Pigs:

In the 1980s, big corporations stepped in and took over the pig industry. Some of today's pig factories are huge industrial complexes, with over 100,000 pigs. (1) These "farms" have "unbreathable air, unhealthy animals, almost unimaginable crowding, and razor-thin profit margins". (2)

Many serious diseases are caused by the toxic gases of the overpowering ammonia-saturated air; topping the list are: ammonia, methane and hydrogen sulfide. (3) Bob Fraser of Lehman Farms (Pork Producer): "…ammonia really chews up the aimals' lungs… next thing you know you've got a real respiratory problem - pneumonia or something…at least I get out of here at night. The pigs don't so we have to keep them on tetracycline…" (4) 60% of pig workers in the US, Canada and Sweden have reported breathing problems. (5) A recent examination of 6000 slaughtered pigs revealed that 71% of them suffered from pneumonia. (6) The industry rejects the idea of ventilating the buildings with fresh air from outside due to the expense involved.

The pigs "homes" are built on slatted floors of either metal or concrete: the slats allow the urine and feces of the animals to fall through automatically). Bedding is rarely provided, because straw costs money and hinders waste removal. Sleeping on concrete, their joints swell, their skin gets scraped off, and their feet get serious abrasions and infections. One Nebraska study showed that nearly 100% of all pigs raised on concrete or metal slats had damaged feet and legs. (7) But, as one pig producer verbalized: "We don't get paid for producing animals with good posture around here. We get paid by the pound". (8)

Keeping sows permanently in crates reduces building and labor costs - crates are now used by 86% of commercial pig operations. (9) The crates are so narrow that, like veal crates, the sow is unable to turn around - one typical crate design is just 24 inches wide (sow can weigh over 400 pounds). (10) Confinement also reduces feeding costs: with no room to move about, the pigs can't burn up calories doing " useless" things like walking. As production expands, rather than building on to current buildings, a common practice is to stack the pigs in cages, one on top of each other. The excrement from the pigs in the upper tiers falls steadily on the pigs in the lower tiers. This total confinement angers and confuses sows so much that they sometimes attack their crates. Health problems stemming from crate confinement send up to 1/3 of sows to early slaughter. (11)

is the industry's term for the demented and frantic actions of powerful animals driven mad by the frustration of their natural urges caused by intensive farming . "Acute tail-biting…frequently results in crippling, mutilation, and death…Many times the tail is bitten first, and then the attacking pig or pigs continue to eat further into the back. If the situation is not attended to, the pig will die and be eaten." (12) One strategy is to keep the pigs in total darkness, another is…

This is now a standard procedure in pork production. It causes severe pain to the animals, and drives them even crazier. In a pamphlet provided by the US Department of Agriculture, it is suggested that the farmer: "Cut tails ¼ to ½ inch from the body with side-cutting pliers or another blunt instrument. The crushing action helps to stop bleeding. Some producers use a chicken debeaker for docking; this also cauterizes the cut surface." (13)

In nature, pregnant pigs prepare for birth by building a nest. In the pig factories, this is not a possibility. Crushing is a constant danger during suckling, as without the opportunity to build a nest, sows have almost no margin for error in shifting their weight. Piglets get crushed or smothered against concrete, wood, or metal. The pregnant sows, themselves, suffer considerably from abrasion, twisted gut, lameness, sores and hip problems, due as well to the confinement units. (14) It is natural for a sow to produce about 6 piglets a year - but modern interventions have cranked her up to over 20 a year. (15) Hormone injections allow her to be impregnated much sooner. Yet another source of distress has been recently revealed: pregnant sows are kept permanently hungry. Animals being fattened for market are given as much as they will eat; but to give breeding animals more than the bare minimum required to keep them reproducing is, from the producer's point of view, simply a waste of money. The animals get only 60%of what they would eat if they had more food available. (16)

A natural activity for a wild pig is eating and looking for food - pigs In the wild spend about half their waking hours eating. Farmers make only one kind of feed available (protein-rich feed concentrate) - with modern feeding practices, pigs consume an entire day's worth of food in just twenty minutes. (17) This provides the pig with abundant calories, but does a poor job of satisfying hunger. Further, feeds have been found to contain recycled waste, complete drug residues and high levels of toxic, heavy metals, such as arsenic, lead and copper, as well as raw poultry or pig manure (18) - but, rest assured it is artificially flavoured for them. Concentrates are so unsuited to the pigs' nutritional needs that they may damage the pigs, studies have shown that 51% of pigs had liver abnormalities - a condition caused directly by feed concentrates. (19)

As to the possibility that today's pigs are not healthy, industry apologists point to the impressive weights the animals attain as proof they are as hardy as can be. This is a remarkable argument, in that it attempts to equate systematically induced obesity with good health. Each pig gets just 12 minutes of human care during the four months it spends growing to slaughter weight. (20) One in every four commercial pig operations surveyed in 1990 went the entire year without requesting the services of a veterinarian. (21) This, despite the fact that, the Livestock Conservation Institute reports that pig producers lose more than $187 million each year from dysentery, cholera, abscesses, trichinosis, and other swine diseases. (22) One such "other" disease is "Porcine stress syndrome", whch is characterized by "extreme stress…rigidity, blotchy skin, panting, anxiety, and often-sudden death." (23)

• Workers snip notches out of each piglet's ear for identification purposes; to reduce injuries caused by fighting, the piglets' "needle" teeth are clipped, and male pigs are castrated - all of these procedures are done without anesthetic.
• In the commercial pig operations, fights become vicious and deadly because when two pigs come into conflict, there is insufficient space for the weaker pig to retreat. With no means to signal surrender, a confrontation that would otherwise be quickly resolved can turn deadly.
• As naturally clean as any other forest creature - they will never soil their own bedding, eating, or living areas (unless given no choice…). Pigs in confinement have no choice but to soil their own living areas.
• Pigs in confinement show signs of stress, such as gnawing the bars of their stalls, chewing when there is nothing to chew, waving their heads back and forth, and so on. Scottish Farm Buildings Investigation Unit: likened the stereotypical behaviour of sows to obsessive-compulsive behavior in neurotic human beings. (24)
• And, if all of this is survived, then the pigs are slaughter house bound - a trip that sees 250 pigs die during transport everyday in the US alone. (25)