Calls to end ‘one of the most severe forms of animal cruelty in this country’

Farrowing crates: metal cages that hold a sow immobile after giving birth for up to five weeks.

Imagine being held by metal bars barely wide enough for you to lay down on bare concrete with your limbs beneath you, for five weeks. She can’t turn, she can’t roll, she can’t build her straw up into a nest, she can’t properly look after her babies. All she can do is stand there, helpless.

Is this actually a practice in the UK though? Which farms do this?

I haven’t eaten meat/dairy for 4 years and i’m *still* learning about terribly cruel practices that i didn’t know existed.

Animal agriculture in this country may be better than some other countries, but it’s still absolutrely barbaric.

It’s worth noting that the NPA (National Pig Association, who represent UK pork farmers) lobbied against a proposed ban in 2019/2020, as giving the pigs better welfare would cut their profits too much.

Animal farmers only care about profits, and will continue to abuse animals until the consumer stops paying them.

Just a quick reminder that there’s no such thing as ethical or humane animal agriculture/meat. If you eat meat and dairy you’re supporting and funding animal abuse.

Give it some thought.

Two meats I would recommend to avoid as much as possible are pork and chicken. Pork and chicken is so cheap in this country, nearly all of it is factory farmed otherwise it wouldn’t be profitable.

I have cut down on meat a lot, but if I do eat it, I try my hardest to stick to cheap beef from a local farmers market like mince, bavette, hanger etc from my farmers market. It’s not perfect, but its a tiny step in the right direction.

I think one area that looks promising is shellfish farming. From what I have seen, farmed mussels/oysters/clams are possibly the most sustainable and ethical source of animal protein at the moment. I have replaced a lot of my meat consumption with tinned shellfish (mussels in particular)

For as long as animals are used as commodities, they’ll be treated as such

Never going to happen. People are far too attached to their fry ups, bacon sarnies, and pork roasts.

Maybe if this was happening to dogs it would end overnight, but many people don’t see pigs as any other than a food source so they’re not as important.

The fact that it’s not possible to eat meat naturally is lost on most meat eaters.

The barrier to resolving many environmental issues is capitalism, and for as long as we’re attached to capitalism and our war based economic system there’s not going to be much progress on animal rights or environmental issues.

You could argue that capitalism can be used to create an environmentally friend society, but such a society is more expensive, and how do you get past the inequal distribution of resources and profit incentive? We cannot even tackle poverty, let alone animal rights or environmental issues.

Just for some information because as is standard on Reddit when farming is mentioned there’s a lot of people on here talking about topics they have no knowledge about. it is estimated that the transition to flexible farrowing would cost £5000-6000 per sow to retrofit old bars and around £8000 to build new barns. The National Pig Association have suggested and are pushing for a voluntary transition to flexible farrowing over the next 20 years with farmers supporting the idea

https://www.fwi.co.uk/livestock/what-is-the-future-for-flexible-farrowing-systems

However this all comes with the caveat that you cannot expect farmers over here who are already on very thin margins (with pig farming being one of the hardest to make profitable) to compete with imports that don’t meet those standards. British pork is already a world leader when it comes to free range with roughly 50% of all our produce being free range which is far higher than most other comparable countries in the EU and further afield.