A NEW campaign to save British pig farming is not telling the whole story.

This industry should be regarded with anything but pride.

Animal campaigning group Viva! has filmed in dozens of British pig farms in the last few years. Everywhere we found overcrowding, neglect and misery.

Pigs are fun-loving, inquisitive and intelligent, yet in Britain almost all are factory farmed.

Seventy per cent of British sows are forced to give birth in metal crates so small they are unable to turn around for the five weeks they are incarcerated.

Pigs bred for meat are kept in cramped, often filthy conditions.

Many piglets have their tails painfully cut off and teeth clipped, despite routine mutilations such as these being banned.

Piglets don't fight in the wild, but factory farmed conditions can lead to aggression. If you buy British bacon, sausages or pork in a supermarket it is likely to come from squalid conditions like these.

After a miserable, short six month life, pigs are transported, often long distances, to the abattoir, where they face an end that is anything but humane.

Moving pig farming abroad isn't the answer.

The answer is simply to stop eating them.

JUSTIN KERSWELL, Viva! York Court, Wilder Street, Bristol.