Our latest investigation has exposed yet more animal abuse at an RSPCA Assured facility, as featured in the Independent. Pigs were left to suffer in agony – some covered in blood and others unable to even walk – under the so-called ‘welfare label’ that fools the nation into believing that animals are treated with ‘care’. 

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These are ‘outdoor pigs’. What that means in reality is that they spend 4 weeks with their mothers outdoors before being locked inside barren, filthy sheds for 16 weeks. 80% of the life of an ‘outdoor bred’ pig is spent indoors in squalor. This is the marketing con of ‘higher welfare’ – duping people with positive-sounding terms that mask the devastating truth.

Our investigators filmed inside Bage Court Farm, an RSPCA Assured facility in Herefordshire, that fattens piglets for Stockcroft Pigs. This company is one of the biggest suppliers of ‘outdoor bred’ pigs in the UK, and has supplied the likes of M&S, Co-op, Waitrose and McDonald’s.

To gain the RSPCA Assured logo, farms supposedly have to meet over 700 ‘welfare’ standards, yet all we filmed that was different to a standard factory farm was a token sprinkling of straw in the pens, which was quickly trodden into the mounds of faeces in the pens.

Sick and injured animals were dumped into a pen together, left to slowly deteriorate. Some were so unwell that they were left dragging their legs or using their snouts to balance themselves on the ground when attempting to walk to reach food or water. One pig was filmed 38 days apart and showed clear deterioration in that time, in pain and suffering, and was seemingly dumped in the ‘sick’ pen.

These animals were never protected by the RSPCA Assured logo. They were abandoned, abused and discarded like rubbish when they died.

This is the reality behind companies built on exploiting pigs and the assurance schemes that hold them up. They want these images – reflecting the undeniable truth – to stay buried. But together, we can rip away the mask of so-called ‘higher welfare’ and expose the violence inherent in all pig farming.

As always,

For the animals.