Instead of foraging naturally for a varied diet for six to seven hours a day, she is supplied a monotonous feed in such limited amounts that it is consumed in ten to twenty minutes. She must urinate and defecate where she stands. Not surprisingly, frustrated and isolated sows develop abnormal behaviors. The frustrated sow may also develop stereotypical behaviors-neurotic, compulsive movements such as intense and frequent biting of the bars of the crate. Such behaviors resemble chronic psychiatric disorders in humans.
Pigs naturally live twelve to fifteen years.
After being taken from their mothers, piglets are crowded into a series of barren pens or cages, sometimes stacked two or three high. They receive as little as twelve minutes of human attention in a four-month period. The harshness of this dismally barren and overcrowded environment, compounded by frustration and deprivation of every natural desire, encourages tail biting and abnormal aggression from which victims cannot escape. Never having breathed fresh air or felt sunshine on their faces, pigs are sent to slaughter at six months of age. Every year eighty thousand pigs die on the journey to slaughter, victims of poor handling and transportation practices.