When PETA went public with the findings of an undercover investigation at a pig-breeding farm that supplies Hormel in Iowa, we called on the company to ban gestation crates—pens so small that the pregnant sows who are confined to them can't turn around or even lie down comfortably—and then introduced a shareholder resolution to that effect. Less than two years later, the meat giant has announced that it will phase out gestation crates, which cause so much suffering, by 2017.

Among other atrocities at the Hormel supplier, PETA's investigators saw a supervisor shove a cane into a pig's vagina and a worker slam newborn piglets' heads against a concrete floor, leaving them squirming in agony. Referring to a sow, one supervisor remarked to an investigator, "You gotta beat on the bitch. Make her cry." As a direct result of PETA's investigation, six former employees of the Hormel supplier admitted guilt to charges of livestock neglect and abuse.

How You Can Help Pigs

Anyone who brings home the bacon—or the sausage, pork chops, or ham—is unwittingly supporting this atrocious abuse. So when PETA suggests that the best way to help stop the suffering of pigs and other animals raised and killed for food is to go vegan, it's no bull. Order your free vegetarian/vegan starter kit today!

Written by Joe Taskel

A disturbing new undercover investigation inside two pig farms in Goodwell, Oklahoma, one owned by Seaboard Foods, shows injured piglets with their legs duct-taped to their bodies as well as pigs suffering from abscesses, torn body parts, and bacterial infections without being given veterinary care.

Workers are seen chopping off pigs' tails and testicles with no painkillers and hitting pigs in the genitals in order to force them to move from one gestation crate to another. Many of the gestation crates—small metal enclosures in which sows spend most of their lives while they are impregnated again and again—were full of feces and urine. The video shows sows desperately chewing the metal bars of their cages and struggling to stand up. Some are bleeding, and some lie dead.

Seaboard is the country's third-largest pork producer and a supplier to Wal-Mart. Prestage is the fifth-largest producer. Both were investigated.

Did Seaboard know that there was abuse on its farms? Well, 10 years ago, in 2001, a PETA investigation at a Seaboard facility outside Guymon, Oklahoma, led one of its managers to plead guilty to three counts of felony cruelty to animals. Video footage taken by our undercover investigator showed that employees beat pigs with metal gate rods and slammed pigs head-first into the floor in a crude attempt to kill them. Sick and injured pigs were left to die without access to food, water, or veterinary care. Different time, different people, same company, same sort of abuse.

Not an Isolated Incident

Abuse of animals is par for the course on pig farms and all other factory farms. Pigs have the same capacity for suffering as dogs and cats do yet are abused in ways that would be illegal if these animals were the victims.

How You Can Help

The only way to protect animals from this abuse is to stop eating them.

Less than two weeks after receiving appeals from PETA and PETA Germany, RWTH Aachen University, a top German college, has announced that it will no longer perform invasive and deadly training exercises on live pigs in its advanced surgical course, effective immediately!

Truly 'Advanced' Training

Earlier this month, PETA and PETA Germany sent university officials and the German state veterinary authority a detailed dossier outlining humane and superior surgical training methods that—unlike the cruel procedures then used by RWTH Aachen—wouldn't risk violating German laws requiring the use of non-animal teaching methods when available.

The outreach to RWTH Aachen followed PETA Germany's discovery that as part of the "Advanced Skill Course" at the school's surgical clinic, students were cutting open pigs' chests, inserting tubes, and surgically removing their organs before finally killing the animals.

Move the Momentum to Michigan

While RWTH Aachen and the University of Ulm in Germany have both recently scrapped the crude and archaic use of pigs in labs in favor of training surgeons on modern and sophisticated 21st century technology, some U.S. facilities—including the University of Michigan—continue to cut holes into pigs' limbs, throats, and chests and stab needles into their bones and hearts for trauma training exercises even though superior simulation methods exist.

How You Can Help These Pigs

Please tell officials at the University of Michigan to cut out cruel trauma training on pigs and start using humane, contemporary methods of instruction instead.

Photo of the Day

It's a brave pig who can crash a barbecue hosted by a group of hunters. But that's exactly what two PETA "pigs" did at a campaign stop for Newt Gingrich in South Carolina. The "pigs" were protesting taxpayer subsidies of cruel factory farms.

Although they were quickly shown the door, the precocious "pigs" made the most of it, with a grand exit atop a convertible with flags waving and country music blasting while photographers snapped away.

You've played Words With Friends, but what about lights with pigs? A new app called "Pig Chase" puts players finger-to-snout with real pigs on farms.

A player moves a ball of light on the screen, and the light is displayed on a large touch-sensitive panel in the pig's pen. The human player can see the pig's snout as it touches the screen. The human player must use his or her fingers to keep the ball of light near the pig's snout in order to help the pig move the ball of light into a goal triangle with his or her snout. When successful, the pig is treated to a bright, colorful light display. 

Pig Chase was designed to help satisfy a European Union directive requiring farmers to provide pigs with entertainment to lessen the stress that causes pigs to attack each other in cramped factory-farm conditions.

While a game can't change the intensive confinement, multiple mutilations, and filthy conditions to which pigs are subjected on factory farms, perhaps it will help people start to see pigs for the bright, inquisitive animals they are and help pigs pass the time. People may start to realize that if we wouldn't eat the dog we play fetch with, we shouldn't eat the pig we play chase with. And that will make a big difference for pigs on farms.

Earlier this week, a federal appeals court ruled to uphold a Texas law that requires doctors to describe ultrasounds and play audio of the fetal heartbeat to women seeking abortions.

No matter where you stand on abortion, we hope you'll appreciate the billboard that we'll be erecting in Austin, Texas.

Pig: © iStockphoto.com/Chris Pethick

After all, the meat industry is responsible for immense suffering—from castration without painkillers to animals who are shackled and have their throat slit, sometimes while fully conscious—and billions of deaths, which is about as anti-life as it gets. In contrast, a vegan saves 100 lives a year in addition to reducing his or her risk of dying prematurely from many of our nation's top killers, including heart disease and cancer. Now that's pro-life by any definition!

As it turns out, people are genuinely taken by surprise when they find out where sausage meat comes from, as evidenced by this amusing Portuguese video showing what happens when a fake butcher pretends to make sausage from scratch.

It sounds like the plot of a Disney movie, but this video of a pig and dog who are best buds would warm even Walt's cryogenically frozen heart.

"Don't mind me." After committing the most adorable case of breaking and entering ever, a baby seal curled up on a New Zealand woman's couch for a nap.

Can you do a good "fish face"? These people are spot-on. … Or are the fish doing a spot-on "human face"?

Would you like an awkward conversation about the facts of life with that? A 7-year-old girl and her mother allegedly discovered a condom in the child's McDonald's Happy Meal. 

Talk about a return on your investment: Eight years after she went missing, a dog is going home to her family, thanks to a tiny, inexpensive microchip.

And a chicken named Liberty, dubbed Britain's "last battery hen" is headed home too. She will enjoy retirement on a farm with other hens who were formerly confined to battery cages as the U.K.'s ban on the cruel confinement system goes into effect for the new year.

Smithfield Foods, Inc., the world's largest pig supplier, announced yesterday that it will phase out gestation crates for pregnant sows by 2017. Let's hope it keeps its word this time. Smithfield has promised this before.

Female pigs at Smithfield are forced into continuous cycles of pregnancy and birth, only to have their piglets ripped away from them within weeks. The pregnant pigs are confined to metal-barred gestation crates so small that they are nearly immobilized.

In 2007, Smithfield agreed to phase out the crates in 10 years. The decision followed pressure from animal advocates, including PETA's public protests, meetings with Smithfield executives, and a shareholder resolution to ban the crates. But after two years, the company dropped the plan, citing economic woes.

Last month, PETA launched a "hashtag hijack," flooding a Smithfield Twitter event with tweets from supporters demanding the end of gestation crates. Smithfield has now agreed but has given itself another five years to comply and said the ban would apply only to farms owned by the company, not its many contract farms.

A company that earned record profits last year off the misery of pigs could start today to end one of its worst abuses. And it should require its contract farmers to do the same. Hopefully, Smithfield won't renege again and will listen to our calls to ban all gestation crates. Animal advocates can continue to cut into the company's profit margins by refusing to eat Smithfield products—or any pigs.

The turdoggie hybrid we rolled out on billboards just in time for Thanksgiving proved so popular that we decided to return to the laboratory and craft a new creation for Christmas—the puplet:

Dog: © iStockphoto.com/Angelika Schwarz • Pig: © iStockphoto.com/Clint Scholz

Pigs are a lot more like dogs than you might think. Piglets and puppies both love to play and have their ears scratched, and they can easily master skills like sit, fetch, and jump. When in their natural surroundings—not on factory farms—pigs are social, playful, protective animals who bond with each other, make nests, relax in the sun, and cool off in the mud. Pigs are known to dream and recognize their own names, and they are thought to be more intelligent than 3-year-old human children. And just like kids—and dogs—pigs don't want to be eaten.

To celebrate a compassionate Christmas, keep the ham off the table and whip up a pig-friendly feast with the holiday recipes available on our "Living" page.