For more than 150 years, the Spanish family enterprise Joselito has worked to preserve the local ecosystem and raise “Happy Pigs” for their Iberian ham. Now they are the first pig-rearing company to be awarded a GGN label.
Joselito’s Happy Pigs live their entire lives in freedom and in their natural dehesa habitat. The dehesa is a cultural landscape of the Iberian Peninsula that provides not only a variety of foods, but also a wildlife habitat for endangered species. The Happy Pigs each enjoy approximately 3 hectares of pasture in this Mediterranean ecosystem and feed in a 100% natural way. They consume up to 7 kilos of acorn and 3 kilos of grass daily during the Montanera season. In their search for the best acorns, the pigs can travel more than 10 kilometers every day.
Joselito and GLOBALG.A.P.
As a company that prides itself on the protection of the environment and the welfare of its animals, Joselito was keen to achieve farm assurance via GLOBALG.A.P. certification. The GLOBALG.A.P. certificate guarantees that Joselito is engaged in responsible practices, both in animal care and in the sustainable production of products.
The GGN label
Not satisfied with only certifying the origin of food, GLOBALG.A.P. created the GGN label so customers can identify and purchase products which have been produced according to good agricultural practices. Transparency is the core value of the label, and consumers can trace the origin of each product by looking up the individual registration number in the online database.
The GGN label is available for GLOBALG.A.P. certified aquaculture and floriculture products sold in Europe. GGN labels for meat as well as fruit and vegetable products are currently in the pilot phase, and Joselito was one of the first companies to apply for the GGN label for livestock.
If you are a producer or trader and interested in applying the GGN label to your products, please contact the GGN team via e-mail at info@ggn.org for more information.