Few Freedoms for Farmed Pigs

Factory Farmed Pigs

A Pig’s Life

The Factory-Farmed Pig

Take Action

A Pig’s Life                                                                               Back to Top

Pigs are highly social, intelligent, and sentient animals. They are curious, playful, and affectionate creatures who form small family groups of usually one boar and a couple sows along with juveniles from earlier litters. They are considered as intelligent, if not more intelligent, than dogs. While it is often thought they are dirty animals because they roll around in mud, pigs wallow in the mud to cool themselves off since they cannot lower their body temperature through sweating as humans can or by panting as dogs can. The mud also protects them from sunburn and insect bites.

Pigs use their extremely sensitive noses to root around in the dirt, looking for small insects, grubs, and worms to eat. They also eat the dirt itself because there are minerals and vitamins in the soil they need. Because pigs are clean animals by nature, they prefer to keep their bathroom area separate from their nest area. In fact, newborn piglets will move to a far away corner of the nest to go to the bathroom.

When ready to deliver their young, sows leave the nest to find a protected site where they dig a hole and fill it with vegetation. Even in an indoor barn, they will root around in whatever material is available to make a nest for themselves prior to the birth of their piglets. Piglets are active animals, similar to puppies, in that they like to scamper around and play with one another. They begin foraging at about nine weeks of age.

The average lifespan of a domesticated pig is 10 to 15 years and of a pig in the wild, 25 years.

The Factory-Farmed Pig                                                           Back to Top

A pig’s natural behavior is denied to the estimated 105 million pigs raised yearly for slaughter on factory farms. There is no family unit on a factory farm, no opportunity for piglets to play. Breeding sows (female pigs who produce multiple litters a year) are either artificially inseminated or confined to rape racks, tiny stalls in which they can only lie down or stand up. The male pig is then allowed access to the stalls to mate with the sows. Once impregnated, the sows are confined to gestation crates, typically 2’x7’, for up to four months until their offspring are born. Sows can neither turn around nor move about in this type of crate. The floors of these crates are slatted so that urine and feces can fall through. There is no bedding, even straw, for the animals to rest on.

Sows and their piglets are then moved to farrowing crates, similar to gestation crates only usually smaller, in which the new mother and her young live during the piglets’ first few weeks of life. The sow remains on her side and cannot move around to nuzzle her babies. The floors of these crates are slatted so that urine and feces can fall through. There is no bedding, even straw, for the animals to rest on.

Industry practitioners claim that farrowing crates reduce the possibility of sow fights and injuries to the young and provide the sow a sense of peaceful space; however, sows are unable to sit or stand up and cannot naturally attend to their young. This is a source of much frustration for the sow. Furthermore, many babies get trapped in the floor slats and between the sow’s body and crate bars and cannot properly nurse.

Each sow has more than 20 piglets a year, approximately 10 percent of whom die before they reach three weeks. After several weeks in the farrowing crates, the piglets are removed to what is called the nursery where they live until they are again moved to the finishing pens, where they live until they are transported to the slaughterhouse. In both settings the young pigs are confined to crates often stacked on top of each other. Breeding sows return to the rape racks, are again impregnated, and again returned to gestation crates. The life of a breeding sow is between three and four years in a factory farm, at which time she is slaughtered.

Factory-farmed pigs are slaughtered typically between six and ten months, depending on what the flesh will be used for (bacon, sausages, pork, etc.), the breed of the pig, and the growth rate of the pig.

To avoid the behavior known as tail-biting, an aggressive and cannibalistic coping behavior typical of intensely confined and psychologically stressed animals, newborn piglets have their tails docked near the base without the use of anesthesia or other pain killers. This act of mutilation occurs because many overcrowded, repressed pigs will fight with each other, biting and tearing at ears and tails. Also, newborn piglets often have their ears notched and teeth removed, again without anesthesia. Male newborn piglets are castrated (removal of the testicles) without anesthesia.

Animals confined in small spaces will engage in bar-biting, a neurotic behavior where confined pigs repetitively bite the metal bars of their crates, and sham chewing, which is the repetitive chewing of nothing.

Due to close-quarter confinement and unsanitary living conditions, pigs suffer from a variety of diseases. One is porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS), another is swine influenza virus (SIV), and yet another is salmonellosis. The latter two diseases are zoonotic, meaning they can be transmitted to humans. Humans who work in factory farms are susceptible to a variety of respiratory diseases as they work in intensely confined areas covered in pig feces, vomit, and urine.

Take Action to Help Pigs

What can you do to change what is happening to pigs? First, stop eating these sentient, intelligent animals. Selecting a vegetarian/vegan diet is the best way to eliminate the number of pigs being raised and slaughtered in factory farms. Other humane actions include:

• Substitute veggie and soy-based products for bacon, sausage, hotdogs, etc.
• Find a vegetarian group in your area and attend a meeting.
• Visit a farm sanctuary and get know the sentient creature the pig truly is.
• Learn more about factory farming and educate others.
• Support legislation to require stricter regulation and enforcement of animal farming welfare and treatment laws.

May 2009                                                                                        Back to Top