Shocking farm footage shows piglets with tails cut off and mothers crammed into tiny cages – Photos and video expose myth of UK’s world-leading animal-welfare standards, activists say
Shocking farm footage shows piglets with tails cut off and mothers crammed into tiny cages – Photos and video expose myth of UK’s world-leading animal-welfare standards, activists say
33 comments
How many citizens really care? It is a myth that few people are aware of the monstrous horrors gentle loving animals suffer. People just want to eat. It is beyond words really.
That’s interesting, I thought those crates were banned
The myth is that you can grow a living thing to later kill it and eat it in a moral/humanitarian way
There was a great anime called “The promised Neverland” where Daemon farms humans to eat them, and we see it from the perspective of children in the orphanage who are slathered when they reach a certain age
This is standard farming practice. The shocking thing is how ignorant people let themselves be about how their meat is produced.
One day, future peoples will look back at this kind of mistreatment of animals, be all judgemental, and say “They used to imprison and eat pigs?”…
As they order a sausage and bacon butty from their replicator.
This is standard practice across British industry. It’s all completely legal and even gets validated as Best Practice by the RSPCA etc.
If a newborn piglet is ill or in any way deformed (increasingly common due to chemicals, pollution, etc.), the RSPCA advises that the “humane” way to treat it is to kill it immediately. You could take it to a vet to heal the poor thing, but that’s not what the RSPCA advises, that would impact business profits. They advise, specifically: “external trauma, involving a heavy blow to the head either against a solid surface or using a blunt instrument, is a recommended method for humanely killing piglets under 4 weeks of age or 5 kg.” In other words, they either have their skull split open with an iron pipe, or they’re simply picked up and swung to crack their heads open against a concrete floor or wall. It normally takes a few swings or blows in order to kill the four week old baby piglet. ([Source from the National Pig Association](http://www.npa-uk.org.uk/NPA_responds_to_consumer_concerns_over_method_of_dispatching_sick_piglets.html))
86% of pigs in the UK are slaughtered by being lowered into a gas chamber where they essentially burn from the inside out. It doesn’t matter if you (think you’re) “buying local”, or “organic”, or “free range”; you are not eating just the 14% that are killed after being electrically stunned. You aren’t special, you aren’t different.
>”Most of the big slaughterhouses in Britain and Europe do not kill pigs by electrical stunning, which would mean instant death, but by lowering them in crates into chambers filled with carbon dioxide. For at least 15 seconds, the animals thrash about desperately, scream in pain and gasp for breath while the gas acidifies their eyes, nostrils, mouths and lungs.
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>As the CO2 penetrates their entire systems, they scramble to try to escape, panicking and in distress. The animals literally burn from the inside out, critics say. The suffering sometimes goes on for up to a full minute-and-a-half, according to some.”
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>[…] In the UK, as long ago as 2003, the government’s own welfare advisers recommended that carbon dioxide killing should be banned – but that advice was never taken up. And the following year the European Food Safety Authority also concluded that it was cruel and called for it to be phased out – but again no action was taken. Since then, both the RSPCA and Compassion in World Farming have repeatedly jointly called for alternatives to be made available. ([The Independent](https://www.independent.co.uk/independentpremium/long-reads/pigs-carbon-dioxide-co2-bacon-sausage-slaughter-house-meat-industry-a9132006.html?r=16949))
[This is what that looks like](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7hAELEBjX4). It’s completely uncensored, so you can see and hear the pigs screaming, bucking, smashing their heads against the walls of the cage trying to escape and screaming their lungs out as the gas burns them from the inside out. 86% of all pigs killed in the UK die that way. If you buy bacon, if you buy pork, whatever, that’s how it got to your packet or plate.
Oh, one last ‘interesting’ tidbit: a really common problem is called the ‘Last Pig Problem’, and any farmer or slaughterhouse worker can tell you about it, they experience it multiple times a week.
>Their social bonds run deep, perhaps not as deep in a conscious way, at least not as obviously so, as elephants, cetaceans, or the great apes, but deep nonetheless. When those bonds are broken, a pig suffers a tremendous amount of psychological stress, most often expressed in repeated deep, long, doleful groans, and when the circumstances are right, pigs express that psychological suffering (stress is an inadequate term) of broken bonds by totally and completely flipping out. They run back and forth squealing. They run aimlessly, in circles, screaming. They will jump fences, or they will plow right through them. When confined in a tight space, they will smash themselves against walls and gates, repeatedly. They will spastically chew on metal bars. They will try to climb whatever can be climbed. They will jam their snouts under the bottom rung of a gate over and over again and strain and struggle to lift it off of its hinges. They will smash themselves against the walls and gates again, repeatedly. ([Source](https://www.thedodo.com/the-last-pig-459704635.html))
Bacon isn’t worth it, just buy the vegan bacon next to it on the shelf at the supermarket.
[This is the reality of animal agriculture in Britain](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvtVkNofcq8).
[Go vegan](https://challenge22.com/?group=362).
There’s no way to ethically kill and eat animals.
The best you can do is not think about it.
You can avoid it altogether by not eating meat.
It is astonishing – the scale of horror, cruelty and injustice that humans wilfully turn a blind eye to.
I remember my mum once telling me that she prefers to buy chicken breasts rather than the whole bird because it looks “too chickeny”.
It’s always fascinating to see how people get so defensive when confronted with the animal cruelty that goes into providing the food they like to eat.
It was da Vinci who said: “The time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men” and I reckon that he was right.
Sorry nobody’s gonna care. Same as last time this leaked, or the time before that. Stuff like this is easy to compartmentalise. The world is literally cooking because of global warming and nobody’s changing shit. Good luck. The bored middle class has cried to the public about shit like this for decades. The rich profit form it, and the poor are to busy surviving to give a fuck.
Every single year people are outraged by the Korean dog festival. If they want to be upset about animals being raised for meat, kept in horrendous conditions and cruelly killed. They don’t need to look that farther afield. Your local supermarket will have plenty.
Ignorance is bliss.
Watching documentaries like Earthlings and Dominion (both available on YouTube) should be mandatory-viewing. The Dairy Industry and Meat Industry are bombarding us with a flow of constant false information, purposely lying to us. I think we owe it to ourselves – and the animals – to see how things truly are. And it’s not pretty.
Bold of you to assume that most Brits care. Animal welfare has never really been that important to us. We kill foxes for sport.
I used to be vegan and stuff like this is what converted me.
I can’t see welfare improving really. I mean we deem it legal to bolt gun animals in the head and slit their throats for our taste buds and nutrition, so who is really going to clamp down on a farmer abusing animals in other ways?
Nobody cares and animal welfare laws are rarely enforced.
The world will only go vegan with lab meat. The sooner that arrives the better.
There is no moral way of eating animals. If you believe it’s there is a ethical way of mass slaughtering animals for meat you’re just absolutely stupid and ignorant.
But meat eaters often tell me the uk standards are the best in the world and that we don’t mistreat animals? What’s going on?
“””shocking”””
Vegans like me will push to stop this. The majority of people will respond “Yummy”, and nothing will happen.
Don’t eat pork.
Of all animals we farm, pork have the worst standards relative to their cognitive ability – by a huge way.
That’s not to justify bad standards for less intelligent animals. Just pigs can suffer _and then some_.
When I say I don’t eat any animal products and say it’s because of animal welfare, people just go quiet. They know it’s an issue but choose not to think of it so they can enjoy their precious bacon sandwich. I don’t preach, if people want to eat it so be it. But I do think it’s totally selfish, needless and abhorrent. I even know people that claim to love animals who have to eat meat everyday. Hypocrites to the max. WHEN is something actually going to be properly done about this?! Who tf do we humans think we are to go around treating living things like this. Meat packaging should have images of the barbaric conditions these poor creatures are subjected to on it. Same as cigarette packets have pictures of disease etc. WAKE UP people. Put the lives of other living creatures above your selfish desire to eat them!!!!
Who thought we were world leading in animal welfare standards?
There is a shocking lack of empathy to farm animals and people willfully ignore their conditions. They do know but choose not to confront it. You can tell by how many people get defensive about veggies/vegans.
Daily mail readers get their knickers in a twist over halal meat saying it’s cruel but they don’t actually give a fuck as to where their meat comes from
Problem you have is people are skint and for all animals to have the highest welfare those costs are going up and people aren’t interested in paying at the moment
They are world leading so just how bad is the rest if the world?
Feel like we’re starting to reach a vegan tipping point in the UK: anywhere I get coffee have non-dairy milk, most restaurants I go to have a vegan option. It’s no longer much of an inconvenience to eat a plant based diet and that’s really important in persuading people to eat a diet that doesn’t directly support horrors like this. I challenge any meat eater to watch this video and tell me this is morally fine.
It surprises me the amount of people that complain that they need meat every lunch and dinner in order to stay “healthy” and to prevent them from physically deteriorating, yet they also spend every evening sitting on a sofa eating Doritoes and M&Ms & refuse to do any exercise what so ever. Lazy bastards!
This is the one of many various things I’m aware of, yet forcing myself not to think often of. But I’m disgusted whenever seeing how these poor animals are treated just so we are being feed – although knowing the amount of food gets wasted daily… What a wonderful civilization we live in.
They UK is a funny place, likes to pretend it cares about animal welfare but also loves to mock and berate vegans.
Personally I fully accept I’m an asshole as I’ve watched enough awful videos to know that there is a good chance many many animals have suffered for me to enjoy my meat.
I fully respect people who make the decent choice to genuinely respect animals and therefore keep away from all animal products and know the lovely stereotypes used to bash these people is bizarre.
But a lot of people in the UK do love a good put down of certain groups en masse.
My cousin is a poultry worker, have heard him and his colleagues talk about hitting animals whilst collecting them for slaughter. He used to love animals but that’s the culture in those jobs and he isn’t the same person anymore.
This made me so emotional, all humans care about is money money profit and money again nothing else. These poor animals do not deserve life like that..
Is this the exception or the rule? I live near a load of pig farms they look fairly happy.
I’ve gone veggie, I can’t eat shit anymore. If I have to eat meat it needs to have been alive, these poor aminals have not experienced living. I’m better than that.
God I wish meat eaters would just stop pretending that they care about animal welfare. Like, no judgement whatsoever if you eat meat. But, don’t pretend you also aren’t ok with animal suffering of you’re having a cheeseburger