Pigs

SENTIENT AND CONSCIOUS BEINGS

Pigs are friendly, loyal, and intelligent animals that consistently outperform dogs and certain chimpanzees in learning tests. They are naturally very clean, live in small family groups, and enjoy playing and exploring their environment.

PRISON

However, they are deprived of everything natural to them. They sometimes never see the sun and never breathe fresh air. In almost all cases, pigs live penned and crowded together in dreary concrete enclosures or overcrowded sheds in a deplorable state of hygiene: filthy pens, accumulation of droppings, profusion of flies, stagnant water. Carcasses of pigs of all ages, adults and piglets alike, litter the floor. Some are in an advanced state of decomposition, left among the living animals.

PHARMACOLOGY

Numerous antibiotics are used (some classified as critically important by the WHO). Growth hormones (dexamethasone, a doping agent banned for athletes) are also present in farming. 20% of pigs die between birth and the age of departure for the slaughterhouse.

MENTAL HEALTH and ITS CONSEQUENCES

The frustration and stress caused by this extreme confinement can lead to aggressive behaviors, such as fights, tail-biting (caudophagy), biting the ears of conspecifics, or stereotypies (pathological repetitive movements). Pigs with open wounds are eaten by their pen-mates. Male pigs experience chronic pain due to the placement of a ring in their snout.

TORTURE

To limit the consequences of these attacks, male and female piglets are almost systematically subjected to two types of mutilations, performed without anesthesia from a very young age: tail docking to prevent caudophagy (this mutilation generates chronic pain similar to that described in humans after an amputation) and teeth grinding or clipping to prevent injuries to the sows' udders (this mutilation can cause delayed pain associated with inflammatory reactions and abscesses).

TRANSPORT

When only a few months old, they are taken to the slaughterhouse where they are gassed to death in a CO2 pit or hung upside down and their throats slit. Some are transported alive on ships during long journeys, often suffering from extreme temperatures. They are deprived of food, water, and veterinary care, and many fall seriously ill or die during the journey. Dead and dying pigs (yet still conscious) have been seen thrown overboard.

« At the height of winter, there are always pigs stuck to the walls and floor of the trucks, so you go in with wires or knives and you cut into the flesh to detach them. The pigs are alive when you do that. » testifies a slaughterhouse worker.

RAPE, KIDNAPPING, ABUSE

Mother sows are forcibly inseminated repeatedly. Each litter of piglets is taken away from them after just a few weeks, then sent to fattening pens before heading to the slaughterhouse. During and after farrowing, sows are confined in gestation crates so narrow that they cannot even turn around toward their little ones, let alone satisfy their nesting instinct.

Newborn piglets' legs get caught in the slots of the slatted floor. Many die at birth, sometimes crushed by their mother.

EXPERIMENTATION

In laboratories, pigs used for experimentation are inoculated with diseases, subjected to conditions triggering depression, or mutilated to serve as teaching models for plastic surgery techniques or wound healing. They are also used in atrocious military tests during which they receive multiple gunshots and are subjected to explosions causing severe injuries to test treatment methods.

LEATHER

Leather is a lucrative co-product of the meat industry, so pigs endure all the atrocities of intensive farming before being killed and having their skin used to make clothing, shoes, and other leather goods made of « pigskin » or « suede » leather.

SLAUGHTERHOUSE

At the slaughterhouse, pigs are suspended by their hind legs before being killed. Workers are in such a rush that they stun them poorly, meaning they regain consciousness and are aware when they are bled to death and plunged into boiling water.

PRODUCTIVITY

In the pork industry, productivity gains achieved through zootechnics (genetic selection, feeding, breeding techniques, etc.) seem limitless. Year after year, they continue to progress in pig farms, to the detriment of animal health.

While breeding sows « produced » 16 piglets per year in 1970, they yield 29 today. To achieve such figures, piglets are weaned ever earlier, and the interval between weaning and re-breeding is constantly reduced. Exhausted sows are sent to the slaughterhouse at 33 months of age.

Fattening pigs also grow faster: it now takes them 165 days to reach a weight of 100 kg, compared to 200 in 1970. Poor piglets deemed non-viable are euthanized by being bashed against a wall, onto concrete, or with a sledgehammer.

AS PETS

Those used as pets are often abandoned by their owners once their large size makes them « cumbersome ». Breeders often breed pigs at a very young age to trick buyers coming to see the litter into believing the parents are small adult-sized pigs.