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This piglet has fallen from thecages and is alone, starving and ill

Viva!’s Director, Juliet Gellatley,tells you what the pig industrydoesn’t want you to know…

Pigs outsmart dogs. And a recent scientificreview by Emory University, USA shows thatthey are on an intellectual par with ourclosest living relatives, chimpanzees.

Pigs once lived wild in most of Britain, in smallfamily groups and, as forest dwellers, spentmuch of their lives rooting in the soil, yet thevast majority of British pigs raised for meat aredenied even that. Most sows are routinelycaged to give birth and their offspring mutilatedwithout anaesthetic and kept indoors onintensive units – from the ramshackle to thegigantic – where almost all of their naturalinstincts are thwarted.

The British pigindustryThere are around 5 million pigsalive in Britain at any one time.Most are factory farmed. A tinypercentage (1 per cent) of pigsare organically farmed in theUK and this sector is in decline.

About 40 per cent of ‘breedingsows’ give birth outdoors, butmany of the piglets bornoutside will be reared indoors.Staggeringly it is still the normfor pigs in Britain to be keptintensively in industrial units.Although some farms allowstraw, most pigs arecondemned to barren hovels

with just footballs or chains hanging from theceiling as a pitiful form of ‘environmentalenrichment’. This causes extreme frustrationand boredom for these bright animals.

First-hand knowledgeViva! has investigated about 60 pig farms overthe years and recently I visited a typical farm,Necton Hall, Norfolk in the black early hours ofthe morning. The doors of the first shed wecame across were wide open and the lights hadbeen left on. I walked inside, followed by acameraman, to film about the desperate life ofpigs. It was one of the most difficult experiencesof my life.

To see Juliet inside Necton Hall Pig Farm and add your voice toViva!’s Face Off campaign head to viva.org.uk/faceoff

Mothers in crates The shed was filthy and drab, festooned incobwebs. A corridor ran through it, with motherpigs locked in crates on both sides. I stopped byone and looked at her abused body lying on ahard and unforgiving floor. “503” was crudelypainted on her back. She looked at me, then ather dead piglet, who she nuzzled through themetal bars that imprisoned her. In her eyes ran astory of emotional and physical pain. An animalcompletely neglected by society.

Birth is magical. But not when it takes place ina cage like this, only inches bigger than themother’s body. What should be beautiful andrewarding becomes horribly obscene. And yetBritain still places 60 per cent of mother sowsinside farrowing crates to give birth, where theycan barely move for five weeks at a time.

Contrast this to the wild, where mother sowsbuild nests from twigs and leaves, and can walkmany kilometres to find a suitable site.

Torn awayThe natural weaning age for pigs is 12 to 15weeks, but on British farms piglets are weanedartificially early at just 3-4 weeks old. This isoften more than piglets’ immature digestivesystems can cope with and can lead to scours –severe diarrhoea. As a result, piglets requiremedication and, in intensive conditions, end upon a daily regime of drugs, including antibiotics,which has led to the development of‘superbugs’. Almost one-fifth of piglets do notsurvive until weaning.

Mutilating babiesIn the last shed at Necton Hall was anotherreminder of the horrors that the meat industryinflicts on defenceless young animals. On the floorlay the severed tails of piglets who had beenmutilated by the farmer. Lying next to them werethe discarded bodies of four piglets who didn’teven live long enough to leave the farrowing pens.

Paradoxically, as with most types of factoryfarming, mutilations are used to try and controlabnormal behaviours directly caused by theintensive farming methods themselves. About80 per cent of British piglets suffer major typesof mutilations, including ‘teeth clipping’ and‘tail docking’ – both without anaesthetic andexposed by Viva! in the national press.

Teeth clipping can lead to teeth and gumdamage, with chronic pain and risk of infection.Tail docking (cutting off part of the tail) iscarried out to try and prevent pigs biting eachother; it causes stress and intense pain. Thisbehaviour is directlycaused by boredom,frustration and a lackof environmentalenrichment.

In another shed, pigfaeces littered thegangways that separated the pens of the olderpigs. It seemed a sick joke that these beautifulanimals were crammed into dirty, wooden-slatted pens, with no bedding and givenabsolutely nothing – except a ball. Pigs aremeant to spend their days exploring theirwoodland homes, snuffling for food, playingwith family. They roam 2 to 15km a night. Theyare fun-loving, full of joie de vivre. In this place,the small piglets already had despair stamped intheir expressions – here there was no play.

It wouldn’t happen in the wild, but sometimespigs on intensive farms resort to cannibalism.One terrified animal lay at the back of a penunable to move, as another chewed on her leg.Her pain and terror must have beenunimaginable.

SlaughterMother pigs are killed at four years old for‘low-grade’ meat. Their piglets’ lives are cutshort at just five to six months old for pork,bacon, sausages and ham. Their naturallifespan is 12 to 15 years.

Although the pigindustry changes little– people do. Almost allpigs are reared indoorsfor meat but theBritish consumer isincreasingly refusing to

buy it. When I wrote a report on the industry in2001, 16 million pigs were killed per year formeat in the UK; in 2014 it was 10 million. Stillcarnage but the trend is firmly in the rightdirection.

Viva! complained about Necton Hall and manyother farms over the years to the government,but action has not been taken. As consumerswe have to face up to the fact that Defraprotects agribusiness, and it is up to us to takeresponsibility for the welfare of farmedanimals. We can choose to use our colossalconsumer power to buy kind – and that meansa vegan diet.

Almost one-fifth of pigletsdo not survive until weaning

It is up to us to takeresponsibility for the welfare

of farmed animals

Viva! exposed the scandalof the battery piglets at aRed Tractor approved farmthat supplies Morrisons

Mothers in cages: thisis the fate of 60 percent of British sows

80 per cent of piglets aremutilated in factory farms

Piglets have theirtails cut off withoutpain relief. We filmedthe horrific aftermath