Midland Bacon, VIC 2024

In late 2023 and early 2024, FTP's investigators revisited Midland Bacon piggery near Stanhope in northern Victoria, focusing on the farrowing shed.

Farrowing crates are small pens containing even smaller cages, where sows are confined for up to 6 weeks while they give birth to and nurse their piglets. Every intensive breeding piggery in Victoria still uses farrowing crates.

In these crates, newborn piglets are subjected to a series of painful surgical mutilations, without any kind of anaesthetic or pain relief. Their tails are cut with scissors. Their teeth are cut back. Chunks are cut out of their ears as a method of identification. These unnecessary procedures are performed not by qualified veterinarians, but by untrained farm-hands.

The runts of the litter, and any piglets who seem sick or weak, are not given treatment or care, because that would cost more time and money than pig farms can be bothered investing. Instead, these piglets are picked up by their back legs, and slammed head-first onto the floor, not a metre away from their mothers who watch on helplessly. In large piggeries, like Midland Bacon, this happens every morning.