It's time to live up to the claim to be a nation of animal lovers

Not solely because of a less than pleasant experience with a pet Vietnamese pig when I was a TV reporter. But the idea of keeping a sow in a crate just seemed inhumane, which it turned out was actually the point.

At this point I should point out that the pig was not real, but a fluffy animatronic version visiting the Scottish Parliament to draw attention to the plight of its real life counterparts on farms across the country. And that campaigners don’t necessarily want us to avow all bacon, pork or ham consumption but just to think, and do something, about the conditions in which our farm animals are kept.

Animals are, after all sentient beings. They can feel pain. The least we can do is provide them with reasonable living conditions.

Penny, as our animatronic friend is known, is on the Crate Britain Tour around the UK’s largest pig farming areas as part of a campaign to end the use of metal farrowing crates, used to ‘house’ sows for five weeks at the end of their pregnancies and while their piglets are being weaned.

There is no space to turn around, and just basic access to a trough at one end and gaps in the side to allow piglets to feed. A number of constituents had already written to me about the crates and while they sounded awful, I hadn’t quite realised just how cruelly restricting they are until I came face to face with one.

Scandinavian countries have already outlawed them and while around 40 per cent of pigs on British farms are crate-free there is currently no incentive for farmers to end the practice.

Originally, they were intended as a way of protecting both the sow and her newborns from the danger of her accidentally trodding or lying on them. But as production methods have increased the size of pigs the crates have become more cramped.

In some places where farrowing crates are banned they have been replaced by larger better designed compartments, but campaigners say that to encourage farmers here to change will need both regulation and financial support. Not because farmers don’t care. I am confident that most care at least as much for their animals as the protesters do. They are after all their livelihood.

But new crates would be an expensive investment at a time when the agricultural sector is under financial pressure. There would also be a financial gamble as without regulation setting out exactly what size, shape construction, etc would be acceptable, there would be a danger of buying products only for them to ruled by subsequent rulings.

Hence the need for regulation. But that would be just the tip of the iceberg. What we really need in this country is a national strategy to ‘End the Cage Age’ in all food production in this country.

That would mean a comprehensive new Animal Health and Welfare Bill preventing unnecessarily painful practices and making Britain a world leader on animal welfare and health standards.

We often describe ourselves as a nation of animal lovers. It’s time we lived up to that claim.