Issues | Pigs

Pigs

Gestation Crates: Female pigs (sows) are repeatedly impregnated through artificial insemination and kept in gestation crates for most of their pregnancies. These crates are so small that the pigs cannot turn around or take more than a step forward. This severe confinement denies them the ability to perform natural behaviors like rooting, foraging, and socializing.

After each pregnancy, the sows are re-impregnated, perpetuating a cycle of constant confinement. The psychological toll of this confinement drives them to gnaw at the metal bars of the crates for hours on end, leaving their jaws painfully injured and swollen.
Farrowing Crates: After giving birth, sows are moved to slightly larger farrowing crates, where they nurse their piglets through narrow bars. These crates immobilize the mother pigs, preventing them from interacting naturally with their young. Piglets are accidentally suffocated by their mothers, as the sows cannot move to avoid crushing them. This distressing separation is repeated with every litter, leaving the mother pigs in a continuous state of anxiety and frustration.

Pig Thumping: Pig thumping, a standard practice in factory farming, also known as piglet euthanasia, is a brutal method used on factory farms to dispose of piglets that are sick, injured, or deemed too small to be profitable. This practice involves workers grabbing piglets by their hind legs and forcefully slamming them headfirst onto concrete floors or walls. The intention is to kill the piglets instantly, but it often results in a slow and agonizing death, as some piglets are left writhing in pain or struggling to breathe.
Castration: Male piglets are castrated shortly after birth without any pain relief. This process is traumatic and causes days of pain, with piglets often lying alone and trembling. Meat producers claim that castration is necessary to improve the taste of the meat, inflicting pain for consumer tastebuds.
Tail Docking: To prevent tail biting caused by the stress of overcrowding, farmers cut off piglets' tails without anesthesia. This mutilation causes acute pain and long-term nerve damage.
Ear Notching: Workers cut sensitive parts of piglets' ears to identify them by the number of cuts, a painful process performed without anesthetic. This further exemplifies the industry's view of pigs as products rather than sentient beings.

Feedlots: Pigs are genetically manipulated to grow at an alarming rate, reaching "market weight" at just six months old. This unnatural growth causes health issues such as arthritis and joint problems, leaving many pigs unable to stand or walk.
Crowded Pens: Pigs are very clean animals. In factory farms, they are confined to small, overcrowded pens, where they sleep and eat in their own waste. The severe stress leads to abnormal behaviors, such as biting each other's tails, which is why tail docking is practiced.

Transport: When pigs are ready for slaughter, they are loaded onto crowded trucks for long journeys, sometimes lasting over 28 hours. During transport, they suffer extreme temperatures, dehydration, and injury from overcrowding. Many pigs die from exhaustion, heatstroke, or hypothermia. Approximately 726,000 pigs die each year in transport in the U.S.

Slaughter Process: At the slaughterhouse, more than 1,000 pigs are killed every hour. Pigs are stunned before their throats are slit open, left to bleed out, and then dipped into scalding water to remove their hair. Due to the speed of the slaughter line, some pigs are improperly stunned and remain conscious as they are hung upside down and killed. Many pigs are boiled alive in the scalding tanks, enduring unimaginable agony.
Gas Chambers: In an attempt to streamline the slaughter process, some factory farms have turned to gas chambers as a method of killing pigs. These chambers use high concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) to render pigs unconscious before slaughter. However, this method is far from humane. As pigs are exposed to the gas, they panic, squeal, and gasp for breath, experiencing extreme distress and pain before losing consciousness. The gas causes a burning sensation in their lungs and can take up to a minute or more to render them unconscious, prolonging their suffering.

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