Pigs are smarter than all dog breeds, and outperform three-to-five-year-old human children in cognitive tests. They can even tell time! They’re also quite hygienic, despite popular belief. They designate specific sites for their waste, keeping their eating and sleeping areas clean and tidy. The reason they get so muddy? To keep cool and prevent sunburn.
These curious and social animals are sadly among the most mistreated. As one of the most sensitive and intelligent species on the planet, they really feel the pain and suffering that comes with the cruel practices of industrial farming and slaughter.
The current landscape:
It’s important to note that welfare issues exist across all farming systems, even in ‘free-range’ and ‘organic’ setups. These welfare issues are mostly hidden from the public. The truth is, pigs spend most of their lives in cramped conditions and endure painful surgical procedures without any pain relief. In every state in Australia, it's still legal to kill sick or injured piglets by slamming their heads against a hard surface, and sadly, pigs are often subjected to cruel methods of stunning before they're slaughtered.
The different stages in the life of a farmed pig:
Sow stalls, also known as ‘gestation crates,’ are tiny cages used to confine pregnant pigs (‘sows’) during pregnancy. These stalls are barely wider than the sow herself (just 0.6m x 2.2m), giving her enough space to take a single step forward or back, but no room to turn around.
Sows often suffer painful injuries, lameness and urinary tract infections. On top of that, they endure social isolation, stress and frustration.
Sows can legally be kept in these stalls for up to 6 weeks–half of each pregnancy. But due to artificial insemination and intensive breeding practices, they’re often pregnant for most of their lives. With two or more litters each year and the use of farrowing crates after birth, this means that sows can be confined to tiny pens for almost half of their lives.
When it comes to the use of sow stalls, Australia is among the worst of the developed countries. The UK and Sweden banned sow stalls back in the 1990s.
Farrowing crates are small metal cages (0.5m x 2m) used to confine mother pigs before and after giving birth (‘farrowed’). These crates prevent her from turning around, forcing her to live in her own waste, which causes stress, discomfort and a higher risk of disease.
Mother pigs are naturally nurturing and protective. If allowed to, they’ll build nests, bond with their piglets and play an active role in guiding their behaviour. In farrowing crates, they are denied this. Trapped and unable to care for their young, mother pigs often suffer from depression, while piglets, deprived of normal social interaction, may develop aggressive behaviours like tail biting. To prevent injuries, piglets endure painful procedures such as teeth clipping and tail cutting without pain relief.
Under natural conditions, mother pigs wean their piglets at 10-17 weeks. But in factory farms, piglets are taken away as young as 3 weeks, causing stress and increasing their chances of illness. After each litter, the sow is re-impregnated until her body gives out, usually by the age of 2 or 3, when she is sent to slaughter.
90% of Australian factory farms use farrowing crates. They are banned in countries like Switzerland, Sweden and Norway.
Pigs naturally live up to 12-15 years, but in factory farms, those not chosen as breeders are sent to slaughter at just 5 or 6 months old. The journey to the slaughterhouse is incredibly stressful, with pigs crammed into trucks for hours, often without enough space to lie down.
At most Australian slaughterhouses, nearly 90% of pigs—whether factory-farmed or free-range—are ‘stunned’ using carbon dioxide gas chambers. This method is legal and based on efficiency, but it causes pigs intense pain and distress. Investigations reveal pigs violently shaking and gasping for air as they're forced into tiny ‘gondolas’ and lowered into the chamber, suffering long after they have collapsed.
Beyond the routine cruelty of factory farms and slaughterhouses, ‘ventilation shutdown’ is a particularly brutal method of mass killing used during disease outbreaks. The process involves cutting off ventilation and raising temperatures, which causes pigs to suffer an agonising death that ends in suffocation. It has been used through swine flu epidemics to deliberately kill millions of pigs. Alarmingly, the practice of ventilation shutdown is on the rise in the US.
A Note on Regulation
In Australia, the pig industry is mostly self-regulated. The methods used for farming and slaughtering pigs get the green light from Federal and State Agricultural authorities—the same departments that prioritise high productivity and profits for the pig industry. For example, Victoria's animal protection laws have exemptions for farmed animals, allowing practices that would typically be seen as animal cruelty to happen to pigs, all because they’re covered by an industry ‘code of practice.’
While beef production has a much larger climate impact than pork, the pig industry still contributes significantly to greenhouse gas emissions, particularly methane and nitrous oxide. In fact, nitrous oxide has a global warming potential 300 times greater than carbon dioxide!
To put this in perspective, one pig produces two to four times the waste of an adult person. This waste contains nitrogen and phosphorus, which are essential for crops but can be toxic in excess. Often, this animal waste is flushed into large ponds or stored in pits, then spread untreated as fertiliser on fields.
Unfortunately, the volume of waste far exceeds what crops need and the land’s ability to absorb it. When it rains, all that excess waste—and everything else in it—runs off the fields, contaminating wells, rivers, lakes and eventually the ocean. Water pollution is the top environmental disaster linked to factory pig farms.
Understanding Pork Labelling
In Australia, there are no clear or legally enforceable definitions for pig production systems, which creates a confusing mix of logos, labels and certification systems from both industries and retailers. But here’s the bottom line: no matter how they’re raised—whether in factory farms or organic settings—all pigs ultimately face the same terrifying fate in an abattoir.
Pork is known for being high in saturated fat and cholesterol, both of which increase your risk for heart disease. Cutting pork from your diet could also help prevent kidney stones, gestational diabetes and even Alzheimer’s disease. Cured meats like bacon and ham are particularly concerning due to cancer-causing nitrosamines formed from nitrite additives.
Contamination is a big issue in pork production. Pigs are often given arsenic-based feed to promote growth and manage diseases, with a staggering 85 tons of arsenic compounds consumed each year. On top of that, pork has been found to contain harmful chemicals like PCBs—these are toxic substances that were once used in industrial processes and later banned because of their risk to public health and the environment. To make matters worse, tests on retail pork samples have shown the presence of dangerous bacteria that can cause serious illnesses.
Zoonotic diseases—those that jump from animals to humans—pose a serious threat to public health. While COVID-19 came from wild animals, many experts believe that industrial meat production is a more fertile ground for future outbreaks. Pigs are especially worrisome because they’re prone to influenza viruses that can quickly mutate and spread to humans. The 2009 H1N1 outbreak, or ‘swine flu,’ originated from a pig factory farm in Mexico and went on to kill up to half a million people within the first year. Other strains continue to circulate.
