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Increasing interest in animal welfare means that there are a range of options for where your ham comes from this Christmas. What should you look for if you want to tuck into a ham from an ethically raised pig?

You’ll find hams from four main production systems on supermarket shelves this year: conventional hams, sow stall free, free range and “outdoor bred, raised indoor on straw”. So what do these labels mean?

Conventional hams

Conventional hams come from pigs farmed in intensive systems, where both sows (mother pigs) and piglets (the pigs that your Christmas ham comes from) are housed indoors.

Piglets are weaned at around three to four weeks of age. They are then housed in group pens on slatted or concrete floors (sometimes with straw or litter) until they are turned into ham and other pork products at around four months.

Some of the main animal welfare issues in intensive pig farming relate to the confinement of mother pigs. During their pregnancy, mother pigs are housed in “sow stalls”. These metal stalls are about the length and width of a fully grown sow and allow little movement.

Pigs are intelligent and social animals, and this confinement can cause stress and injury. There is evidence that other types of pig housing can also lead to stress and injury.

Before giving birth, sows are moved to a farrowing crate, where they remain until their piglets are weaned. Farrowing crates are designed to prevent mother pigs crushing the piglets. The mother pig has just enough room to lie down, meaning that her movement is severely restricted.

Sow stall free

Around 75% of pig production in Australia is now “sow stall free”, after the pork industry introduced a voluntary phase-out of sow stalls. Coles brand pork products are sow stall free, and Woolworths has committed to using stalls for less than 10% of the sow’s pregnancy (of around 115 days).

In some countries, including New Zealand, sow stalls have been totally or partially banned by law. They are also banned in the ACT.

Confusingly, “sow stall free” doesn’t mean that sows are free of all systems of confinement. Sows can spend up to five days in “mating stalls” after they have been mated (for Coles’ own brand products, it’s less than 24 hours). Sows are still housed in farrowing crates until their piglets are weaned.

Free-range

There are some free-range Christmas hams in the major supermarkets this year. However, just 5% of the Australian pig herd is free range.

In free-range systems, such as the RSPCA-approved outdoor system and Australian Pork Certified Free Range, both sows and piglets live outside in paddocks. They have access to shelters, wallows and shade.

Sows in these free-range systems aren’t confined in sow stalls or farrowing crates, and have the opportunity to express natural behaviours.

Most large-scale free-range pig production takes place in the south of Western Australia, which has ideal soil, water and climate conditions. Free-range pig farming is challenging in many parts of Australia, because of the hot climate.

Pig farming can also have environmental impacts. These include the degradation of soil and water systems through nutrient overload from manure.

You can buy free-range hams from farmers’ markets, specialist butchers and small-scale pig producers. When you buy at a farmers’ market, ask about how the pigs are raised and whether they are free-range.

Outdoor bred

There are a few hams around labelled “outdoor bred, raised indoors on straw”. These used to be labelled “bred free range”, until the ACCC took action against some producers using this label for misleading and deceptive conduct.

Hams with this label come from production systems where the sows live outside. They live under free-range conditions and are not confined to sow stalls or farrowing crates.

Piglets are born outside, but are moved inside after weaning and raised in group pens on straw or other litter, before being butchered for products including Christmas hams.

So what ham should I buy?

You can vote for better animal welfare by buying the most ethical ham you can afford, whether that’s a sow stall free ham from one of the major supermarkets or a free-range one from a small-scale producer at a farmers’ market.

Supermarkets are setting higher animal welfare standards for their own-brand pork products in response to increasing customer interest. These higher standards have the potential to influence new Australian Animal Welfare Standards and Guidelines for pigs, which are likely to be developed in the next few years.

Up to two-thirds of processed pork (including ham and bacon) is imported as boneless frozen pork. If you want to buy an Australian ham, look for ham on the bone, a label such as “Made from 100% Australian pork”, or the square pink “Australian Pork” label.

If you’re looking for an ethical ham that also scores on taste, check out the Good Food Christmas Ham Taste Test. Seven of the top ten hams were from free-range pigs.

Rachel Carey is a Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne on the project 'Regulating Food Labels: The case of free range food products in Australia', which is funded by the Australian Research Council. She is also a Research Fellow on the project Foodprint Melbourne, which is funded by the Lord Mayor's Charitable Foundation.

Christine Parker's research is funded by the Australian Research Council, Discovery Grant, Regulating Food Labels: The Case of Free Range Food Products in Australia (DP150102168).

Gyorgy Scrinis' research is funded by the Australian Research Council, Discovery Grant, Regulating Food Labels: The Case of Free Range Food Products in Australia (DP150102168).

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Donald Trump’s presidential victory on November 8 came as a shock to many, and has alarmed scientists, NGOs and governments around the world. As we write in Nature today, the global environmental community is particularly concerned by Trump’s anti-climate and broader anti-environmental stance during his presidential campaign.

Trump’s more extreme campaign statements may not eventuate. But there will most likely be substantive changes in how the United States engages with the world on environmental, and many other, issues.

Yet the environmental movement must not wallow in despair at the prospect of President Trump. It must instead actively look for opportunities under a post-Obama administration.

What if the US leaves international treaties?

The United States has provided important, albeit intermittent, leadership for the global environmental movement since the 1970s. Yet President-elect Trump campaigned on a strong anti-environmental platform.

Certainly, given the consistency of his campaign promises on the issue, the next US president may actively withdraw his nation from the Paris Agreement on climate change.

In an indication of this, Myron Ebell, the head of the transition team for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), is a known, vocal climate change denier, and Scott Pruitt, the nominated head of the EPA, has actively opposed Obama’s policies to reduce US greenhouse gas emissions.

However, the environmental movement should not see reduced US support for multilateral environmental treaties such as the Paris Agreement as all doom and gloom. This would also provide other powerful nations like China with an opportunity to provide greater leadership.

China is already a signatory to more than 50 international environmental treaties, including the Paris Agreement and the Convention on Biological Diversity, which has never been ratified by the US. Domestically, China has implemented numerous policies in support of its international environmental commitments. This includes setting up the world’s largest carbon trading market.

Critics will argue that China’s environmental commitments and policies, both domestically and internationally, have many shortcomings. But China has shown much greater initiative on challenges like climate change in recent years.

Provided that a critical mass of other countries stand together with China, the global environmental agenda can continue to strengthen in spite of weakened US support.

For example, Indonesia, Australia and many other countries have indicated that they will press ahead with the Paris Agreement together with China, regardless of what President Trump does in the coming years.

It isn’t just about national governments either. A less environmentally minded Trump administration is an opportunity to strengthen initiatives that are independent of the US federal government. Examples include environmental commitments by subnational units of government, cities, and companies, as well as community groups.

In fact, reduced US federal government support for global environmental treaties may create the space for greater experimentation, innovation and learning by actors at levels other than national government. A sign of a greater role by non-US government actors under Trump is the surge in donations to environmental NGOs following the election result.

Beyond the US

Trump was elected on a campaign promise of trade protectionism unseen since the second world war. But protectionism could also present an opening to strengthen environmental safeguards.

Global commerce facilitated by international trade poses many threats to biodiversity. So trade protectionism could be used to support environmental protection. For example, nations could take action against importing products that threaten key ecosystems or species.

At present, such restrictions are determined by consumers and companies making choices along the supply chain. National legislation could be much stronger.

But strong protectionism also presents great uncertainties and risks. Today’s global conservation and environmental movement was established in the space provided by the US-led global security and economic order after the second world war.

If a Trump administration does shift the US away from this leadership role, the global power relationships could change radically. The environmental movement will need to be proactive and adapt quickly.

For example, a post-US-led world order may allow alternatives to the US-style capitalist form of social organisation to become more influential. Alternative models, based on goals that include the environment and wellbeing, may have more space to establish themselves. Examples include the Genuine Progress Indicator and Gross National Happiness.

The next four years will be challenging. Environmentalists will need to be vociferous in raising concerns with the US government.

The uncertainties of a Trump presidency call for a proactive and flexible approach that can cope with the risks and seize the opportunities. President Trump represents an opportunity to strengthen the environmental movement, not just for the next four years, but for the years after that too.

Hugh Possingham, Chief Scientist of the Nature Conservancy, and Director of the Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation Science, University of Queensland; Bram Buscher, Professor and Chair at the Sociology of Development and Change group, Wageningen University; and Ray Ison, Professor of Systems, Open University, all contributed valuable thoughts and insights in the development of this piece.

Duan Biggs receives funding from Australian Research Council and Luc Hoffmann Institute and is affiliated with the World Conservation Union (IUCN).

Hubert Cheung receives scholarship funding from the Lee Shau Kee Foundation.

James Watson receives funding from the Australian Research Council. He is also the Director of Science and Research Initiative at the Wildlife Conservation Society.

Kent Redford does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

British researchers are now routinely mapping a great swathe of Earth's surface, looking for the subtle warping that ultimately leads to quakes.

Electricity bills are set to rise further for households, according to a report from the Australian Energy Markets Commission (AEMC).

The report, released this week to coincide with the December meeting of the COAG Energy Council, forecasts that electricity bills will increase by an average of A$78 by 2018 in the five eastern states and the ACT. Together these comprise the National Electricity Market (NEM).

The AEMC has prepared these three-year reports each year since 2010. But no report has received as much publicity as this one. This is largely because the latest report comes hard on the heels of the announcement that Victoria’s Hazelwood power station is to close – the largest power station closure ever in Australia.

It also follows the release of a specially commissioned report by Chief Scientist Alan Finkel that opens with the words: “The physical electricity system is undergoing its greatest transition since Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison clashed in the War of the Currents in the early 1890s.”

So what does the latest report really say?

What’s the forecast?

The AEMC’s 2016 residential price report projects moderate increases in the average price paid by households in New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and the ACT over the next two years, and moderate decreases in Queensland and Tasmania.

These overall movements result from the interaction of the three major cost components of the total cost of electricity supply.

The three components are:

• the regulated network costs (transmission and distribution)

• what the AEMC calls environmental costs (the large and small renewable energy targets, together with various state- and territory-specific programs), which are also set by regulation

• what the AEMC calls competitive market costs, comprising wholesale market cost and retail margin.

This approach to estimating total prices was established in the 2010 report and has been fundamentally unchanged ever since. The sophistication and detail of the analysis have, however, increased considerably over the years.

The biggest factor affecting the prices projected in the 2016 report is the planned closure of Hazelwood next March. This is in addition to last May’s closure of the Northern power station in SA. These closures are particularly important for Victoria, SA and Tasmania.

State of the states

In Victoria, Tasmania and SA, a combination of Victorian brown coal and Tasmanian hydro and wind supplies most electricity traded in the wholesale market.

Gas is important in SA, but its cost has greatly increased because of higher gas wholesale prices. Demand peaks are supplied by gas plants and Snowy hydro.

Australia currently has more electricity capacity than demand. But the power station closures shift this much closer to balanced supply and demand. Consequently, wholesale prices are expected to increase and flow through to retail prices in Victoria and SA.

In Tasmania, large decreases in network costs, based on regulatory determinations already made by the Australian Energy Regulator, are expected to more than offset wholesale prices increases. Network costs in the other two states are expected to change little.

The Hazelwood closure will also affect NSW prices. The first consequence of reduced generation in Victoria will be a reduction, or even reversal, of the current strong overall south-to-north energy flow on the Victoria-NSW interconnection.

Low-cost brown coal generators in Victoria are often the marginal source of supply in the NSW market. This puts downward pressure on NSW wholesale prices (and also leaves significant spare coal-fired capacity in NSW for much of the time).

The removal of spare capacity in Victoria will mean that nearly all NSW supply will be sourced from higher-cost black coal generators within NSW. Spare capacity will be reduced and wholesale prices will therefore tend to increase.

Over the past couple of years Queensland has been the only state where demand for electricity has grown substantially (mainly because of electricity use in coal seam gasfields). That growth is now slowing and it is expected that the balance of supply and demand will remain much as it is now. Consequently, wholesale prices will remain relatively unchanged.

Network costs are also expected to stay roughly constant in both NSW and Queensland. The overall outcome projected by the AEMC is therefore a modest price increase in NSW and a small decrease in Queensland.

End of an era?

Stepping back from this state-by-state picture, what we see is the approaching end of an era of generation oversupply in the NEM, stretching back to the early 1990s.

This situation was originally caused by too many power stations being commissioned in the 1980s in NSW and Victoria. It was then prolonged by three factors:

• the extension of the operating life of older coal-fired power stations well beyond that anticipated when they were built

• the reduction and near-cessation of growth in demand for electricity

• the construction of new renewable generation (mainly wind power) under the Renewable Energy Target (RET) legislation.

For most of this period, average wholesale prices in this oversupplied market have been well below the cost of new power stations. They are now expected to move gradually up towards that replacement cost level, when it will be economic to add more power stations to the market.

It is ironic that conservative voices who blame the RET for forcing coal-fired power stations to close are often the same voices who claim that higher electricity prices are forcing businesses to close and contributing to the cessation of demand growth.

If they had their way and there was no wind generation, and the Kurri Kurri and Point Henry aluminium smelters had not closed, then demand would have outstripped supply some years ago.

This would allow higher-cost power stations to be competitive, and wholesale prices would have already been at or above the levels projected by the AEMC in this report.

And what would have been the lowest-cost generation technology available (which hasn’t been competitive in the over-supplied market until now)? Based on the most recent data, probably wind.

Hugh Saddler is a member of the Board of The Climate Institute

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It isn’t that there is no evidence of the crash. In July of last year, a portion of a wing was found near Madagascar and Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean. Since then, other debris has been found in the Western Indian Ocean.

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A buzzard perches on the high branch of a leafless tree. With its back to me, it looks out on the same scene, but do we see the same thing? I see through the trees to fields chemically enhanced with the vivid greens of new crops. The old landscape under this December sky is a brown study: a mood induced by hedges, ash keys, muddy paths, the woods bare and misty-headed with reddish and purple-brown buds. The subtlety of these colours has a deepening beauty as winter thickens across the land.

This buzzard is a harlequin of browns, greys and whites, and it has been suggested that because of this plumage, colour is relatively unimportant to these predators. I’m always impressed when I see buzzards soaring and they catch the light in the silvery feathers under their wings and their markings glow like bronze and polished wood. But this display is for the benefit of other buzzards, not for me.

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Application on ecological sustainability - call for public comments open from 15 December 2016 - 20 January 2017

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NSW and Queensland - which still own their networks - block reforms that could lower network costs. Meanwhile, Finkel sings praises of pumped hydro and household battery storage to COAG energy ministers.