despite EU law requiring farmers to provide enrichment materials, such as straw, we found all the pigs were housed in barren conditions with no manipulable materials to satisfy their inquisitive minds. We also discovered many pigs were kept in squalid, cramped conditions with no space to escape from their own waste, which had flooded the pens.

In all farms that we visited, all pigs had their tails docked, often severely, almost certainly without pain relief, despite EU rules forbidding routine tail docking.

In some of the farms we visited, pigs had clearly been the victims of fighting. This is likely as a result of lack of space to move away from aggressors, boredom causing them to pick on each other and lack of access to feed at the same time. In one case, the injuries inflicted as a result of this fighting had resulted in one pig dying.

In a number of farms, lame and sick pigs had been left in barren alleyways, rather than be placed in a hospital area where they could recover in a pen with straw for comfort and away from other pigs that would cause them harm. Left to suffer in silence, our investigators found evidence that sick pigs were just left there to die.

I’d never seen pigs so deprived of stimulation, that the only thing to occupy their inquisitive nature is to play with their own waste. Using their snouts to push it through the metal bars of their pens and then back in again really hit me hard.

Hundreds of pigs were in this vast shed. I could barely hear my colleague in here such was the noise.

Investigator

Irish pig farms – 2013

Compassion in World Farming’s former Investigation Unit has uncovered the worst abuses of pig welfare in the EU to date.

In the spring of 2013, our investigations unit visited five Irish pig farms. The conditions they found were beyond our investigators’ worst expectations.

Pig investigations