Compassion in World Farming has investigated 'shocking' lapses in pig welfare reported on Spanish farms still using sow stalls despite their EU wide ban implemented in the New Year.
"Bins full of dead pigs being eaten by maggots; piglets lying in their own filth; pregnant sows kept in sow stalls, so narrow that they cannot even turn around: this is a horrific reality check" the animal welfare charity said.
The Pigs Directive lays down minimum standards for the protection of pigs within the European Union.
One such standard, agreed by the EU in 2001, is the banning of sow stalls as of January this year. The charity said the stalls were a 'cruel reality' and are still being used in Spain.
The National Pig Association said from the New Year, up to 40% of EU pigs will come from farms flouting animal welfare rules.
Stalls have not been used in the UK for many years, but figures released by Brussels show 80% of EU countries have not yet complied with the ban.
The recent horse meat scandal has made many consumers wary of processed meat products.
The report said millions of pigs continue to be kept indoors in stalls with little bedding and a lack of suitable enrichment.
"This is against the law which requires that fattening pigs must be given straw or other natural manipulable material. All of the fattening pigs seen on the 9 farms had their tails docked, and may well have been subject to other painful and routine mutilations such as castration and teeth cutting" Compassion in World Farming CEO Philip Lymbery said.
"We must do more to ensure that pigs are treated as the sentient beings they are. What use is a Directive if we don’t follow it throughout the EU? This footage shows that the Commission must do more to enforce the Pigs Directive and penalise those flouting it."
NPA chairman Richard Longthorp said: "It makes a mockery of Europe’s animal welfare legislation."
"As the United Kingdom imports around 60 percent of its pork — much of it as processed food such as ham and bacon — shoppers will need to be very careful about what they choose from supermarket shelves and when eating out in restaurants."
Matthew Curtis of pig-breeding company ACMC said: "Figures from the National Pig Association suggest that nearly 5 million sows will be kept under illegal production systems".
"They will produce roughly 96 million pigs - about 1.8 million a week. This is a staggering amount - equivalent to the entire production from Germany and Spain - the EU's largest pig producers,"
"Imports of such meat will have serious implications for British pig farmers who follow high welfare practices and who have had to comply with a total ban on sow stalls for over a decade," he said.
"Due to cheaper production methods this lower-welfare meat could undercut UK-produced meat and the fiasco in the EU surrounding non-compliance with the battery-cage ban in 2012 will pale into insignificance compared with this."
The NPA has warned that some European countries 'do not have the necessary infrastructure' to identify law-breaking farms.
"We have been pressuring Brussels for more than a year to take measures to protect European consumers from illegally produced pigmeat. Its stock response has always been that it could do nothing until January 1, 2013. Well that date is now upon us and it needs to act urgently to have any chance of keeping its integrity intact," said Longthorp.
