The lives of pigs farmed for meat
Resident rescued pigs at Farm Sanctuary. The photos and video in this post are provided by We Animals Media.
Pigs are highly intelligent and social animals, often compared to dogs and human children.
In the United States alone, we raise over 124 million pigs for their flesh every year. That means we kill about 339,726 pigs every day, 14,155 every hour, 236 every minute, or 4 every second.
While bacon, sausage, pork, and ham are common in many American diets, most of us have limited knowledge of how these products end up on our plates. This post aims to help by exploring the lives of pigs raised for meat in the United States.
Selective breeding
Modern domestic pigs come from wild boars in Europe, Asia, and North Africa.
In the late 19th century, we began selectively breeding pigs to:
Grow larger and faster
Require less food per pound of meat
Yield a higher percentage of lean meat
Have more piglets in each litter (domestic pigs have about 8-14 piglets, while wild pigs have about 4-6)
Be more docile and resistant to diseases
These changes enabled us to grow more pigs faster, with less food, in less space, in dirtier conditions, and with more control, ultimately resulting in more profits for us.
Breeding and artificial insemination
While we primarily raise farmed pigs for meat, we also use some pigs for breeding.
We either let pigs mate naturally in a pen or, more commonly, we artificially inseminate females. Artificial insemination involves collecting semen from a male, either by manually stimulating him or by providing him with a fake female to mount. Then, we restrain a female and insert a catheter containing the semen into her vagina and cervix.
Pregnancy and gestation crates
Once pregnant, we move around 70% of the females to gestation crates, where they spend most of their 4-month pregnancy. Gestation crates are metal cages of similar length and width to the pigs (7 feet by 2 feet); they enable us to maximize profits by fitting more pigs in less space. The pregnant pigs can only stand up or lie down on the concrete floors; they don’t have enough room to turn around, walk, or engage in their natural behaviors, such as socializing or building nests.
Sows confined to gestation crates.
The confinement causes the pregnant pigs both psychological and physical stress. Out of frustration and boredom, they chew on metal bars, engage in repetitive movements, exhibit signs of despondency, or display aggression. The concrete floors and restricted movement lead to pressure sores, joint pain, lameness, postural deformities, and other ailments.
For welfare reasons, some countries and states have banned gestation crates, however they remain a popular and standard practice in most of the United States.
Birth and farrowing crates
After giving birth, we transfer the mothers to a farrowing crate, which resembles a gestation crate but has side openings allowing her piglets to nurse. We keep her there for about 5 weeks. After that, we take her piglets away to fatten them for slaughter. A few weeks later, we impregnate the mothers again and continue this cycle for 3-5 years until we slaughter them too.
Sows confined to farrowing crates.
In the first days of the piglets' lives, we perform several procedures. We cut their teeth and tails to prevent fighting and cannibalization, behaviors that are unnatural in the wild but can become common in factory farms due to the stress and crowding of their living conditions. We may make notches in their ears for identification purposes. And for male piglets, we castrate them to enhance the taste of their meat. We do all of these procedures without giving the piglets any pain relief.
Fattening pens
At about 4 weeks, we move piglets to fattening pens. These pens are typically indoor and windowless facilities that house thousands of piglets. The concrete floors of the pens have slats that allow urine and feces to fall through. The piglets have limited space to move around, and they cannot engage in natural behaviors such as foraging, playing, wallowing, or grooming.
Compare this to wild pigs, who spend most of their time walking around and foraging for food in groups of around 20.
We feed the piglets a diet consisting of corn, soybeans, and antibiotics. The high-calorie content in corn and soybeans promotes quick weight gain, while the antibiotics assist in managing diseases that occur due to overcrowding and unsanitary living conditions.
Left: We separate piglets from their moms at about 4 weeks. Right: A piglet that’s left to die.
When piglets get sick before their "slaughter age," or if they don’t grow fast enough for us, we kill them. We either shoot them, stun them, leave them to die on their own, or thump them. Thumping is when we lift a piglet by their back legs and slam them headfirst into the floor or a wall until they die from the impact.
Transport and slaughter
Pigs can live 10-15 years, but we typically slaughter them at 23 weeks old, when they’re still piglets.
We often raise piglets in a different location from where we kill them. To transport the piglets to a slaughterhouse, we load them onto large, poorly ventilated transport trucks with hundreds of other piglets. The trucks are so crowded that the piglets have no room to move.
Their ride to the slaughterhouse may be up to 28 hours. During that time, we give them no food, water, or rest, and expose them to extreme weather. In hot months, piglets sometimes die of heatstroke or heart attacks. In cold months, they sometimes get hypothermia or freeze to death. They may also be injured or die from falling or being crushed by other piglets or equipment.
Piglets packed into a transport truck.
Once they reach the slaughterhouse, we unload the piglets into a holding area by jabbing them with electric prods.
We stun the pigs by either shooting them in the head with an electric prod or captive bolt or by lowering groups of them in gas chambers where we expose them to high levels of carbon dioxide. In the gas chambers, the piglets display behaviors that are consistent with pain and distress. They gasp for air, make high-pitched vocalizations, shake their heads, thrash around, and try to escape. This lasts several minutes.
The next phase involves hanging the piglets by a back leg, slitting their throats, and bleeding them. After that, we submerge them in a scalding water tank to loosen their hair and skin. Occasionally, when using electric or captive bolt stunning, we may not stun the piglets effectively. As a result, they may remain conscious during some or all of this process, ultimately drowning in the 140-150ºF water.
Finally, we dismember them into various cuts of meat for human or pet consumption.
How to help
Pigs, like us and our pets, are intelligent, emotional, and sentient beings. The things that we do to them cause them immense suffering.
If the way we treat pigs makes you uncomfortable, there's good news: as a consumer, you have the power to directly impact the welfare of farmed animals. All you need to do is stop purchasing products that are produced in a way that you disagree with, and suppliers will be forced to either stop or improve their practices. It’s that simple.
Instead, you can purchase animal products from suppliers who treat animals well. But in this case, you’ll need to do research and exercise caution, as farmers and labels often claim to be more humane than they actually are.
Or, you can abstain from consuming animal products altogether, as humans don't need to eat animals to be healthy. Instead, opt for plant-based proteins such as lentils, beans, vegetables, and even fruits.
Every day and every meal, you have the opportunity to live out your values. If animal welfare is one of your values, join us in choosing compassion every time you shop and every time you eat.
