Wonga Piggery

Owned by the family of Edwina Beveridge, Windridge Farms' Wonga Piggery is one of the industry's most highly regarded in terms of animal welfare, yet footage and photographs taken covertly by activists and provided to Animal Liberation ACT tell a different story:

• Dead and dying piglets left out in the open
• Piglets whose legs have become trapped in the cage floors
• Sows confined to tiny cages within farrowing crates and sow stalls or packed into "group housing", many with large open injuries, others with smaller wounds indicative of fighting caused by overcrowding and a lack of stimulation
• Pigs living in their own faeces
• Round-the-clock artificial lighting
• Infestations of flies and rats with rat droppings littered throughout piglet feed

This is yet more evidence of systemic cruelty in our country's pig farms; the twelfth exposed by Animal Liberation, the fifth in the Young NSW region. Having removed a large number of their sow stalls in favour of the new standard of "group housing", we can see that this apparently great welfare advancement is nothing more than larger cages, where pigs still have very little room to move and are now vulnerable to fighting brought on by frustration and boredom.

The bright white sterility of some of the farrowing rooms are a perfect example of how mechanised and factory-like modern animal "farming" has become, with sentient animals treated as nothing more than units of production. Despite their best efforts, the industry has once again proven that there is no ethical way to raise and kill pigs for human consumption.

Windridge Farms previously took Animal Liberation NSW to court to prevent footage from Wonga Piggery being released, unsuccessfully arguing that they should have copyright over any material filmed illegally on their property.