An intensive piggery to be identified today has previously been investigated and found to be acting within the law, an animal's advocacy group says.
TVNZ's Sunday programme aired footage by animal welfare organisation Open Rescue, who were accompanied by comedian Mike King during a break-in at a North Island intensive pig farm.
King, a long-standing front man for a campaign advertising pork, said he was deeply ashamed of his role in promoting that type of farming.
The pigs were unable to move and obviously in distress, chewing at the cage bars and frothing, he said.
National animal advocacy organisation SAFE has said they will disclose the location of the piggery to the Minister of Agriculture today.
However, SAFE campaign director Hans Kriek said he expected a MAF investigation to find the piggery was acting within the law.
"This farm has previously been investigated by MAF, who found nothing in breach of the law. The farm is disgusting but appears to be operating within the law, so we doubt if MAF will find anything different this time," Mr Kriek said.
"The owner of the intensive piggery at the centre of public outrage is no rogue farmer. He owns several intensive piggeries worth an estimated $4 million."
SAFE said the owner was a leading pig industry representative and a former director of the New Zealand Pork Industry Board, who owns five piggeries.
The organisation also responded to comments made by the New Zealand Pork Industry Board chairman Chris Trengrove on TVNZ's Close Up yesterday, saying it was surprised to hear him denying ever seeing similar conditions on other intensive pig farms with sow stalls.
"Over 22,000 pregnant sows live in sow stalls in New Zealand and suffer the same fate as those pigs on the exposed piggery. Other pig farms may look a bit cleaner but the cages are just as small and cruel," Mr Kriek said.
At his post cabinet press conference yesterday, Prime Minister John Key said he found the television footage of intensive pig farming "very, very disturbing".
There was a need for change if that was indicative of a large number of piggeries around New Zealand, he said.
The New Zealand Pork Industry said the pork industry was phasing out long-term use of sow stalls and that the programme did not represent the pork industry as a whole.
The pork industry's board had postponed the annual Bacon of the Year awards in response to the programme.
The SPCA joined the voices of objection following the programme, with chief executive Robyn Kippenberger calling for a ban on sow stalls and farrowing crates.
She called for Agriculture Minister David Carter "to ensure that the Animal Welfare Code for Pigs was altered, as soon as possible, to ban these cruel practices".
"It is total nonsense for a code that is meant to reflect the humane principles of the 1999 Animal Welfare Act, to allow pigs to be kept for most of their lives in such tight conditions that they can't even turn round."
Pig farmers who continued to use sow stalls and farrowing craters were "behaving in a totally inhumane and unacceptable way, for the sake of short-term profit", she said.
"The industry as a whole does itself no favours by continuing to protect and support these farming methods, which are banned in the United Kingdom and much of the rest of the European Union."
NZPA