Australians have had a love affair with ham, pork and bacon for generations, with the great Aussie breakfast of bacon and eggs a part of our national diet. Yet the farming of pigs has changed rapidly over the past generation. Family farms have been run out of business, unable to compete with larger factory-style operations.^[1] The implications for the welfare of pigs have been sinister and largely invisible to the Australian consumer.

The sad reality for most pigs now is that mothers no longer forage in the earth in the open air, but are confined for most of their lives to steel stalls so cramped that they cannot turn around, with concrete and steel floors on which to feed, lie and give birth.^[2] They are akin to battery hens, yet the public is largely unaware of this unfolding tragedy.

Pigs have feelings too^[3] 

Few species are more social than pigs: they form close bonds, cooperate with and defend one another.

More than 20 pig vocalisations have been identified. They have an elaborate courting ritual including a song between males and females. Newborn piglets learn to run to their mother’s voice and the mother pig sings to her young while nursing. After nursing, a piglet sometimes runs to her mother’s face to rub snouts and grunt.

When she is ready to give birth, a pregnant pig can walk 5-10km to search for a good nest site and gather bedding materials.

Pigs are extremely active and inquisitive and (if allowed to roam outdoors) spend their days smelling, nibbling, manipulating objects with their powerful and sensitive snouts and rooting about in the soil for tidbits.

Pigs are recognized to be at least as good at problem-solving as dogs. Scientists have discovered that pigs ‘have an understanding of what is going on in other pigs’ minds and make their own decisions according to what they want.’ This type of thinking has often been assumed to be unique to apes and humans.

Cruel treatment on factory farms^[4]

Pregnancy hell

Sow stalls are so small that pregnant pigs are not able to turn around or take more than one step forward or back. This confinement can cause stereotypes, repetitive purposeless behavior which is a sign of suffering. Some pigs spend up to half their time in stereotypical behavior.

Babies  

Most sows give birth in a concreted area called a farrowing crate that is so small they can hardly move. Their babies are prevented from  snuggling up to them in the normal way due to the presence of steel bars. Their babies are also taken away or ‘weaned’ prematurely and the stress of abrupt weaning results in piglets having a high incidence of clinical disease and diarrhoea.

Confinement  

Pigs born on factory farms and used to produce meat generally spend their whole life indoors. They are housed in sheds with thousands of others and moved from pen to pen as they grow bigger, before eventually being loaded onto trucks for transportation to the slaughterhouse. For many of them, this trip is the only chance they have in their whole lives to experience life outdoors and to feel the wind and the sun.

Depression

Scientific research proves that some factory farmed pigs suffer prolonged depression because they are denied natural light, space and the opportunity to forage for food in natural surroundings.

Pain

Castration of piglets is so painful that it can provoke vomiting, trembling and leg shaking. Piglets’ teeth are clipped which can cause up to 15 days of extreme pain. No pain relief is required by law.

Why the law is not on their side

In Australia, there are State and Territory animal welfare laws that are intended to protect animals but in reality, the fundamental interests of most farm animals, including pigs, are not protected in law. National Model Codes of Practice apply in addition to some animal welfare laws; however, these Codes also fail to provide true protection. To make matters worse, they are often used to justify many cruel factory farming practices. The current Model Code of Practice for the Welfare of Animals- Pigs (revised) (2006) (the Revised Code) is no exception. Some of the cruel practices it permits are:

• Pregnant sows may be confined for the duration of their 16 week pregnancy in individual sow stalls, measuring no more than 0.6 x 2.2m. These stalls, which have been associated with physical disorders, chronic stress and depression, are so small that female pigs cannot even turn around.

From about 2017:

• The maximum time for holding pregnant pigs in sow stalls will reduce to 6 weeks. This is two weeks more than the minimum standard being introduced by the European Union and New Zealand. Sow stalls are already banned in the United Kingdom, Sweden, Switzerland, The Netherlands and Finland. They are also banned in Florida and are being phased out in Arizona, California, Colorado, Maine, Michigan and Oregon in the United States. Two of the largest pork producers in the US and Canada also recently announced their plans to phase out sow stalls. 
• Heavily pregnant and nursing sows will be confined for up to 6 weeks of each reproductive cycle in farrowing crates, before their young are prematurely weaned. These crates, which measure 0.5 x 2.2m, are even smaller than sow stalls.
  
  
• Pig producers are not obligated to provide access to the outdoors where pigs can engage in natural behaviours such as grazing, wallowing in mud, walking around and nosing or manipulating their environment.
  
• Painful mutilations of young piglets, including tail docking, teeth clipping and castration without pain relief, continue to be permitted.
  
• Natural materials such as straw for sleeping and nesting, while encouraged, are not mandatory, rendering many pigs subject to a miserable life on concrete floors.

Other countries are taking steps to ban sow stalls and other cruel factory farming practices.  Australia is lagging shamefully behind.

Recent news

Retailers internationally are making significant moves towards supporting free-range pig products. For example, Chipotle Mexican Grill (which operates 460 quick-service eateries in 20 US states) made a bold statement about pig cruelty by announcing they would only provide free-range pork, rather than pork from ‘Concentrated Animal Feed Operations’, or ‘CAFOs’ (another term for ‘factory farm’). Indeed, the Chipotle website itself states “The conditions in a CAFO are bad, even horrendous.”^[5]

Internationally, growing consumer pressure is thought to have caused food producers to move away from cruel farming methods. In 2007, Canada’s largest pork producer, Maple Leaf Foods, announced its intention to phase out the use of sow stalls in favour of group housing at all company-owned pig production operations within the next 10 years.^[6] Smithfield Foods Inc., the world’s largest pork processor and pig producer, has also moved to phase out sow stalls over the next ten years.^[7]

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