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THE REALITY OF FACTORY FARMED PIGS

Around 250 million pigs are slaughtered each year within the EU. The vast majority are farmed industrially.

There are two main kinds of pigs on farms:

Breeding sows whose role is to produce piglets
Fattening pigs that are reared for their meat

Breeding sows – the mother pigs

Young female pigs start breeding when they are around seven months old. Most sows within the EU spend their entire 16 week pregnancy in sow stalls. These metal-barred stalls , usually have bare partly slatted concrete floors, and are so narrow that the sow cannot turn round and can only stand up and lie down with difficulty. She is kept like this for one pregnancy after another.

Sow stalls are so narrow that a sow cannot turn around

Following years of campaigning from Compassion in World Farming and our supporters, sow stalls have been banned in the UK since 1999 and are due to be phased out across EU Member States in 2013.

However, even after 2013, farmers will still be able to use these inhumane stalls during the first four weeks of pregnancy. A scientific report by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has concluded that keeping sows in stalls for the first four weeks of pregnancy causes pain, stress and frustration and restricts their standing up and lying down behaviour.

Compassion in World Farming believes that the ‘first four weeks’ exception should be removed: sow stalls should be banned throughout the sow’s pregnancy as in the UK and Sweden.

A few days before giving birth, the sow is moved to a farrowing crate. The extreme lack of space in the crate means that she can barely move. In the crate, the sow cannot fulfil her strong instinct to build a nest. Nor can she mother her piglets properly. The sow is kept in the crate until her piglets are weaned at three to four weeks of age.

Farrowing crates prevent the sow from being able to get away from her piglets

Compassion believes that farrowing crates should be phased out by law in order for sows to express their natural behaviour which includes building a nest of grass, twigs, leaves and branches in which to give birth and nurse her piglets.

Farmers assert that the crate is necessary to prevent the sow from crushing her piglets by lying on them. Recent research, however, shows that well-designed farrowing pens, in which the sow has ample space, can be just as effective as crates in preventing piglet mortality.

Analysis of data from Swiss farms – where farrowing crates have been banned – has found that piglet mortalities in farms using loose farrowing systems are no higher than in farms that use crates.

Ideally, pregnant sows should be kept free-range, with good shelter provided by an arc supplied with deep straw bedding, which she can use for comfort, warmth and nest-building.

Fattening pigs

Piglets are removed from their mothers at just three to four weeks old and then kept in groups for fattening. Stress, illness and conflict often result when piglets are abruptly weaned and mixed with unfamiliar piglets.

Piglets in farrowing crates become bored, restless and aggressive

Growing pigs have no access to outdoors and are unable to carry out natural behaviours

Most fattening pigs in the EU are kept indoors in overcrowded, barren sheds. They are kept on bare concrete or fully slatted floors with no straw or other bedding. Stocking densities are often high.

Scientific research shows that in natural conditions pigs are highly active, spending 75 per cent of their day rooting, foraging and exploring. Such activities are impossible for factory farmed pigs. The lack of straw or other natural materials prevents the pigs from carrying out their natural behaviours. Bored and frustrated, they turn to the only other ‘thing’ in their bare pens: the tails of other pigs. They begin to chew and then bite those tails.

Piglets are tail-docked to discourage them from biting each others’ tails

To prevent tail biting, farmers dock (slice off) part of the piglet’s tail. A 2007 EFSA report found that over 90 per cent of EU piglets are tail docked despite the fact that routine tail docking has been illegal in the EU since 2003. Our latest undercover investigation supports these findings.

Scientific research has for many years shown that the correct way to prevent tail biting is not to dock the tails, but to keep the pigs in good conditions. EU law requires pigs to be given straw or some similar materials to enable them to engage in their natural behaviours of rooting, foraging and investigating. However, [as our investigation shows] many EU farmers appear to ignore this law.

Compassion urges the European Commission and the Member States to enforce the legislation that requires pigs to be given materials such as straw and prohibits routine tail docking.

Around 250 000 pigs are castrated each day in the EU, usually without anaesthetic. This causes both acute and prolonged pain.

Castration was banned in Norway in 2009 and castration without anaesthetic was banned in Switzerland in the same year. Castration is not usually performed in the UK and Ireland and the majority of male pigs in Spain and Portugal are not castrated. In The Netherlands, anaesthesia with CO2 has been developed for castration, although scientific research shows that CO2 is aversive to pigs and may make the procedure even more distressing.

Compassion believes that castration should be prohibited throughout the EU.