• The piggery of Victorian Farmers Federation Pig Council president David Wright has been targeted by animal advocates who have released new footage showing ‘cruel and sickening’ treatment of pigs on his farm.
• David Wright gave evidence during the Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry into pig welfare earlier this year, where he spoke about the high standards he maintains on his farm.
• Animal advocacy group Farm Transparency Project is now calling out the pig industry leader, publishing footage showing mother sows in narrow cages with painful, infected pressure sores, as well as sows in farrowing crates with over a dozen stillborn piglets.

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View interactive virtual tour

Farm Transparency Project has published new footage and an interactive virtual tour from the pig farm of David Wright, president of the Victorian Farmers Federation Pig Council. David Wright spoke earlier this year at the Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry into pig welfare, where he expounded the Australian pig industry’s commitment to animal welfare and criticised the work of investigators who had exposed cruelty and abuse in Australian pig farms and pig slaughterhouses.

The footage, which was captured in the months following the inquiry hearings, shows sows confined to small cages on Mr Wright’s farm with painful, infected pressure sores and debilitating wounds. The footage also shows dozens of stillborn piglets, as well as sick, weak and dying piglets suffering in farrowing crates. 

Farm Transparency Project says that the conditions on the farm are typical of the Australian pig farming industry, where care for animals will always be sacrificed to maximise profit. 

Executive Director of Farm Transparency Project, Chris Delforce, says that the pig meat industry is one of the worst offenders when it comes to mistreatment of animals. 

“I have been investigating commercial pig farms in Australia for the past 12 years. During this time I have witnessed some of the most sickening instances of animal cruelty imaginable. Despite his words to the contrary to a parliamentary committee, conditions on David Wright’s pig farm were no better than some of the worst that I have documented.”

“The fact that a pig industry leader can go before a parliamentary inquiry and claim that the industry he represents has a commitment to animal welfare, while knowing that on his farm, sows are suffering in tiny cages, with pus-filled pressure sores, and piglets are having their frail bodies eaten by cats and rats, sometimes while they’re still alive, is indicative of an industry that has become so reliant on deception that they fail to even see the animal cruelty that they are responsible for.” 

“Most Australians would see the conditions on Mr. Wright’s farm and be disgusted but, the reality is, sheds filled with maggots, rats, cats and suffering pigs are the standard in these factories which raise pigs for food.”