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Farmers Jailed For Trying To Smuggle Pig Semen Into Australia To Create 'Super Sows'

Farmers Jailed For Trying To Smuggle Pig Semen Into Australia To Create 'Super Sows'

Two men in Western Australian smuggled the semen in shampoo bottles.

Stewart Perrie

Stewart Perrie

Many people would think farming involves looking after the land, raising sheep, cattle, chickens or lambs or sowing rice, wheat, cotton, fruit etc.

While that may be true for loads of farmers across Australia, there are a select few who are determined to make their produce as big and as juicy as it can be and they're willing to potentially break the law to get the job done.

That's what's happened to a bunch of farmers who have just been jailed after trying to bring in pig semen to Australia.

PA

The two men from Western Australian have been sentenced to two years behind bars for their involvement in an illegal semen racket that's sole purpose was to create super pigs in the Land Down Under.

Sounds outrageous, right?

Torben Soerensen, managing director at the GD Pork piggery, and Henning Laue, his production manager, both plead guilty for their elaborate project which spanned from 2009 to 2017.

They brought the semen from Denmark back into Australia in shampoo bottles. I mean, if anything is going to pass as that type of bodily fluid it's going to be shampoo.

Now, you're probably wondering why Denmark is the home of these super pigs. According to Vice News, the semen (the pig's not Danish people) over there leads to loads of baby pigs and their meat is apparently leaner and better quality than your average porker.

During the course of these two bloke's operation, they managed to inseminate nearly 200 pigs, which created ten times as many piglets.

PA

That's a lot of pigs.

The reason why it's so illegal in Australia is because, naturally as an island nation, we have some pretty strict rules about what comes into the country. Quarantine officers are keen to stop anything that could potentially disrupt or destroy our local agricultural practices, especially Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome, or blue-ear pig disease.

When investigators were zeroing in on these two guys, they had to do a genetics test on some of the pigs by taking hair samples. Sure enough, they were found to have Danish heritage but thankfully, because they were free of disease, they weren't killed by authorities.

Two years sounds like a lot for a pig semen racket but Soerensen will be eligible for release after 18 months good behaviour, and Laue after eight months.

GD Pork has also been fined a casual $500,000 but that will be a tough bill to pay considering it has gone into liquidation, according to the ABC.

Featured Image Credit: PA

Topics: News, Weird, Australia