Pigs

Pigs are confined for years to filthy gestation crates. Other Viewing Options Download Video Embed code to post this video on your MySpace page or blog.

Many people who know pigs compare them to dogs because they are friendly, loyal, and intelligent. Pigs are naturally very clean and avoid, if at all possible, soiling their living areas. When given the chance to live away from factory farms, pigs will spend hours playing, lying in the sun, and exploring their surroundings with their powerful sense of smell. Considered smarter than 3-year-old human children, pigs are very clever animals.¹ Learn more about the intelligence of pigs.

Most people rarely have the opportunity to interact with these outgoing, sensitive animals because 97 percent of pigs in United States today are raised on factory farms.² These pigs spend their entire lives in cramped, filthy warehouses, under constant stress from the intense confinement and denied everything that is natural to them.

Piglets' tails are cut off and their teeth are pulled out without the use of painkillers.

As piglets, they are taken away from their mothers when they are less than 1 month old; their tails are cut off, some of their teeth are cut off, and the males have their testicles ripped out of their scrotums (castration), all without any pain relief. They spend their entire lives in overcrowded pens on a tiny slab of filthy concrete.

Breeding sows spend their entire miserable lives in tiny metal crates where they can't even turn around. Shortly after giving birth, they are once again forcibly impregnated. This cycle continues for years until their bodies finally give out and they are sent to be killed. When the time comes for slaughter, these smart and sensitive animals are forced onto transport trucks that travel for many miles through all weather extremes—many die of heat exhaustion in the summer and arrive frozen to the inside of the truck in the winter.

According to industry reports, more than 1 million pigs die in transport each year, and an additional 420,000 are crippled by the time they arrive at the slaughterhouse.^{3, 4} Many are still fully conscious when they are immersed in scalding water for hair removal.

Learn more.

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¹ Cambridge Daily News, "A New Slant on Chump Chops," 29 Mar. 2002.
² U.S. Department of Agriculture, "Confined Animal and Manure Nutrient Data System: Swine," U.S.D.A. Economic Research Service, 1997.
³ Feedstuffs, "Research Looks at Transport Losses," 17 Apr. 2006.
⁴ Joe Vansickle, "Quality Assurance Program Launched," National Hog Farmer, 15 Feb. 2002.