The lives of mom pigs are miserable even their slaughter: Please reduce pork consumption

Mother pigs, who are used as machines for producing meat pigs, continue to be detained in gestation crates and farrowing crates from the age of 6 month till they are killed. This is the case for 90% of breeding farms in Japan. They are slaughtered after being detained, being robbed of their child 3 or 4 times.

How?

Meat pigs called growing-finishing pigs are killed within 180 days, so when they are slaughtered, they weigh about 110 kg. On the other hand, a fully grown mother pig weighs more than 200 kg, a size that does not fit in a general slaughter lane. At one slaughterhouse, they are slaughtered as shown in this video.

The mother pig goes through an electric shock for stunning by a human, not by a machine, which could cause lots of failures. The sow, driven into the space of the sea of blood, resists and runs away, so it can be like a fight. Even though only one animal can be killed at a time like in this video, sometimes two animals are put in at the same time. Also, the next pig may be put in while the previous sow is still bleeding and lying down. The pig in this video kept watching another pig being killed for about 1 minute and 30 seconds.

At the meat processing center, everything goes on an assembly line. Staff are under pressure not to cause a delay in their part. It is important to finish their work within a set time without disturbing the flow. That is why scenes like these often can be seen where there is no consideration for the feelings of pigs.

Even after the mom pig had been suffering this whole time…

Once, an employee of a pig farm described a sow to be slaughtered as follows:

Soon, when production efficiency drops and the economic value disappears, the sow will be killed, and the door of the gestation crate opens as if it were the day when the jail time has finished.

A sow to be killed walks down the aisle as if she was frolicking, jumping, and feeling the natural joy. Waiting ahead of her hopeful back is not a bright sun, but a bloody end.

The mother pig seems to be happy to walk, but at the slaughterhouse, she is overtaken by the urge to not move forward.

The last thing they see is the human face that kills her, or the large amount of their blood on the floor? Or is it the illusion of her child she breastfed for 21 days in the gestation crate?

I can’t forget the back of the sow, who was to be terminated, happily walking down the aisle of the farm.

If they understood the language and were told that she was going to be killed, how would they walk?

What kind of tear will she shed?

Or does the liberation from the restraint outweigh death?

Neither pig farm employees nor owners will see the scene where their mother pigs are killed. How would they feel if they learned that pigs that had been bred for two, three, or four years were running away in extreme fear and were killed in the sea of blood? Would they not think to improve it?

Consumers who eat pork don’t see the scene, either. Companies that buy pork don’t see it, either.

Slaughterhouse officials should improve the site themselves, but the silent pig farms, businesses, consumers, and everyone in a society that tolerates this system have equal responsibility.

Translation thanks to Misaki.