Amen.
If people knew how bad it was they would demand we adopt European agricultural practices. Our system is hideous and torturous.
I’m not speaking as a PETA member, I used to help my friend & neighbor with his large scale hog operation until I just could not take the inherent cruelty any longer.
I don’t have any shots of the sows in the crates where they are trapped for 5-8 weeks, but it was truly hideous. Crates so small the sows sometimes touched on each end - they always were pinched in on the sides. The sows always came out screaming and in very bad condition with sores on their legs and sides.
When the pigs are removed at 4-6 weeks the males are sorted out for castration. One person holds them up by the rear legs. Another person then takes a scalpel or straight edge razor blade, cuts the scrotum and then yanks out the tiny testicals. The pigs scream and scream and scream.
Things aren’t much better for the market pigs. They go 25 pigs into a pen about 16 X 16. By the time they are market size at 240lbs there isn’t enough room for them all to lay down at once and fighting is constant.
Add in that in the 4-5 months they are in the pen it will never be washed. The pigs will live on concrete slats that are slathered with shit. Their skin will get a sort of permanent diaper rash with many puss-filled pimples.
Flies, mice and rats are their constant companions.With filth everywhere, and overcrowding a strategy, death tolls are high and factored in as a cost of business.
Finally, when the pigs are market size, they are shocked and whipped, screaming all the way, up ramps and onto trucks. I’m sure the process doesn’t end in kinder for them at the end of their trip.
Only a monster would stick up for American hog confinement practices.
The above pictures were taken by me 15 years ago. These practices have not changed but it is now illegal to film such conditions with the intent to discredit the cruel industry.