Not only are they sentient, but also very intelligent and they need help.
Brazil is the
in the world
Source: Brazilian Association of Animal Protein 2019
To be more profitable, producers put the sows in individual crates, which are practically the same size as their bodies. The result: they cannot walk around, not even turn around! In addition to space efficiency, this type of system requires less labor and facilitates taking care of these animals (health, feeding, heat detection and insemination).
The cruelty of using these crates is clear. Not just the discomfort, but also the fact that the sows, which are sentient and very intelligent animals, are unable to socialize, explore the environment and build a nest. Their low activity generates locomotor problems (lameness), urogenital problems, muscular atrophy and behavioral disorders.
In addition to breeding sows, another critical point in pig farming is the treatment of piglets shortly after birth. It is very common to perform intensely painful procedures without anesthesia or aftercare (analgesics and anti-inflammatory drugs, for example), such as:
Surgical castration of male piglets – to reduce aggressive behavior and to enhance meat quality.
To prevent injuring the udders of lactating sows and to prevent piglets biting each other’s tails.
Just like clipping or trimming teeth, cutting or shortening the tail is performed on the piglets to avoid tail biting.
For the sake of individual identification of animals. The Australian method is permanent, low cost and applied mainly to female piglets and males raised for breeding.
Several farms have already started to adopt animal welfare practices, such as housing the sows in large pens together with others during the gestation period, using anesthetics before the procedures mentioned above, or using non-painful alternatives like immunocastration or trimming teeth instead of clipping.
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