All About Pork

Every year around the world, approximately 1.5 billion (1,500,000,000) pigs are killed for human consumption [6]. Australia accounts for approximately 5.5 million of them [7]. In almost all circumstances, pigs are killed at just 6-months old because it is not financially viable to keep them alive longer. If cared for, a pig can live for over 20 years!

Shortly after birth, piglets are “processed”, meaning they may undergo some surgical procedures, often without any pain relief. Piglets may have their tails docked [8], their canine ‘needle’ teeth clipped [8], and be castrated - if left uncastrated, their flesh develops an undesirable flavour and odour for consumers [9]. A piglet under 15kg, who is injured or unwell, they can also legally be killed with blunt force trauma. The most common method is for workers to slam the piglets head against the concrete floor [10]. If not performed correctly, the piglet will suffer excruciating pain and can be left to bleed out. It is also stressful for the mother, as she can see her baby be killed.

Grower pigs eat the equivalent of about 3% of their body weight and drink about 10% of their body weight each day. Pigs are omnivores and can be fed a combination of vegetables, grains, and meat. As a result, some pig farmers feed their pigs food waste – this has been found to include expired food, such as dairy products (including custard and ice cream), juice, confectionery, fish fillets, bread, or even ganache [11]. In addition to this, the animals who die before being sent to slaughter (particularly ducks and chickens) are collected and sent to a rendering plant where they are mixed with “waste” body parts of other animals – heads, blood, bone, hoofs, and feathers – that humans don’t consume. This mixture is then added to grains and vegetable proteins for other animals, such as pigs, ducks, chickens, fish, and turkeys, to eat [12 PDF].

In Australia, approximately 90% of pigs are kept in intensive, indoor farms. Within this housing system, sows can be kept in individual sow stalls, or housed in groups [13]. 

A sow can stay here for up to 16 weeks [14]. In group housing, sows have more room to move, but can be aggressive towards one another due to the stress and lack of environmental enrichment. They are still forced to sleep on concrete and metal floors, living in their waste [15]. 

After the 16-weeks, sows are moved into farrowing crates to give birth, and they are kept there until her piglets are weaned – approximately 3-4 weeks later [16]. Very different from the nest pigs build in the wild, sows are forced to give birth on the cold metal and concrete floors. After her piglets are taken, the sow may be placed in a mating stall for up to 5 days – these are similar to sow stalls but used for artificial insemination. Then, she is returned to a sow stall or group housing [17].

Boars, who are used for mating or semen collection, are also kept in isolated stalls. They are only let out for semen collection or mating, which may only be once a week. Last year, Animal Liberation NSW and QLD, exposed a boar semen collection facility in Queensland. 

After they have been weaned, piglets are moved into indoor group housing, where they will spend the next five months. In the indoor and outdoor pens, they cannot exhibit their natural behaviours, such as foraging, and as a result, they develop stereotypies (abnormal repetitive behaviours) [18].

About 5% of sows are kept outdoors, meaning they have more room to move. 

After the sow’s babies have been weaned, they are moved into large barns with litter bedding [19], and she is impregnated again. The piglets spend the next 5 months confined to a barn with others. Apart from the litter bedding, there is no enrichment, and the pigs can become aggressive to each other.

On a free-range farm, pigs have access to the outdoors. They are provided with housing for shelter and are not confined to stalls or farrowing crates [20]. Piglets are still weaned at 3-4 weeks old, and mothers are impregnated again. In pastures, the pigs may have a nose ring inserted to prevent them from foraging [21]. This, once again, purposefully denies them from exhibiting natural behaviours and is painful and distressing for the pigs.

After 3-5 years of repeated pregnancies, sows are slaughtered, as it is not economically viable to keep them alive. In Australia, there are three industry practices for stunning pigs before they are killed by being stabbed in the throat and are left to bleed out, the first being carbon dioxide gas chambers (considered the most “humane” [22], an undercover investigation in 2015 exposed that pigs struggle violently until they pass out from asphyxiation, burning from the inside). Electrical stunning [23] and captive-bolt guns [24] can also be used.

Australia has roughly 2,700 pig producers – 90% of which are intensive commercial indoor facilities [25]. As a result, pig farms do not require as much land as cattle and sheep. In terms of water use, according to Australian Pork, the world average is approximately 4,856 litres of water used per kilogram of pigmeat, while conventional Australian systems use around 3,020 litres per kilogram [26].

A pig produces four times more waste than a human being, meaning a large pig farm can easily create the same amount of waste as a small city [27]. Their waste contains high concentrations of nutrients (nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus), and trace contaminants (heavy metals, organic compounds, and endocrine-disrupting chemicals) [28]. While some traditional farming systems use their manure to grow crops, the amount of manure, generally exceeds the land’s ability to absorb it, so waste is stored in lagoons or pits. These pits have been known to break or leak, contaminating surrounding water sources. Spraying the waste also contaminates water, soil, and air [29].