Animal welfare

About half of all piglets born are male. Castrating these male piglets is necessary since, when they are adult boars, their bodies will produce substances that can cause a pungent and bad odour when their meat is prepared. Naturally, supermarkets do not want to offer this meat with its ‘boar taint’ for sale. Castrating boar piglets prevents the meat having a bad odour but we acknowledge that this can be a painful procedure. Therefore we, together with the entire production chain, are looking for methods to avoid castration while at the same time ensuring the expected high quality of the meat.

VION policy
VION supports the ambition to put an end to castration as formulated in the German Düsseldorf Declaration and in the Dutch Noordwijk Declaration as soon as possible and in a responsible manner that is accepted by the international sales market. These two declarations state 2015 as the target date.

However, as no responsible manner to enable this practice to be stopped has so far been developed, we support all possible measures to make sure that castration will be less painful for the piglets. In this respect, the Netherlands has chosen for castration using anaesthetics, whereas Germany has opted for injections in order to achieve the same effect.

Looking for a solution

VION – as well as all the other stakeholders in the sector – is currently actively involved in long-term studies to provide better insight into, and understanding of, this complex matter. The research is aimed at breeding, farming and at reliable and objective methods of detecting the smell before the meat is delivered. In addition to this primarily fundamental scientific research, VION has invested in practical studies. The company has over 20 years of extensive practical experience offering boar meat, initially on the UK market. On the basis of this experience, VION has developed QA protocols that have been accepted by Dutch buyers.

Market acceptance

There are no uniform international standards for boar meat. Meat of (non-castrated) male pigs can be sold without any problems in the UK. The Italian and Spanish ham markets on the contrary do not accept any boar meat, due to the risk of a bad smell. Selling boar meat in other European countries is difficult as well.

Dutch supermarkets increasingly sell meat of non-castrated pigs, and almost all supermarkets have stated that they will no longer offer any meat from castrated pigs by the end of 2011. They intend to rely on the inspection methods that have been developed in the field to make sure that they can deliver on this commitment.

Inspection approach

Not everyone is equally sensitive to boar taint. Men are less sensitive than women and older people less than younger people. VION checks every boar that is slaughtered in its slaughterhouses for boar taint. This is done by heating some meat and sniffing its odour.
The people who do this have been selected for their sensitivity to boar taint. They are frequently rotated and we also run additional analyses on random samples. This enables us to control the quality risks in a way that is accepted by an increasing number of buyers.

Immunocastration?

We do not see immunocastration as a structural alternative to castration. This procedure consists of a male piglet being injected twice with a substance that stops the production of the gonadotropin hormone (when the piglet is between 8 and 20 weeks old). This hormone affects the functioning of the reproductive organs. The injections compromise the animal's integrity by decreasing the size of its testicles and glands, and changing the pig's hormone balance as well as its physiological and psychological state. As a result, there is a lot of social and market opposition to this procedure.