Each year Americans eat an estimated 318 million pounds of
ham around the holidays. But how many actually think about where it comes from?
Sadly, at today’s factory farms, piglets are routinely castrated, tail docked,
and ear tagged without painkillers, and mother pigs endure nearly a lifetime of
extreme confinement in small metal crates. Of course, all pigs meet the same
brutal, grisly death.
Mercy For Animals has documented workers viciously
beating pigs with shovels and metal rods and slamming piglets headfirst onto
concrete floors (a standard practice called “thumping).
Pigs, like all animals raised for food, endure hellish lives
at factory farms from the moment they’re born until they’re violently killed.
These nine stills from our undercover investigations prove it.
1. A piglet undergoing castration without
painkillers
2. Pigs crammed in small metal cages without room to even
turn around
3. Organs spilling out of a dead piglet left to rot
4. A piglet slammed
headfirst against the concrete floor
5. A pig screaming in a pool of blood
6. A pig gnawing on bars as her only means of mental
stimulation
7. A pig forced to sit in another’s blood while she
awaits a similar fate
8. Pigs forced to watch their friends die
9. A pig who froze to
death while being transported to the slaughterhouse
Pigs are considered one of the most intelligent animals in the world.
They can play video games with more focus and success than chimps. Like all
animals, pigs are sensitive and emotional. They feel fear, stress, and pain.
One can only imagine the torment they endure day in and day out for the
merciless meat industry.