Around 1.3 billion pigs are slaughtered annually for meat worldwide. The majority of these are in East Asia, particularly China, which rears around half of the world’s pigs. They are usually slaughtered after 4-7 months. Pigs intended for pork are usually slaughtered 1-2 months younger than pigs for bacon. I think that the way pigs are being raised and slaughtered is corrupt and barbaric.
Mother pigs; spend most of their lives in individual “gestation” crates that are approximately seven feet long and two feet wide, not large enough for them to turn around in. Just before giving birth they are moved to “farrowing” crates, which also are not large enough for them to turn around in or build nests for their young. The deprived environment produces neurotic coping behaviours such as repetitive bar biting, sham chewing and obsessively pressing on water bottles.
Piglets are taken from their mothers when they are as young as 10 days old and are packed into pens until they are separated to be raised for breeding or meat. They are too overcrowded and prone to stress-related behaviours, such as cannibalism and tail biting.
On a television episode of TV ones Sunday that I watched, the New Zealand pork industry was dealt a shameful and public relations slap-in-the-face after its former comedian celebrity kingpin, Mike King, ousted their farming practises as ‘brutal’, callous’ and ‘evil’. Mike condemned the “appalling treatment” of factory farmed pigs. He observed inside a New Zealand piggery and found a dead female pig inside a sow stall, lame or crippled pigs and others that could barely stand. Pigs either extremely depressed or highly distressed, pigs that had scars and injuries and a lack of clean drinking water. Mike says “they were screaming and frothing at the mouth, I was disgusted and I’m sorry I was ever a part of promoting it”.
This is no joke, real life ‘Babes’ see no sun in their limited lives, except for when being loaded onto the truck to be