Many people think of Charlotte's Web and Babe when they imagine how pigs are raised for meat, but these Hollywood tales don't depict reality at all.
Almost all of the 100 million pigs killed for food in the U.S. every year endure horrific conditions in "concentrated animal feeding operations" (CAFOs), the meat industry's euphemism for factory farms. These social, sensitive animals spend their lives in extremely crowded, filthy warehouses, in which they are deprived of even natural sunlight until the day that they are crammed onto a truck bound for the slaughterhouse.
Mother pigs spend their lives confined to tiny metal crates. They never feel the warmth and coziness of a nest or the affectionate nuzzle of a mate. Instead, they are surrounded by cold metal bars and lie on wet, feces-coated concrete floors.
When they are old enough to give birth, they are artificially inseminated and imprisoned for the entire length of their pregnancies in "gestation crates," which are cages only 2 feet wide that are too small for them even to turn around or lie down comfortably in.After giving birth, mother pigs are moved to "farrowing crates," contraptions similar to gestation crates, with only a tiny additional concrete area on which the piglets can nurse. One worker describes the process: "They beat the shit out of them [the mother pigs] to get them inside the crates because they don't want to go. This is their only chance to walk around, get a little exercise, and they don't want to go [back into a crate]."
Workers sometimes tie the mother's legs apart so that she cannot get a break from the suckling piglets. She may develop open "bedsores" on her body from the lack of movement. This practice is so barbaric that gestation crates have been banned in Florida, the U.K., and Sweden, and bans will go into effect in coming years in Arizona, California, Oregon, Ohio, and the European Union.
The piglets are taken from their mothers after less than a month. In nature, they would stay with their mothers for several months. The mothers are impregnated again, and the cycle of forced breeding and imprisonment continues.
This intensive confinement causes debilitating stress and intense boredom. Missing their piglets, and with nothing to do but stare at the bars in front of them, mother pigs often go insane, neurotically chewing on their cage bars or obsessively pressing on their water bottles. After three or four years, when their bodies are exhausted and their minds are pushed to or even past the brink of insanity, they are shipped off to slaughter.
Meanwhile, the male piglets have their testicles cut out of their scrotums, their tails cut off, many of their teeth clipped in half, and their ears mutilated, all without any pain relief. They are placed into pens crowded with many other piglets, where they are kept until they are large enough for slaughter. The animals are given almost no room to move because, as one pork-industry journal put it, "[O]vercrowding pigs pays."
Impeccably clean by nature, pigs on factory farms are forced to live in their own feces and vomit and sometimes even amid the corpses of other pigs. Extreme crowding, poor ventilation, and filth cause rampant disease. By the time they're sent to the slaughterhouse, 70 percent of pigs on factory farms suffer from lesions caused by pneumonia. At any given time, more than one-quarter of pigs suffer from mange. They are fed massive doses of antibiotics to keep them alive in these conditions, but many pigs die from infections.
Because of illness, a lack of room to exercise, and genetic manipulation that causes them to grow too large too quickly, pigs often develop arthritis and other joint problems. Many pigs on factory farms are forced to live on slatted floors above giant manure pits. Smaller pigs often suffer severe leg injuries when their legs get caught between the slats.Always concerned with the bottom line, some farmers simply kill sick animals instead of giving them medicine or veterinary care. A PETA investigation found that a manager at an Oklahoma farm killed pigs by beating them with metal gate rods, and others were left to die without food or water. Unwanted "runts" were killed, as they are on most farms, by "thumping," or slamming the animals' heads against the floor.
You can help put an end to this cruelty. Order PETA's free "Vegetarian/Vegan Starter Kit" and start removing pork and other animal products from your diet today. We'll send you all the tips and recipes you'll need to help you make the transition to an animal-friendly diet.