No Muddy Puddles for Real-Life ‘Mummy Pigs’ Killed for Food
‘Mummy Pig,’ beloved animated matriarch of the popular children’s show Peppa Pig, recently announced that she’s pregnant with a new piglet.
The piglet, younger sibling to precocious Peppa and gentle George, will no doubt bond with Mummy and Daddy Pig and enjoy a long, happy life in Peppatown, but things couldn’t be more different for real pigs.
The real pigs we breed and kill to make bacon, pork chops, and ham endure short and cruel lives, and the industry that profits from their suffering completely ignores how individual and clever pigs are.
Mother Pigs Are Forced to Birth Piglets, Who Are Then Taken Away
Every porkchop or bacon butty starts with forcibly impregnating female animals to generate – literally – fresh meat. In the UK alone, over 11 million pigs are exploited for their flesh every year. Many of them become “breeding” pigs and are made to pump out piglets from as young as 6 months old.
Mother pigs are naturally nurturing. Piglets recognise their mother’s voice among many gilts and sows, and mothers often “sing” to their babies as they nurse, while piglets sometimes ‘make biscuits’ like kittens during feeding. Mother pigs also make nests to make their babies comfortable, but in the food system, all they’re afforded are cold, hard concrete and slatted floors.
Piglets on factory farms are removed from their mother at three or four weeks old. If female, they may follow in her grim trotter steps. If male, they’ll be fattened up to be killed. To mitigate stress injuries from overcrowding in sheds, piglets are mutilated without pain relief, their teeth, tails, and ears painfully cut and notched.
When she’s just 2 years old, the mother pig will also be killed as her fertility wanes.
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Mother Pigs Are Kept in Farrowing Crates
In the UK, 60% of mother pigs are forced to give birth in cages called farrowing crates, which are barely bigger than their bodies. Metal bars restrict the pig’s movement, and she can’t even turn around, let alone interact with her babies.
If you can imagine what it would be like to be stuck in a dry bathtub for over a month, you can start to understand the misery of pigs in farrowing crates.
Not being allowed to interact with their babies or nest as they normally do is stressful for pigs, and farrowing crates are so cruel that they’re banned in Norway, Switzerland, and Sweden.
Pigs Usually Only See Sunshine on Their Way to Slaughter
Factory farms, where 60% of pigs in the UK are confined, are almost always dark, dirty sheds devoid of sunlight. These huge sheds are barren and stink of faeces and urine as pigs — who love to be clean — are forced to stand in their waste.
When you consider that pigs’ sense of smell is about 2,000 times more sensitive than a human’s and that factory farm pollution can be seen from space, you start to realise how horrific these conditions are for animals.
When they’re still babies, pigs and other animals raised for food are prodded onto trucks where they endure long journeys, often without food or water. Sometimes, animals will bravely risk injury, jumping from these trucks in a desperate bid for freedom. More often, they arrive at the abattoir sick, injured, and dehydrated and are marched to their deaths.
Pigs Are Gassed and Violently Killed
Peppa Pig is 4 years old, making her around 3 and a half years older than the average slaughter age of pigs in the UK.
All slaughterhouses are the same whether a pig is raised in a shed or a field. The air is heavy with the stench of faeces and blood, and the animals are afforded no kindness.
While some are still electrically stunned, most pigs in the UK are stunned in gas chambers, lowered into a chamber full of C02 alongside their friends, and held there until their squeals subside. They are then hoisted by their leg and have their throats slit.
You Can Help Mother Pigs
Unlike Peppa’s Mummy Pig, pigs don’t need cups of tea to be happy. Social animals, pigs just want somewhere to wallow with their friends, enrichment to satisfy their high intellect and boundless curiosity, and the freedom to live their lives without being cruelly abused and killed.
Every animal is someone. If you agree that all piglets deserve to know their mothers, order or download your FREE Vegan Starter Kit today and discover a world of vegan upgrades to pork!
