Help Save Lives

A female pig is a Sow, a male pig is known as a boar. A juvenile is known as a Piglet, or a Farrow. Pigs are omnivores, which means they consume both plants and animals, however, what many people do not know is that pigs can digest everything including human bone, nails and hair. Pigs, in the wild will forage for their food, they have such an excellent sense of smell, that they are used to forage for truffles in many European countries.

Pigs are extremely intelligent, they have been known to play simple computer games and in some cultures they are kept as pets especially the Pot Bellied pig.
Pigs lack sweat glands, thus you will see them rolling around in the mud on a hot day. The mud covers their skin, keeps them cool and acts as a sun-block.

A litter of piglets will contain 6 - 12 piglets.

Well, we all know who this little fella is don't we. It's Babe.
We all loved the film didn't we, cute little piglet bought for slaughter, misses his mother, doesn't want to die, he just wanted to be loved....

Ahhh, that's what we all said when we saw the film. Then, within a week almost every single carnivore who had seen it had eaten pork.
Not because they are bad people, but because it wasn't true, it was just a film... wasn't it?

The sad fact is, it is true. Piglets are torn away from their mother at just three weeks old. In the wild, piglets will suckle their mother until they are at least 12 weeks old and even then they do not leave her side until they feel ready.
So, let's have a look at what really happens inside the factory farms, shall we?

A pregnant sow is kept inside a metal barrier, sometimes concrete cells measuring 1 metre x 1 metre until they are ready to give birth, once they are there are moved into another room just as cramped as the first. They can sit, they can lie down, but they cannot turn around and usually are covered in their own excrement. In most factory farms, bedding is a rarity. Once the sow gives birth to anything between six to twelve piglets, she is not allowed to mother them,  instead, she has to lay on her side for them to suckle from her.

When the piglets are three weeks old they are taken from the mother. The mother will be made pregnant again almost immediately after by AI (Artificial insemination). She is forced to go through the process again and again for about four years, by that time she is so exhausted and distressed she is slaughtered and used as cheap consistency in low grade foods such as pies and sausages.

The piglets, once being torn from their mother are force fed a combination of powerful drugs, some to cure diseases, some to prevent diseases and some to encourage a rapid and unnatural growth speed. The piglets have weak digestive systems and are constantly passing diarrhoea.

The piglets become distressed, so in order to stop them savaging each other, they have some of their teeth snapped off, they also have their tails amputated, all without anesthetic. One company even admit, that pigs in captivity have been known to kill and eat their own young, something that will not happen in the wild.
The piglet has been bred for its flesh and fat (pork), it's hair may be used in brushes, it's skin sometimes used for leather and its bones for bone meal fertiliser. Once the piglet is ready for slaughter, usually at about 5 months old, their food will be withdrawn leaving them feeling weak, lethargic and cold.

The pigs are then stunned although not always and not always successfully, in fact pigs are slaughtered in 239 premises in Britain, only 204 of these use the stunning method. They are stunned by placing electrodes on the side of the pigs head, or in some cases  using the conveyor belt method. Placing the electrodes in the exact spot in order to ensure a successful stunning, in very hard as the pigs are distressed and will try to avoid it. Viva! reported that out 16.3  million pigs slaughtered in UK in 1998, only 12 million were given the electric head stun, 1.6 million of these would have been stunned on the snout/jaws, and 244,800 would not have been stunned at all. They then have their throats slit.

CAUTION: TRUTHFUL PICTURES BELOW 

The other alternative is gassing using C02. 25% of pigs are slaughtered this way. However, while being gassed, the pigs squeal, hyperventilate and try to escape for around 30 seconds before they fall unconscious. They are supposed to be left in the gas chamber until they are dead, who knows whether or not they are?
20.5% of pig abattoirs use Captive Bolt stunning (see the Cows section for more information) despite the fact that it is not recommended due to the target area of the pig being really small. 

They didn't tell you that in Babe did they?

Any questions or comments?
Drop me an email on helpsavelives@tiscali.co.uk