This factsheet was completed by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA)  . Please direct any questions or comments to PETA directly at 757-622-7382 or info@peta.org.

Pigs: Smart Animals at the Mercy of the Pork Industry

Pigs “have the cognitive ability to be quite sophisticated. Even more so than dogs and certainly [more so than] three-year-olds,” says Dr. Donald Broom, Cambridge University professor and former scientific advisor to the Council of Europe.(1) Pigs can play video games, and when offered a choice, they have indicated environmental temperature preferences.(2)

These facts are not surprising to anyone who has spent time around these social, playful animals. Pigs, who have a great sense of smell and can live into their teens, are very protective of their young and form bonds with other pigs. Contrary to popular belief, pigs are clean animals, but they do not have sweat glands, so they take to the mud to stay cool and ward off flies.(3,4)

Factory Farming Causes Suffering

Only pigs in movies spend their lives running across sprawling pastures and relaxing in the sun. On any given day in the United States, there are approximately 60 million pigs living on factory farms, and about 100 million are killed for food every year.(5,6) Factory-farming conditions are no better in Canada, which annually exports more than 6 million live pigs to the U.S. for slaughter.(7) Managers of Canada’s largest pig exporter faced cruelty charges after 10,000 dead and dying pigs were found on the company’s farms. Investigators found dead pigs stacked behind barns and dead piglets in manure tanks, and all the live pigs “were in some form of distress.”(8)

Mother pigs (sows), who account for about 6 million of the pigs in the U.S., spend most of their lives in individual “gestation” crates, which are about 7 feet long and 2 feet wide—too small for them even to turn around.(9) After giving birth to piglets, sows are moved to “farrowing” crates, which are wide enough for them to lie down and nurse their babies but still not large enough for them to turn around or build nests for their young.(10)

Piglets are taken from their mothers when they are as young as 10 days old. Once her piglets are gone, each sow is impregnated again, and the cycle continues for three or four years before she is slaughtered.(11,12) This intensive confinement produces stress- and boredom-related behaviors, such as chewing on cage bars or obsessively pressing on water bottles.(13,14)

After they are taken from their mothers, piglets are packed into pens until they are separated to be raised for breeding or meat.(15) Because they, too, are overcrowded and prone to stress-related behaviors (such as cannibalism and tail-biting), farmers chop off the piglets’ tails and use pliers to break off the ends of their teeth—with no anesthetics.(16) For identification purposes, farmers also rip chunks out of the young animals’ ears.(17)

Transportation and Slaughter

Farms all over North America ship piglets (called “feeder pigs”) to Corn Belt states such as Illinois and Indiana for “growing” and “finishing.” The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported that fewer than 30 percent of weaned piglets spend their entire lives on the same farm.(18)

During transport on trucks, piglets weighing up to 100 pounds are given no more than 2.4 square feet of space, and farmers are warned that the piglets “probably will get sick within a few days after arrival.”(19) One study confirmed that vibrations, like those made by a moving truck, are “very aversive” to pigs. When pigs “were trained to press a switch panel to stop for 30 seconds vibration and noise in a transport simulator … the animals worked very hard to get the 30 seconds of rest.”(20)

Once pigs reach “market weight” (about 250 to 270 pounds), the industry refers to them as “hogs,” and they are sent to be slaughtered. The animals are shipped from all over the U.S. and Canada to slaughterhouses, which are mostly in the Midwest. There are no laws to regulate the duration of transport, frequency of rest, or provisions of food and water for the animals.(21,22) Pigs tend to resist getting into the trailers, which can be made from converted school buses or multidecked trucks with steep ramps, so workers use electric prods to move them along. There is no federal law to regulate the voltage or usage of electric prods on pigs, and a study showed that when the electric prods were used, pigs “vocalized, lost their balance and tr[ied] to jump out of the loading area” and that their “[h]eart rate and body temperature was significantly higher … when compared to pigs loaded using a hurdle [movable chute].”(23) A former pig transporter told PETA that pigs are “packed in so tight, their guts actually pop out their butts—a little softball of guts actually comes out.”(24) According to industry reports, more than 100,000 pigs die on the way to slaughter each year, and more than 400,000 are crippled from the journey by the time they arrive at the slaughterhouse.(25) A Michigan State University study concluded that the number of pigs who died during transportation increased 46.7 percent over a five-year period and that the increase was attributable to “[r]ough handling and incorrect management at the time of loading and transportation.”(26)

A typical slaughterhouse kills about 1,000 hogs every hour.(27) The sheer number of animals killed makes it impossible for them to be given humane, painless deaths. Because of improper stunning, many hogs are alive when they reach the scalding water bath, which is intended to soften their skin and remove their hair.(28) The USDA documented 14 humane-slaughter violations at one processing plant, where inspectors found hogs who “were walking and squealing after being stunned [with a stun gun] as many as four times.”(29) An industry report explains that “continuous pig squealing is a sign of … rough handling and excessive use of electric prods.” The report found that the pigs at one federally inspected slaughter plant squealed 100 percent of the time “because electric prods were used to force pigs to jump on top of each other.”(30) A PETA investigation found that workers at an Oklahoma farm were killing pigs by slamming the animals’ heads against the floor and beating them with a hammer.(31)

The Unhealthy “Other White Meat”

The consumption of pork and other animal products has been linked to cancers of the mouth, throat, colon, and stomach.(32,33,34) A study of more than 90,000 women concluded that “frequent consumption of bacon, hot dogs, and sausage was … associated with an increased risk of diabetes.”(35) And yet, those very pork products are on the daily menu for 25 percent of kids between the ages of 19 months and 2 years.(36) According to another study, the children of pregnant women who consume cured meats on a daily basis run a “substantial risk of [growing a] paediatric brain tumour.”(37)

Every year in the United States, food poisoning sickens up to 76 million people and kills 5,000.(38) Pork products are known carriers of foodborne pathogens: One study found that more than 50 percent of the tested samples of ham were contaminated with staphylococcus, and another study determined that “traditional salting, drying and smoking of raw pork meat was not antimicrobiologically effective” against Salmonella typhimurium.(39)

Because crowding creates an atmosphere that encourages disease, pigs on factory farms are fed and sprayed with huge amounts of pesticides and antibiotics, which remain in their bodies and are passed on to the people who eat them, creating serious human health hazards. Pigs and other factory-farmed animals are fed 20 million pounds of antibiotics a year, and scientists believe that meat-eaters’ involuntary consumption of these drugs is giving rise to strains of bacteria that are resistant to treatment.(40) Both the World Health Organization and the American Medical Association have recommended that factory farms stop using antibiotics, but the pig industry, in particular, is resistant.(41,42) One member of the National Pork Board complained, “If we take growth promoters out, then we’re going to have a wider range of weights in the pigs going to market. And the packer won’t pay top dollar ...”(43)

Environmental Hazards and Costs

Animals on factory farms produce approximately 500 million tons of manure each day.(44) One hog farm with 50,000 animals can produce more waste than the entire city of Los Angeles.(45) Much of this waste ends up in giant pits in the ground or on crops, but either way, it pollutes the air and groundwater. The Environmental Protection Agency says that agricultural runoff is the number one source of pollution in our waterways.(46) A Missouri-based hog farm had to pay a $1 million fine for illegally dumping waste, which caused the contamination of a nearby river and the deaths of more than 50,000 fish.(47) Smithfield Foods, the largest pork producer on the East Coast, was fined $12.6 million for polluting the Pagan River with phosphorous-contaminated wastewater from its slaughter plant.(48)

Along with other animals farmed for meat, pigs are the primary consumers of half the water in the U.S.49 Eighty percent of agricultural land in the U.S. is used to grow food to meet the needs of pigs and other factory-farmed animals.(50) In the “finishing” phase alone, during which pigs grow from 100 to 240 pounds, each hog consumes more than 500 pounds of grain, corn, and soybeans, which means that across the U.S., pigs and hogs eat tens of millions of tons of feed every year.(51)

What You Can Do

Stop factory-farming abuses by supporting legislation that abolishes intensive-confinement systems. Florida voters banned the use of gestation crates, as did the United Kingdom.(52, 53)

Stop buying meat, milk, and eggs. Vegetarianism and veganism mean eating for life—yours and the animals’. Call 1-888-VEG-FOOD or visit GoVeg.com to get your free vegetarian starter kit.

References

1)“New Slant on Chump Chops,” Cambridge Daily News, 29 Mar. 2002 .

2)“The Millennium List,” The Times (London), 9 Jan. 2000.

3)M.K. Holder, “Smart Puzzle #3 Pig,” Center for the Integrative Study of Animal Behaviors, Indiana University, 1999.

4)Meg Meier, “Oink, Moo, Quack,” Star Tribune, 27 Aug. 2002.

5)USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service, “USDA Quarterly Pigs and Hogs Report: September 2003,” The PigSite.com, 20 Nov. 2003.

6)Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, “Pigmeat, Slaughtered/Production Animals (Head) 2002,” 10 Jun. 2003.

7)United States Department of Agriculture, Foreign Agricultural Service, “Canadian Pork Industry Overview, September 2003,” The PigSite.com, Sep. 2003.

8)Kelly Pedro, “Pigs Found Dead, Dying. Seven Men Have Been Charged Over the Grim Discovery Involving 10,000 Animals,” The London Free Press, 15 Sep. 2003.

9)Marc Kaufman, “In Pig Farming, Growing Concern,” The Washington Post, 18 Jun. 2001.

10)Kaufman.

11)A.J. Zanella and O. Duran, “Pig Welfare During Loading and Transportation: A North American Perspective,” I Conferencia Virtual Internacional Sobre Qualidade de Carne Suina, via Internet, 16 Nov. 2000.

12)Kaufman.

13)Zanella and Duran.

14)Kaufman.

15)William G. Luce et al., “Managing the Sow and Litter,” Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Service, Mar. 1995.

16)Luce.

17)L. Neil Burcham, “Identify Pigs by Ear Notching,” Cooperative Extension Service, New Mexico State University, Nov. 1997.

18)Dennis A. Shields and Kenneth H. Mathews Jr., “Interstate Livestock Movements,” United States Department of Agriculture, Jun. 2003.

19)John C. Rea and George W. Jesse, “Managing Purchased Feeder Pigs,” Department of Animal Sciences, University of Missouri-Columbia, 1 Oct. 1993.

20)Zanella and Duran.

21)Shields and Mathews Jr.

22)Zanella and Duran.

23)Zanella and Duran.

24)Carla Bennett, “The Joy and Sorrow of Pigs,” Animal Times, Fall 1996.

25)Joe Vansickle, “Quality Assurance Program Launched,” National Hog Farmer, 15 Feb. 2002.

26)Zanella and Duran.

27)Lance Gay, “Faulty Practices Result in Inhumane Slaughterhouses,” Scripps Howard News Service, Feb. 2001.

28)Joby Warrick, “‘They Die Piece by Piece’; In Overtaxed Plants, Humane Treatment of Cattle Is Often a Battle Lost,” The Washington Post, 10 Apr. 2001.

29)Warrick.

30)Temple Grandin, “2001 Restaurant Audits of Stunning and Handling in Federally Inspected Beef and Pork Slaughter Plants,” 2002 Meat Institute Animal Handling and Stunning Conference, Colorado State University: Department of Animal Sciences, 2002.

31)Marc Kaufman, “Ex-Pig Farm Manager Charged With Cruelty,” The Washington Post, 9 Sep. 2001.

32)F. Levi et al., “Food Groups and Risk of Oral and Pharyngeal Cancer,” International Journal of Cancer, 77 (1998): 705-9.

33)F. Levi et al., “Food Groups and Colorectal Cancer Risk,” British Journal of Cancer, 79 (1999): 1283-7.

34)P.A. van den Brandt et al., “Salt Intake, Cured Meat Consumption, Refrigerator Use and Stomach Cancer Incidence: A Prospective Cohort Study (Netherlands),” Cancer Causes and Control, 14 (2003): 427-38.

35)M.B. Schulze et al., “Processed Meat Intake and Incidence of Type 2 Diabetes in Younger and Middle-Aged Women,” Diabetologia, 24 Oct. 2003.

36)T.A. Badger, “Infants, Toddlers Developing Bad Eating Habits, Study Finds,” Associated Press, 26 Oct. 2003.

37)J.M. Pogoda, “Maternal Cured Meat Consumption During Pregnancy and Risk of Paediatric Brain Tumour in Offspring: Potentially Harmful Levels of Intake,” Public Health Nutrition, 2 (2001): 1303-5.

38)Paul S. Mead et al., “Food-Related Illness and Death in the United States,” Emerging Infectious Diseases, 5.5 (1999): 607-625.

39)P.L. Mertens, “An Epidemic of Salmonella Typhimurium Associated With Traditional Salted, Smoked, and Dried Ham,” Ned Tijdschr Geneeskd, 143 (1999): 1046-9.

40)Jeff Donn, “Contaminated Meat Spurs Concern. Study Finds 1 in 5 Market Samples Contained Drug-Resistant Bacteria,” Associated Press, 18 Oct. 2001.

41)Marc Kaufman, “WHO Urges End to Use of Antibiotics for Animal Growth,” The Washington Post, 13 Aug. 2003.

42)“Groups Applaud AMA Action on Antibiotics in Agriculture, Antibiotic Resistance,” U.S. Newswire, 20 Jun. 2001.

43)Dana Hedgpeth, “Hog Producers Dispute WHO on Antibiotics,” The Washington Post, 16 Aug. 2003.

44)John Heilprin, “Bush Issues Rule for Factory-Style Farms,” Associated Press, 16 Dec. 2002.

45)Senator Tom Harkin, “Animal Waste Pollution in America: An Emerging National Problem,” United States Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, Dec. 1997.

46)Heilprin.

47)“Cargill Fined $1 Million for Dumping Hog Waste in River,” Associated Press, 20 Feb. 2002.

48)Bob Piazza and Rex Springston, “Smithfield Is Fined $12.6 Million,” Richmond Times-Dispatch, 9 Aug. 1997.

49)Bill McKibben, “Taking the Pulse of the Planet,” Audubon, Nov. 1999.

50)Marlow Vesterby and Kenneth S. Krupa, “Major Uses of Land in the United States, 1997,” Statistical Bulletin No. 973. U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1997.

51)Dr. John Carlson, “Evaluation of Corn Processing By-Products in Swine Diets,” Western Illinois University, 3 Apr. 1996.

52)Alicia Caldewell and Anita Kumar, “Smoking Limited, Hog Crates Enlarged,” St. Petersburg Times, 26 Nov. 2002.

53)John J. McGlone, “Current Status of Housing and Penning Systems for Sows,” Pork Industry Institute, Texas Tech University, May 2002.