Animal rights protesters target Jamie Oliver restaurant

Animal rights protesters took part in a demonstration against Jamie Oliver’s promotion of British pork outside the celebrity chef’s latest restaurant today.

Members of Peta stood outside Jamie’s Italian in Brighton holding placards bearing the words “Be Pukka to Pigs: Go Vegetarian” while a heavily pregnant supporter crouched in a crate beside them.

Stooped on all-fours and clad in just a pair of flesh-coloured pants, Lynzi Waddington said she wanted to highlight the “cruelty that goes on behind closed doors” within the pig farming industry.

The 24-year-old, who is six-and-a-half months pregnant, added: “Pigs are very sensitive animals, they do feel pain, and they deserve to be treated right.”

Poorva Joshipura, director of special projects for Peta, said that pigs are confined to the metal crates while they are pregnant and then kept inside them after they have given birth, without room to be able to nuzzle their offspring effectively.

After their piglets are taken away from them the process begins again, until they are killed at around five-years-old.

Ms Joshipura said: “If Jamie truly loved pigs then he would be joining us in asking people to go vegetarian.”

But Oliver’s spokesman said the protesters should target other restaurants as the celebrity chef had long “championed the welfare of pigs” but would not be taking meat off his menus.

“If they want people to go vegetarian then they’re protesting in the wrong place,” he said. “The meat Jamie is serving up is very high quality.

“They should go make a protest somewhere that imports its meat.”

He added that the latest branch of Jamie’s Italian, due to open in Black Lion Street, Brighton, at 6pm today, offered a number of vegetarian dishes to cater for non-meat eaters.

Oliver’s most recent television show was a documentary investigating pig welfare standards, which urged people to buy British pork rather than that produced abroad under poorer conditions.

In Channel 4’s 'Jamie Saves Our Bacon', the chef highlighted factory pig farm conditions in continental Europe, showing the use of sow stalls, where pregnant pigs are kept in cages for up to four months at a time without room to turn.

The stalls are banned in Britain, but sows can be moved to individual crates about a week before they are due to give birth, to prevent the sow crushing her piglets.

The sows usually remain in these farrowing crates until the piglets are weaned at about four weeks old. Peta still believes these crates are cruel, however, and wants them to be banned.

The charity says the sows spend one month out of every five in the crates, causing them extreme mental distress.