Ohio Pork Producers bring us this film below. Despite the cheerful music and the happy, young woman, the video clearly shows:

• Mother pigs (sows) don’t have enough room to turn around
• Pigs (hogs) are confined indoors without access to sunshine, grass, or mud
• Ear tags: a form of mutilation
• Runt piglets are separated from their mothers
• A Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) aka a “factory farm”

They intend to make factory farming appear natural and normal:

• they have a staff veterinarian (who seems to only provide advice over the phone, not actually do regular check-ups)
• they call gestation crates “safety equipment” (gestation crates are cruel devices banned in the EU, Florida, Arizona and California)
• the woman says like she enjoys her work and maybe she does. (But countless other farm workers are not happy and healthy.)

For example, Time magazine reports that only 31.8% of farm workers report that their job makes them “very happy.” Moreover, Farmworker Health Services says:

The living conditions of farmworkers have often been compared to those of developing nations. The health status of farmworkers in the U.S. is among the worst when compared to other subpopulations.”

Just recently, we learned that 45% of workers at pig farms in Iowa and Illinois have MRSA, a deadly bacteria. For more on the topic of farmworker health and job satisfaction, please read Slaughterhouse, Fast Food Nation, The Jungle, or the PEW Report on CAFOs. Or… just go down to your local slaughterhouse or factory farm and ask the workers yourself.

What they don’t show in the video: Virtually every one of those intelligent, adorable pigs will either be killed at a fraction of his or her lifespan, likely in a cruel and unsanitary manner, or that pig will die earlier from disease or abuse. The only ones that might survive will be the ones rescued by animal advocates:

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Sections: Vegan Activism, Vegan Et Cetera
Topics: factory farms, pigs, pork producers, Vegan