Do you know about the group’s calculations?
‘Yes. Varkens in Nood was doing a study on the number of pigs in the Netherlands and asked me for information. I mentioned some possible sources, which they then used.’
Are their figures correct?
‘The calculations are correct but it’s debatable whether we have the right sources and whether we can combine them. My calculations give production levels of around 27 million pigs a year in the Netherlands. Some are exported but there are also imports. Then I get an estimated 17.5 million pigs slaughtered in the Netherlands. Themain inputs for these calculations are the agricultural counts of Statistics Netherlands (CBS) and the trade data
from the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO). However, CBS says 15.2 million pigs are slaughtered. That gives a gap of 2.3 million pigs.’
Varkens in Nood calls this large-scale fraud.
‘That statement is tendentious and I can’t agree. Varkens in Nood suggests that pigs are being slaughtered and exported illegally. But it’s not easy to cheat with pigs in an abattoir for export as there are vets present. Varkens in Nood has also made a connection to the manure fraud but that is far-fetched. The point is that these calculations link data from different databases, which you should be very careful about doing.’
Does that explain the 2.3 million phantom pigs?
‘I don’t have a good explanation for that. I’ve now heard that CBS also has export data, which gives 0.6 million more exported pigs than RVO, reducing the gap to 1.7 million pigs. Now questions have been asked of the minister of Agriculture in parliament. I’m curious to see what new insights the ministry will get from the study.’
Phantom pigs: more measurement error than fraud
The Netherlands has millions more pigs than appear in the statistics, claimed pig rights group Varkens in Nood on 22 January. The campaign group calls this fraud. Researcher Robert Hoste of Wageningen Economic Research says that is tendentious.
