Animal advocacy groups called it cruel and misleading. Local food producers called it humane and important for Hawaii’s food supply. Recently, however, the practice of shipping live pigs to Hawaii for slaughter ended.

Pig imports ceased with a shipment of 220 hogs on the Matson container ship Mokihana that arrived in Honolulu Sept. 27, according to state records.

Industry players said a combination of economic forces, including a long decline in locally raised pigs sent to Oahu’s only slaughterhouse, led importers to quit the business that arose decades ago to supplement the fresh “hot pork” supply.

Animal rights supporters touted the cessation of imports as a victory in a campaign they had waged for over a decade, though people in the business and a University of Hawaii researcher said the change was unrelated to the opposition.

Hawaii Food Products Inc., a major pig importer and producer of kalua pig, roast pork, char siu and lau lau under the Ono Ono brand, got out of the business late last year because of factors that included rising costs for feed, shipping and processing, according to company CEO Norman Oshiro.

“It was many small factors here and there,” he said.

Oshiro said a slide in local pig farming put upward pressure on slaughterhouse fees, and that operating hours for processing imported hogs became less convenient. “They have to do what they have to do,” he said of slaughterhouse operators. “We understand. It was a very hard business (to sustain).”

A representative of the slaughterhouse, which was purchased in 2016 from a struggling co-op that included local cattle and pig farmers, said the decision to cease importing hogs was a mutual one between the new owner, Kunoa Cattle Co., and the pork wholesalers buying hogs from the mainland.

“The market had shriveled up for them,” said Jack Beuttell, Kunoa’s co-founder. “Their business really had been on the decline for years because of imported chilled pork.”

Indeed, local pig farming and pig importing were on long downward paths.

Halina Zaleski, a swine extension specialist with the University of Hawaii at Manoa’s College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources, said Hawaii pig farmers actually exported hogs to California during the gold rush in the mid-1800s. Since industry records were established in 1960, the peak for local pig farming was 72,000 animals in 1965, according to National Agricultural Statistics Service figures.

Zaleski said the biggest pressure was farmland taken over by development in pig farming areas, including Manoa and Hawaii Kai.

As local pig production declined, distributors satisfied Oahu’s demand for fresh pork by importing live pigs from the mainland. In 1997, Oshiro’s supply was about evenly split between local and imported hogs. By 2006, pigs raised in Hawaii had fallen to a low of 16,000 as more farms closed. In 2016, the number fell to 10,000. Last year, it plunged again to 5,000.

At the same time, pig imports also were falling mainly under economic pressures, according to Oshiro and Zaleski. In 1997, about 21,000 pigs were shipped to Hawaii, according to the state Department of Agriculture. That figure dropped to about 14,000 by 2007 and kept falling. In 2015, there were 7,341 imports and last year there were just 3,618.

Animal advocates hailed the last shipment as a victory in a long effort to stop the practice.

“After 15 years of fighting to stop that cruelty to thousands of pigs, to see it ended has been a great relief,” said Cathy Goeggel, president of Animal Rights Hawaii.

Laurelee Blanchard, founder and president of Maui animal refuge Leilani Farm Sanctuary, heralded the change as an end to a “filthy four-day nightmare journey” where pigs regularly died.

In 2008, the World Society for the Protection of Animals initiated a public awareness campaign aimed at ending the pig shipping. WSPA, now known as World Animal Protection, had posters of cramped pigs under the slogan ‘stop unnecessary suffering’ displayed in more than 500 Honolulu buses. The campaign also included online petitions and print ads in a now-defunct weekly newspaper that included clip-out forms to send to grocery stores.

WSPA claimed that pigs on ships were subjected to long periods without food or water, inadequate ventilation, extreme temperatures and pens not cleaned of feces and urine.

Matson disputed that characterization, and said trained livestock tenders must accompany every shipment of animals to provide adequate food, water and waste removal along with a daily wash-down for the animals and containers. Matson also said livestock are carried in specially designed containers offering proper ventilation and drainage.

WSPA, which urged a humane slaughter of animals as close as possible to the point of production, also contended that shipping pigs resulted in mortality rates double that of truck transportation, or 0.5 percent compared with 0.2 percent. A 0.5 percent rate was calculated using shipmaster animal death declarations from 2006 to 2010, and equated to 65 deaths per year on average.

On top of that, WSPA claimed that meat from imported pigs was improperly labeled as “island produced,” though the state Department of Agriculture said the labeling ran afoul of no law.

In 2011, Foodland Super Market and Times Supermarkets said they had decided to cease buying fresh pork from imported pigs in favor of pork shipped from the mainland in chilled containers.

Zaleski said she doesn’t regard the shift by the two grocery chains as having a material impact on the imported hot pork market because most buyers were markets in Chinatown, specialty stores and restaurants that paid a premium for fresh pork.

A shift in customer demand didn’t end pig shipments, she said. “That’s not what happened in 2017.”

Kunoa, the slaughterhouse owner, meanwhile is trying to help rebuild local hog farming. The company recently found its first retail customer, Don Quijote, to buy locally raised fresh pork marketed under the Kunoa brand. And Beuttell said the company is committed to buying more pork from local farms and is contemplating starting its own hog farm with help from the Legislature, which is considering a bill that would allow Kunoa to sell $50 million in revenue bonds for establishing a multi-species farm.

“We’re looking to rebuild the local pork industry,” Beuttell said.

If that happens, Oshiro noted, the economics for importing pigs could once again be viable.