JOANNA LUMLEY is to be shown in one of her most unusual performances yet - acting out the life of a mother pig that is about to give birth.

She has joined forces with Jamie Oliver, the TV chef, to make a documentary highlighting the welfare problems of the 160m pigs raised in Europe each year.

In the film, to be shown on Channel 4 later this month, she will appear on screen locked into a farrowing stall - the narrow confined metal cages into which sows are penned while they give birth and then feed their litters.

Lumley is perhaps best known for her role in Absolutely Fabulous and, most recently, for fronting a TV documentary on the northern lights. But she is also an animal rights activist and a patron of Compassion in World Farming.

In the film Lumley tells Oliver that pigs are treated even worse than battery hens, being denied any chance of building the “nest” in which they would normally give birth and forced to stand in a narrow cage where they cannot even turn round. “The conditions they face are both physically and psychologically harrowing,” Lumley said.

In Britain, which raises about 9m pigs a year, the government has imposed restrictions on confinement systems which mean that British animals are better treated.

Such rules do not apply across the rest of Europe, however, so farmers use the confinement systems to control the sows and stop them wasting energy or injuring their piglets. Many animals spend their whole lives indoors.

The documentary, Jamie Saving Our Bacon, follows a similar programme that Oliver made about battery chicken farming last year.

He will highlight the same themes of bad breeding practices and poor husbandry - and the lack of adequate food labelling that makes it impossible for consumers to distinguish meat from animals that have been well treated.

Europe’s pig industry is regarded as highly efficient but groups like the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals say this has been achieved only by largely ignoring welfare.

In the wild, for example, pigs can live for 20 years having a single, small litter each year. In farms, however, sows produce litters of about a dozen piglets up to three times a year - and are so worn out that most are sent for slaughter at three to four years of age.

In the programme Oliver set up some farrowing stalls in a shed in Suffolk to recreate the conditions which sows experience in continental Europe.

He then asked a group of students to spend 24 hours lying and sitting in the stalls. They were given buckets for their ablutions and basic food. Lumley joined them for some of the time on the day of filming.

“They are like battery cages,” she said. “This is an intolerably cruel way to produce food.” Oliver’s film will also include secret video footage shot by Compassion in World Farming from pig farms across five European countries.

Oliver has targeted European pig farms because about 70% of pork products sold in Britain are imported from there - but UK farmers will also come under fire. He will point out that many use only slightly less restricting farrowing crates. The sow will go into these crates a few days before giving birth and will stay there for the first month of her piglets’ lives.

“I urge people to shop more compassionately and to find out how their meat is produced,” said Lumley.

The RSPCA will tomorrow launch its Rooting for Pigs campaign, calling on supermarkets and other UK food retailers to sign up to a voluntary labelling agreement for pork.

“It is essential that all pig meat be clearly and consistently labelled to allow consumers to make an informed choice, said Julia Wrathall, head of RSPCA farm animal science.

Oliver said: “I very much support the RSPCA’s Rooting for Pigs campaign as I think the public needs clearer labelling when it comes to meat, particularly pork and bacon, as the variation in pig welfare across Europe and the world is so diverse.”

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