Heartbreaking footage captured by animal rights group Animal Equality has exposed horrific abuse at a British pig farm.
Hidden cameras at Fir Tree Farm in Lincolnshire, which is owned by one of Britain’s largest pork producers, reveal workers repeatedly kicking pigs in the face, beating them with plastic boards, and leaving a downed pig too sick to stand without veterinary care for 48 hours before shooting the poor animal.
This is the third time the group has recorded workers violently abusing animals at British farms.
Dr. Toni Shephard, Animal Equality’s U.K. director, said:
While intensive pig
farms are inherently pitiless places, the brutality inflicted on these poor
pigs is incomprehensible. The workers show complete contempt for the animals in
their care and seem immune to their suffering, even when the pigs scream in
pain. We demand that they be brought to justice.
Watch the heartbreaking footage yourself.
No matter where they are in the world, factory farms are rife with abuse. Earlier this year, an investigation from the Italian animal rights group Lega Anti Vivisezione revealed pigs living in filthy sheds, suffering from untreated infections and injuries, and having their tails illegally cut off at six Italian factory farms that raise pigs for Parma ham.
As Mercy For Animals investigations have repeatedly shown, animal cruelty is the norm in the pork industry.
Pigs are considered the fifth-most intelligent animal in the world—even more intelligent than dogs. And like dogs and cats, pigs are playful and social. Despite this, the meat industry treats them as mere objects.
Pigs raised and killed for food are taken from their mothers at just 10 days old and have their tails cut off, their teeth clipped, and their testicles ripped out without any painkillers. Piglets who are too sick or not growing fast enough are often gruesomely killed by being slammed headfirst onto concrete floors. Surviving piglets are packed together into filthy pens.
While pigs in nature live for about 15 years, at factory farms they are selectively bred to grow extremely fast, reaching slaughter size in just six months. Sows are repeatedly impregnated and confined in gestation crates, barren metal cages so small the animals are unable to turn around.
After a life of torment, pigs are brutally slaughtered by being hoisted upside down and having their throats cut.
If we wouldn’t treat dogs or cats in such appalling ways, how can we pay the meat industry to do it to pigs? Each of us has the power to say no to animal abuse by replacing inherently cruel animal products with compassionate vegan alternatives.
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