Pig Cruelty Essay

Pig Cruelty Around 1. 3 billion pigs are slaughtered annually for meat worldwide. The majority of these are in East Asia, particularly China, which rears around half of the world’s pigs. They are usually slaughtered after 4-7 months. Pigs intended for pork are usually slaughtered 1-2 months younger than pigs for bacon. I think that the way pigs are being raised and slaughtered is corrupt and barbaric. Mother pigs; spend most of their lives in individual â€Å"gestation† crates that are approximately seven feet long and two feet wide, not large enough for them to turn around in.Just before giving birth they are moved to â€Å"farrowing† crates, which also are not large enough for them to turn around in or build nests for their young. The deprived environment produces neurotic coping behaviours such as repetitive bar biting, sham chewing and obsessively pressing on water bottles. Piglets are taken from their mothers when they are as young as 10 days old and are pac ked into pens until they are separated to be raised for breeding or meat. They are too overcrowded and prone to stress-related behaviours, such as cannibalism and tail biting.On a television episode of TV ones Sunday that I watched, the New Zealand pork industry was dealt a shameful and public relations slap-in-the-face after its former comedian celebrity kingpin, Mike King, ousted their farming practises as ‘brutal’, callous’ and ‘evil’. Mike condemned the â€Å"appalling treatment† of factory farmed pigs. He observed inside a New Zealand piggery and found a dead female pig inside a sow stall, lame or crippled pigs and others that could barely stand. Pigs either extremely depressed or highly distressed, pigs that had scars and injuries and a lack of clean drinking water.Mike says â€Å"they were screaming and frothing at the mouth, I was disgusted and I’m sorry I was ever a part of promoting it†. This is no joke, real life †˜Babes’ see no sun in their limited lives, except for when being loaded onto the truck to be slaughtered; they have no hay to lie on, no mud to roll around in, not like in our childhood books and movies. There is no freedom or joy in their short lives; it is a misery from the day they are born to the day they die. Pigs feel pain just as humans do. Imagine living in your own urine and faeces?No one would want to live like that, so why do we do this to them? Bacon, pork and ham are all very lovely food indeed, but is it needed to treat them like this? If this is the case, I’m not sure I want to continue eating these foods. I understand the fact that free range products are expensive, but if the government made factory farming illegal then there would be more competition, so they will have to compete with prices. If we all made a push towards making factory farming illegal then I believe it would be more cost effective. Just think about how much healthier the meat would be.At the end of the day it’s not just the pig farmers that need to wake up, we all do†¦ If we really wanted to we could put a stop to this cruelty, by only buying free range products; starting protesting; making petitions, but we do not and this where collective guilt comes into it. If New Zealanders or better yet, the world started doing these things we could easily stop the market for factory farmed pigs, and farmers would be forced to change their practice. If your packet does not read ‘free range’, you know the truth. Help stop pig cruelty today. Kendell Gaskell