt Agricultural College in southern England, is at the forefront of developing more humane  living conditions for pigs and up to 8000 school children visit the Sparsholt piggeries each year.

Sparsholt's John Garrett (seen with Louise at left), said tail docking of piglets  to prevent them biting each other's tails, was no longer carried out at Sparsholt.  The answer to tail biting had been relatively simple.  The provision of extra straw for the piglets to snout around in, had helped solve the problem. “If you give pigs nice things to do, they don't go about biting each other,” he said.

Pigs in South Africa are routinely tail docked to prevent tail biting. In the barren surroundings in which they are 'grown', there is nothing to do except focus on the wiggling tail of the piglet in front.