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Bedfordia, Twinwood Pig Unit – BedfordshireFinalist – Pig Farmer of the Year 2010(Richard Smith, Livestock Manager)BackgroundBefordia Group Ltd, www.bedfordia.co.uk/agricultureBedfordia is a private company based in north Bedfordshire that operates infour key sectors: eco-technology, automotive, property and agriculture. 2 Theagricultural division farms more than 2,200Ha, growing mostly wheat and oilseed rape on the arable side. 3 It also keeps 1,100 breeding sows, supplying Tescoand Sainsbury’s with 23,000 pigs per year through processors Tulip Ltd andWoburn Country Foods. All its finishing pigs are sold at around 22 weeks old. 4The company’s pigs are bred, reared and marketed under the Assured BritishPigs Red Tractor logo, for which they are independently audited. Its finishingunit was built in 2005 and was the first in the UK to comply with the IntegratedPollution Prevention Control standard, which requires the ‘best availabletechniques’ for welfare and the environment to be used. It claims to reduce therisk of introducing disease to the pigs by operating a closed herd, using artificialinsemination to introduce new breeding stock. The pigs are fed on a liquid dietof mostly waste products from food manufacturers.An annual ‘Open Farm Sunday’ is staged, during which families can come andvisit the farm. The promotional photos for this event include a sow and pigletsin a pen full of clean straw. 5FootageAnimal Aid’s footage wastaken in June 2012 at theTwinwood Pig Unit at MiltonHouse Farm, the headquartersof Bedfordia’s agriculturaldivision. Despite Bedfordia’sclaims of reducing disease in thepigs by keeping a closed herd,we found evidence of diseasesand infections in the pigs. Theseinclude lameness, anal prolapse,pneumonia, lesions, and tailinfections, most of which wereobserved repeatedly during filming.Many of the pigs appeared tohave clipped tails, a possiblecause of the numerous tailinfections seen. Clipping is oftenperformed to prevent pigsbiting each other’s tails, a commonproblem in intensive pig farms,caused by over-crowding andboredom. Some of the pensshowed attempts at enrichment,such as barrels hanging fromchains, but it seems these failedto keep the pigs occupied andprevent biting.Many of the pigs observed hadbeen removed from the mainherd due to their illnesses andplaced in a ‘sick bay’. Whilstsome of these animals were instraw-lined pens, others werestill forced to walk, lay and sleepon barren, slatted floors, eventhough they were clearly unwell.Two dead pigs had been dumpedoutside one of the sheds andcovered with a plastic sheet.Another dead pig was still in apen with four other live animals.Both pigs found outside the shedhad marks and lesions on theirbodies that could have beeninflicted either before or afterdeath. It is also uncertain howthe dead pig found inside thepen died, as there were noobvious marks on the body.Award Winning Farmers Exposed: The Best of the Best? 2