Synopsis

Despite Poland’s traditional food being amongst the best quality in Europe, the agenda of the global banks and big agribusiness, aided and abetted by EU bureaucrats, is to consolidate Poland’s three million farmers into mechanized factory farms.

EU taxpayers have unknowingly helped the world’s biggest hog producer to set up in Poland. With farming methods heavily criticized, not least by Robert Kennedy Jnr. in the United States, the company intends eventually to dominate the UK market as well.

Four years ago, seasoned campaigner, eco-warrior and mother of three Tracy Worcester set out to discover who was paying the true price for the cheap imported pork for sale in Britain’s supermarkets. Documenting her investigation into intensive pig farming and the damaging impact it is having on the quality of our food, the environment, and the health and welfare of agricultural communities, True Stories: Pig Business follows the Marchioness as she infiltrates farms in Europe and America and confronts the biggest firm in the pig business.

The film reveals that these huge meat factories overcrowd and mistreat the animals, put small farmers out of business, and pollute the water and air, endangering the health of local residents and consumers.

Former workers admit that because of overcrowding they have to pump the animals with antibiotics. Richard Young, policy adviser to the Soil Association, warns of growing human resistance to antibiotics because of residues in pork, and the possibility of new forms of super-bug emerging. A local doctor confirms that employees and neighbours are poisoned by the stench of a cocktail of 400 gases inside the shed, due to the vast quantity of effluent which putrefies in slurry lagoons before being sprayed onto nearby fields.

While the EU subsidizes this operation in the name of helping Poland become more competitive, small-scale farmer Alicia complains that the giants out-compete her traditional farming methods, as they give their animals additives to make them grow faster and collect huge subsidy cheques.

Tracy Worcester’s message is that consumers have a choice. We need not stand by as corporations ride roughshod over communities, destroying democracy and culture. If we demand accurate supermarket labelling, so that we can buy British, and thereby support the farmers in raising their animal welfare standards, or if we reconnect direct with farmers via local butchers and farmers’ markets, we ourselves can reclaim high-quality, small-scale humane farming husbandry. We can help restore communities, and we can protect animal welfare, the environment, and human health.

It’s possible to change direction. Through our purchasing power, we can take back control.