This is my series depicting the lives of factory farmed pigs.
When you walk through the supermarket and see the ham, the pork and the bacon remember that they come from places like this where these intelligent, sentient beings suffer terribly.
Pig factory farms are places where motherhood is denied. Sows are placed in small, metal barred crates called “sow stalls” during their pregnancies. They cannot move or turn around. They can only take one step forward and one step backwards and they can lie down. Nothing more. They are trapped here for 3 months until they are about to give birth, then they are moved to a crate called a “farrowing crate”. The farrowing crate restricts the sows movement just like the sow stall does. She cannot clean her babies. She cannot interact with them properly, she cannot comfort them and she cannot protect them. She is basically a trapped piglet breeding machine. She nurses her babies through bars whilst lying on a concrete floor. Once her babies are taken away, she is impregnated again and she goes through the whole miserable cycle again until she is no longer able to produce piglets or becomes ill. She is then slaughtered.
Piglets have their tails docked and are castrated without pain relief. They also have their teeth cut or ground down without pain relief. Once these piglets are weaned, they are taken from their mothers and kept in indoor overcrowded enclosures to be fattened up for slaughter. Often these enclosures are covered with faeces and urine. They are trucked off to be killed at 4-6 months old. They never get to forage in the earth, wallow in the mud or see the sky. There is no happiness for these pigs. Ever.
In these images you will see the pleading look in the eyes of trapped sows unable to care for their babies and the misery of young pigs imprisoned in sheds being fattened up to be eaten.
This is the hell that the animals you eat experience.
This series is a work in progress.
Please don’t use my images without permission. All images are Copyright Tamara Kenneally