Pigs Love to Cuddle
Pigs are extremely intelligent animals with complex emotions. They are capable of solving difficult challenges, they love to play, and they each have their own unique personalities.¹ Despite the common misconception, pigs are very clean animals who prefer to keep their area clean and keep their toilet far away from where they sleep.²
Pigs form very close social bonds with each other. They love sharing close contact and affection with each other and will even cuddle!² They are also very peaceful animals who rarely show aggression, unless provoked.²
Nearly 1.5 billion of these individuals are killed every year for food globally.³
The Facts About Pigs Used for Their Flesh
Breeding sows are female pigs who are bred to give birth to pigs for the meat industry. These breeding sows are typically artificially inseminated multiple times a year.4 When they are pregnant, they are usually kept in gestation crates for up to four months until their babies are born. Gestation crates are typically 2′ by 7′ crates that are only slightly larger than the pigs.4
Once they give birth, they and their babies are moved to a farrowing crate, where the sow is only able to lay on her side and cannot get up to tend to her babies. There is no bedding, and the piglets can get stuck in the slats in the floor or under their mother and are unable to nurse. 4 After several weeks, the babies are moved and the mother is impregnated again. After around 3 to 4 years, the breeding sows will be slaughtered.4
Pigs raised in factory farms have their tails cut and often have their ears notched and teeth removed, all without anesthetic.4 After being taken from their mothers, the pigs live crowded together in an unsanitary indoor environment. The noxious gases produced from the pig urine and waste can cause them to have respiratory problems and infections.5 Pigs are intelligent animals, so the lack of enrichment or ability to do natural behaviors in factory farms can cause stress, depression, and aggression.5
Most pigs are then sent to slaughter at around 6 months of age.6 During transport to the slaughterhouse, pigs are often extremely overcrowded on the trucks, leading some pigs to die before they arrive.5 After arrival, pigs are rendered unconscious with a bolt gun. This procedure is imprecise and often does not effectively render many pigs fully unconscious.5 This leads to some pigs being fully conscious when they are hung upside down by their legs and have their throat slit. These pigs suffer even further if they are still conscious when they go into the scald tank where they would essentially experience being boiled alive.5
Sources
- https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/animal-emotions/201506/pigs-are-intelligent-emotional-and-cognitively-complex
- https://onekindplanet.org/animal/pig/
- https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/02/chart-of-the-day-this-is-how-many-animals-we-eat-each-year/
- https://www.nhes.org/factory-farmed-pigs/
- https://www.mspca.org/animal_protection/farm-animal-welfare-pigs/
- https://www.pork.org/facts/pig-farming/life-cycle-of-a-market-pig/
How You Can Help
The best way to stop this kind of treatment is to switch to a plant-based diet. There are so many amazing plant-based alternatives to pork that you can enjoy without any of the cruelty.
