Why is the farrowing crate so bad?
Pigs are quite extraordinary creatures – intelligent, bright, fun-loving, sociable and extremely good mothers. Left to their own devices, females naturally live in matriarchal societies, two or three sows joining together with their piglets until the breeding season. After breeding, the boar disappears while the females remain together, often forming life-long bonds. Producers are fond of telling us that modern pigs bred for meat have long since lost the natural instincts of their wild ancestors and therefore are happy in the filthy, overcrowded sheds to which most are condemned. Oh really? So what happens when you release factory-farmed pigs into the wild? They explore like crazy, near and far, carrying and manipulating good things to eat, using their snout to grub out thick and tasty roots. They search for morsels on the bark of trees and lick them up with relish, overturn tussocks of grass so they can get at the roots and graze carefully on young grass. Where it’s boggy, they dig do
