For Animals.

Pigs are wonderful creatures. Most love to explore, have mud baths, snack, and take naps. If you met a pig you’d probably find they also adore belly rubs. However, they are all unique individuals, each with their own personalities, likes and dislikes, just like our cats and dogs. Did you know that pigs have been shown to be as intelligent as 3 year old human children? They would be our best friends if we let them. Like all animals, pigs do not deserve to be used as slaves, to be exploited, abused, mutilated or murdered. Their bodies belong to them. They deserve nothing but love.

The Reality of the Pig Meat Industry

Pigs Raised for Their Flesh

Pigs bred for their flesh are born in a barren farrowing crate where their mother is confined. The farrowing crate stops mother pigs from being able to nurture their babies. The piglets are deprived of sunlight, fresh air, or a soft place to lay their fragile bodies.

Piglets also suffer from painful mutilations such as having their tails, teeth and testicles cut off without anaesthetic when they’re only a few days old. This is a standard practice within the industry.

When pigs are around 5 weeks old they are separated from their mothers and transferred to ‘fattening pens’. These pens only allow pigs about one square meter of space each. The crowded conditions are very stressful for the pigs, so much so that they can lead to pigs cannibalising each other, which is why pigs tails and teeth are cut off when they’re piglets. The pigs are made to live in these filthy, concrete floored pens for their whole lives and never get to run freely, root in the ground, take mud baths or experience sunlight and fresh air. 

When pigs are 6 months old they are loaded onto trucks and endure long and stressful journeys to the slaughterhouse. In summer the slaughterhouse trucks are like giant ovens and pigs often suffer for many hours in excruciating heat. If given the chance pigs could live up to 18 years or longer, but on farms, 6 miserable months is all they get. 

Pigs used for Breeding

Most commonly, female pigs are forcibly impregnated using artificial insemination. This involves semen being forcefully taken from male pigs and inserted into females to make them pregnant. When the female pigs are ready to give birth they are transferred to farrowing crates. Here they can only stand up or lie down, they cannot even turn around.

Pigs are known to bite at the bars of the cage until their teeth brake. Mother pigs also often graze their snouts against the concrete floor in a futile attempt to make a nest for her babies. Once mother pigs have given birth they can’t even properly nurture their babies because of the cramped conditions. After a few weeks their babies will be taken away from them, and soon they will be impregnated again and the cycle will repeat. After only four or five years the mother pigs will be killed. 

Male pigs exploited for their semen are often kept confined alone in small barren cages. They will also eventually be taken to the slaughterhouse.

Slaughter of Pigs

In Aotearoa, pigs are killed by being stunned with a captive bolt gun then hung upside down and stabbed in the throat. In many parts of the world pigs are lowered into gas chambers, where they thrash around in agony and literally burn from the inside out while fully conscious. Although this is not done in Aotearoa, about 60% of the pork and 85% of cured pork that is consumed here is imported from overseas, including from countries that do gas pigs. However, whichever method is used to kill the pigs, they are still being killed and that’s bad enough.

These animals are shown not one kindness their entire life, they’re exploited and treated like mere commodities, and what is their reward? A terrifying and violent death in a slaughterhouse. If you buy pork, bacon or ham, you are responsible for their life of suffering and their death. Don’t pay for this to happen to these innocent animals, stop buying their body parts and just eat something else.

How Pigs are Treated in the Meat Industry VS at Sanctuaries