Every year, billions of animals are reared and confined on factory farms and then sent to slaughterhouses. It is well known that the veal crate is among the most cruel and deplorable of animal husbandry techniques: young veal calves are kept in tiny stalls for their short 16-week lives confined so intensely that they cannot even move. Perhaps less known, but equally cruel and inhumane, is the way female breeding pigs are treated on factory farms.
Breeding sows are confined in barren metal cages – measuring just two feet wide – for almost their entire lives. The enclosures are called “gestation crates.” Pigs are confined in these crates during pregnancy. They cannot exercise or even turn around and are prevented from engaging in natural behaviors or from satisfying basic psychological needs. After they produce a litter of piglets in a farrowing crate, the mother pig is impregnated again and returned to the miserable life of a gestation crate. This cycle is repeated for up to 10 pregnancies.