Browse Sections

• Music
• Theatre and dance
• Days out
• Clubs
• Comedy
• Film and TV 
  • Reviews
• PC and video games
• Arts
• Crossword
• Tickets
• What's on search
• Food and Drink

Loos 'did not degrade pig'

Anita Singh
30/11/2004

THE episode of The Farm in which Rebecca Loos pleasured a pig has been approved by TV watchdog Ofcom. who ruled that the boar did not feel degraded by the experience.

Viewers of the Five reality show watched as David Beckham's former PA stimulated the animal for 10 minutes to extract a flask of semen.

Thirty-seven people complained to Ofcom with the majority criticising Loos's antics as "akin to bestiality".

The RSPCA condemned the scenes as "morbid and sordid".

But in its ruling today, Ofcom said the stunt was not degrading or harmful to the pig involved. It cleared Five of breaching taste and decency standards.

Ofcom said: "Rebecca Loos was selected by a qualified veterinary surgeon to assist him in a task on a neighbouring farm which involved extracting semen from a boar.

"The programme showed her attending to the boar - under the instruction of the resident farmer and the veterinary surgeon - and collecting the semen.

"The task performed by Rebecca Loos is one that occurs regularly on UK farms. It was properly supervised by a qualified veterinary surgeon and was carried out for a genuine purpose - to artificially inseminate the pigs on the `celebrity farm'.

"We don't believe that the scene was degrading or harmful to the boar."

When the scenes were broadcast in October, the RSPCA was so outraged it urged viewers to boycott the show.

"There is a real risk of causing distress and suffering to the animals involved, and any educational merit the programme may have had has been completely overshadowed by concerns about the negative effects on the animals involved.

"Some of the antics of the celebrities only serve to create a morbid and sordid fascination in perfectly natural animal behaviour," a spokeswoman said.