Pigs on Factory Farms

Mother pigs are confined to cages so small that they can’t even turn around.

Many people think of Charlotte’s Web and Babe when they imagine how pigs are raised for meat. Unfortunately, these Hollywood tales do not depict reality. Almost all of the 100 million pigs killed for food in the United States every year endure horrific conditions in controlled animal feeding operations (CAFOs), the meat industry’s euphemism for factory farms.⁵ Smarter than dogs, these social, sensitive animals spend their lives in overcrowded, filthy warehouses, often seeing direct sunlight for the first time as they are crammed onto a truck bound for the slaughterhouse.⁶

A mother pig, or sow, spends her adult life confined to a tiny metal crate. She will never feel the warmth of a nest or the affectionate nuzzle of her mate—she will spend her life surrounded by thick, cold metal bars, living on wet, feces-caked concrete floors. When she is old enough to give birth, she will be artificially impregnated and then imprisoned again for the entire length of her pregnancy in a “gestation crate,” a cage only 2 feet wide—too small for her even to turn around or lie down in comfortably.⁷

After giving birth, a mother pig is moved to a “farrowing crate,” a contraption even worse and smaller than a gestation crate, with only a tiny additional concrete area on which the piglets can nurse.⁸ Workers will sometimes tie the mother’s legs apart so she cannot get a break from the suckling piglets. She may develop open “bed sores” on her body from the lack of movement. This practice is so barbaric that gestation crates have been banned in Florida, the U.K., and Sweden and will be banned in the European Union in 2013.^9,10

Pigs develop sores from living in filthy conditions that are too cramped to even stand up in.

When pregnant sows are ready to give birth, they are moved from a gestation crate to a farrowing crate. One worker describes the process: “They beat the shit out of them [the mother pigs] to get them inside the crates because they don’t want to go. This is their only chance to walk around, get a little exercise, and they don’t want to go [back into a crate].”¹¹

The piglets are taken away from their mother after less than a month—in nature, they would stay with their mother for several months.¹² She is impregnated again, and the cycle of forced breeding and imprisonment continues. For such an intelligent animal, this intensive confinement causes debilitating stress and boredom. With nothing to do but stare at the bars in front of her, a mother pig may go insane. This is often exhibited by neurotic chewing on the cage bars or obsessive pressing on her water bottle.¹³ After three or four years, when her body is exhausted and her mind pushed to or even past the brink of insanity, she is shipped off to slaughter.

Piglets are mutilated and castrated without the use of painkillers; some die from shock.

Meanwhile, the sow’s piglets have their testicles cut out of their scrotums, their tails cut off, many of their teeth clipped in half, and their ears mutilated, all without any pain relief.¹⁶ Terrified and in extreme pain, the piglets are often put alone into tiny metal wire cages (called “battery cages” by the farmers). These cages are stacked on top of each other, and urine and excrement constantly fall on the piglets in the lower cages. After the piglets have grown too big for the cages, they are placed into small, cramped pens crowded with many other piglets, where they are kept until they are large enough for slaughter. The animals are given almost no room to move because, as one pork-industry journal put it, “[O]vercrowding pigs pays.”¹⁷ Impeccably clean by nature, pigs on factory farms are forced to live in their own feces, vomit, and even amid the corpses of other pigs.

Pigs in factory farms never get to go outside until they are sent to slaughter.

Overcrowding, poor ventilation, and filth cause rampant disease. Respiratory problems are common because of high levels of humidity and toxic gases from the manure pits—in fact, 70 percent of pigs on factory farms have pneumonia by the time they’re sent to the slaughterhouse.¹⁶ Many pigs die from infections caused by the noxious fumes and filth of their enclosures. Pigs are fed massive doses of antibiotics to keep them alive in these conditions. Conditions are so filthy that at any given time, more than one-quarter of pigs suffer from mange.¹⁸

Because of illness, lack of space to exercise, and genetic manipulation that forces them to grow too big too fast, pigs often develop arthritis and other joint problems.¹⁹ Many pigs on factory farms live on slatted floors above giant manure pits. Smaller pigs often suffer severe leg injuries when their legs get caught between the slats.²⁰

Always concerned with their bottom line, some farmers kill sick animals instead of giving them medicine or veterinary care. A PETA investigation found that a manager at an Oklahoma farm was killing pigs by beating them with metal gate rods, and others were left to die without food or water. Unwanted “runts” were killed, as they are on most farms, by “thumping,” which involves slamming the animals’ heads against the floor.²¹ Watch video from that investigation.

After enduring months in these hellish conditions, pigs are forced onto trucks, bound for a horrific and agonizing death at the slaughterhouse.

Read about transport and slaughter.

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⁵ Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, “Pigmeat, Slaughtered/Production Animals (Head) 2002,” 10 Jun. 2003.
⁶ Cambridge Daily News.
⁷ Marc Kaufman, “In Pig Farming, Growing Concern,” The Washington Post, 18 Jun. 2001.
⁸ Kaufman.
⁹ The Humane Society of the United States, “Maryland: Support Minimum Crate Size for Pregnant Pigs,” HSUS Online, 2005.
¹⁰ The European Union, “Animal Health and Welfare: Pigs,” The European Union Online (Europa), 2005.
¹¹ Eisnitz, p. 219.
¹² Lauren Ornelas and Juliet Gellatley, “A Report on the U.S. Pig Industry,” Viva! USA, 2004.
¹³ A.J. Zanella and O. Duran, “Pig Welfare During Loading and Transport: A North American Prespective,” I Conferencia Vitrual Internacional Sobre Qualidade de Carne Suina, 16 Nov. 2000.
¹⁴ James Cromwell, “Veterinarians Should Act to Stop Crating of Pregnant Pigs,” The Chicago Sun-Times, 6 Nov. 2004.
¹⁵ William Luce et al., “Managing the Sow and Litter,” Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Service, March 1995.
¹⁶ Gene and Lorri Bauston, “Brutality: Main Crop of Factory Farms?” EarthSave International Online, 2004.
¹⁷ “Swine Diseases (Chest): Mycoplasma Pneumonia,” Iowa State University College of Veterinary Medicine, 2005.
¹⁸ IVOMEC Pharmaceutical advertisement, Pork Magazine, 17 Dec. 2002.
¹⁹ Cindy Wood, “Don’t Ignore Feet and Leg Soundness in Pigs,” Virginia Cooperative Extension, June 2001.
²⁰ Jessica Gentry and John McGlone, “Alternative Pork Production Systems: Overview of Facilities, Performance Measures, and Meat Quality,” International Meeting on Swine Production, April 2003.
²¹ “Seaboard Pig Farm Investigation Video,” PETA Online, 2001.
²² Kelly Pedro, “Pigs Found Dead, Dying,” The London Free Press, 15 Oct. 2003.