Øystein Fimland holds an egg in one hand while touching the electric fence with the other. The current is weaker today than usual. Probably a bad contact somewhere. But none of the animals escaped during the night. Fimland is completely new to the pig game. On the farm, which his parents-in-law owned before, he has a few pigs. They are always out. Now he has recently delivered the first nine for slaughter. – Pigs have nothing to do indoors on concrete, he says, as he strolls through the edge of the forest. Five sows and a bunch of piglets live there. Only a small proportion of Norwegian pigs feel this way, because most live a life on concrete floors. Every morning, Øystein Fimland looks after his animals. Sometimes they lie completely flat and he shouts out to check if nothing has happened. I call myself a farmer and it’s a bit funny. It’s such a small scale, but it’s farming I do. Before and now Before, it was common to have a small number of pigs outside in the summer, which were slaughtered at Christmas. It has started to become popular again. At the same time, more people are buying from small producers. These are very small numbers in relation to the total, but enough that Animalia’s status report for meat mentions the rise of small herds of fattening pigs. At the time of writing, there are around 20 advertisements for meat from outdoor pigs on finn.no. In this article we meet four people: The small farmer who couldn’t eat pig from the store anymore The conventional farmer who feels neglected The butcher who comes to visit those who are going to eat their own pig for Christmas The big outdoor pig farmer who has found his way into the grocery store Horror and disgust In 2019, a chill went down the back of many people. In the Brennpunkt documentary “The secrets of the pig industry”, poor conditions in Norwegian pig barns were revealed. Afterwards, washing up was promised: the farmers who did not follow the rules would be fined and excluded. But for Fimland, it was not about some farmers making mistakes. He believes that the food policy does not allow good enough animal welfare. The farmers work under too much pressure to deliver the cheapest possible meat, is his view. – The farmers have zero fault in this. He believes that they work within a framework with politically determined prices for what they produce. – They have to do the job accordingly, to manage to make ends meet. Nortura, which is owned by Norwegian farmers, writes to news that the farmer must be paid for what the production costs and that extra animal welfare that goes beyond the regulations must be compensated from the market. Nortura also emphasizes that several of the breaches that came to light in the documentary cannot be excused with economics. – Why is it the system and not the farmers’ fault? – It is complicated to answer briefly. But when you work with a limited amount of resources, and at the same time have to meet continuous demands for efficiency, it will break at one point or another. Since childhood, Fimland has butchered pigs. The parents bought whole pigs, cut them up and made sausages, bacon, liver pâté, spareribs and so on. After the revelations, he started as a pig farmer himself. First with a friend. Fimland does not sell the meat through grocery stores. He sells directly to the consumer, at a higher price per kilo than you pay for “regular” pig. We sneak around the whole clusterfuck! Øystein Fimland Apart from the butcher and the meat cutter, there are no intermediaries. He is left with the profit himself. Eventually, he will also do the meat cutting himself. – It seems that people are becoming more and more concerned with sustainability, animal welfare and natural processes. Fimland has built up its own customer group. Through platforms such as Reko-ringen, Dyrket or Finn, small farms get in touch with customers and agree appointment times for deliveries. There have been several small herds of pigs where the animals live outside. There are probably several hundred. Concrete figures are difficult to come up with. The closest you can get is to look at how many operate organic production, where there is a requirement that the pigs must have access to outdoor areas. The organic share was 0.4 per cent of the fattening pigs and 0.7 per cent of the sows in 2021. This means that over 99 per cent of the pigs in Norway live indoors. The conventional In a barn on Ås, the temperature alarm goes off. Outside, the blue mercury in the gauge ticks at the -20 degree mark. When you drive to the farm, it looks like a Scandinavian Christmas card. You come across a white main house with a red barn in the yard. Everything covered in a solid half meter of snow. It is eight in the morning. Kjell Skuterud has been looking after his pigs for just over an hour. In here, 1,200 pigs are raised every year. Skuterud has installed heaters in the barn. The pigs have around 20 degrees all year round. All life. When will the pursuit of efficiency stop? A sow can have twice as many piglets as she has teats. He talks about breeding technology. The sows have more kids, which are always ready for slaughter earlier. When the pigs are newborns, he spends about the whole day in the barn. – I think we should put the brakes on a bit. I have never run so fast and chased so hard to keep up. He adds that it is a challenge with older barns to accept so many piglets. Expanding is usually not financially feasible. Usually he eats breakfast before doing his morning routine in the third barn. The last round is starting to eat away at the empty stomach. – I want to remove the pressure on the animals. If it is lower, it will also be better to be smoked. He took over the farm with pigs from his father in 2003. He has had very good years. But since 2015 it has been tighter. – The price of meat has risen slightly since the 80s. We can produce more than that time. But it does not follow the price trend. Bjørn Gimming, leader of the Norwegian Farmers’ Association, writes that the price for the pig farmer was stagnant for a long time. It is higher now, but the farmer’s costs have still increased more than the price in the shop. He adds that the Norwegian Farmers’ Association wants greater transparency about how the price of food is set. – There is something called smoker welfare and I feel that is being forgotten a bit. It seems to me that the most important thing is not animal and farmer health, says Skuterud. He feels that all that matters are results. And that the farmer is left with too little of the profit. He believes this is also the reason for the horror pictures Norwegian homes got to see in 2019 and 2021. – The farmer has a busier everyday life. It is more difficult to get around. It goes away. Nortura writes to news that Norwegian meat producers must be competitive in an international market. When it became known that activists had entered the pig barn, it had unpleasant consequences for Skuterud. His daughters did not dare to go near their grandparents who live 300 meters away. The family set up cameras and began locking the barns with large padlocks. He disagrees with the activists’ approach, but says it was good that it came out. The industry would never do it themselves. – It affected my working day unbelievably much. I changed my routines and focused on getting better and being more alert at work. After the revelations, everyone who works with pigs has been on a compulsory course. – I feel that the farmer is to blame. Never the system. If you are pressed long enough, are stressed enough and have chased long enough, you will quickly fire. – I am not looking to take any individual. Change must come from the political side. I ask the system questions. The groups are running like crazy. Virke, the interest organization for the grocery industry, says they cannot answer news’s questions and refers to the Ministry of Agriculture and Food. The ministry replies to news that they do not have the capacity to answer our questions due to heavy workload before Christmas. The Economist Inland, in a gently undulating landscape, reminiscent of the Midwest in the USA, Vidar Julien waits in a muddy yard for the slaughter truck. It’s still dark outside. Julien has about as many pigs as Skuterud. But his is never in. It was not revelations about a lack of animal welfare that motivated him to do it differently. He and his wife took over an ordinary pig farm, which needed upgrading. – I am more of an economist than an agronomist. I looked at the math that we ages would make money on a new pig house. The investment requirement for outdoor pigs is approximately 10 per cent of the investment requirement for indoor farming. After the older sow has been loaded, we follow the slaughter truck through the rain to neighbor Heinrich Jung, to load more pigs. Julien saw what the neighbor was doing. Pigs outside all year with small huts they seek shelter and sleep in. No need for a modern barn. The entrance ticket to becoming a pig farmer suddenly became very accessible and without too much financial risk. – The customer must be acutely aware of this: If you want more animal welfare, it costs money. No one can do it for free, says Jung. They can sell the meat through Kolonihagen and a number of other players and get paid a higher price than the conventional farmer gets. – I think many of the effective methods are at the expense of the animals. So when I started with pigs, I wanted to do it on the animals’ terms. – But it is meat production, no doubt about it. We are not a zoo. Slaughter day In Degernes, a pig lies on a trailer and is fed by the owner. It seems relaxed. It does not know its own fate. Inside, two chefs prepare food from the Christmas pig. Slaughter, dismemberment and preparation for Christmas. Like in the old days. Then the butcher came to the farm to slaughter the Christmas pig and everyone helped make things from the animal. – I think people have become more interested in self-salvage and the philosophy of short-travel food. Harald Solberg has received many requests to slaughter pigs at people’s homes in recent years. – It will come back. But not on the same scale as it was before. That time is over. Solberg worked at an industrial slaughterhouse before. – We don’t understand what it means to eat as much meat as we do. What do you eat on Christmas Eve? Chopsticks Fish Vegetarian / Vegan Pig, but I am very conscious of who I buy from Pig, but with a bad conscience Pig Other Show result
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How is the Christmas pig doing in 2022? These farmers have “luxury pigs” that live outside all year round – Norway
