Content warning: graphic images of animals in distress or deceased

Meet Flat House Farm, a farrow-to-finish farm housing up to 8,000 pigs and 800 breeding pigs where undercover investigators for Viva! found conditions so awful that even Red Tractor was ‘appalled’ by our findings. In a four-month investigation, pigs were found acutely suffering from bleeding hernias, prolapses, deformed trotters and rectal strictures. Others were covered in lacerations and grotesque bites, injuries inflicted on them by other pigs, driven to insanity by their barren environment. Somehow, Red Tractor’s own investigators missed the clear lack of care for severely sick and dying animals and the squalid conditions that pose a serious health risk, yet again leaving it up to animal protection groups to expose the truth.

• DAILY MAIL: Starving pigs are caught on film resorting to cannibalism in a shocking catalogue of neglect unveiled at 'high standards' farm

Dying and dead animals had been pulled into the walkway, left to slowly die and rot, instead of being treated or collected – a serious violation of the government’s guidance on how to handle fallen stock. Our investigators found one particularly sick, bloated animal, left in a walkway without food or water, other than the water dripping down a wall on a rainy evening. 

Hidden cameras captured feral cats picking off sick piglets, eating them alive and dragging their limp bodies into walkways to feast. Fly infestations abounded, leaving feeding troughs covered in maggots while the entire site was covered in filth. 

On factory farms like Flat House, animals are crammed together in appalling conditions, allowing for infections to spread and mutate with ease. Such places are the perfect breeding grounds for future zoonotic diseases and pandemics. 

Workers were also captured performing routine mutilations, clipping piglets’ tails and teeth with pliers and without pain relief. This is a standard procedure inflicted on piglets in an attempt to prevent tail-biting, a behaviour that manifests from the stress and lack of stimulation these intelligent animals suffer from. One of the most distressing scenes found a farm worker ‘thumping’ young piglets - killing them by slamming their tiny heads onto the bars of their mother’s metal cage. The worker dumped the bodies aside and exclaimed “I f****** hate doing this!” 

Flat House Farm follows the widespread practice of using farrowing crates. In their last week of pregnancy, a sow is confined to a barbaric crate where she can barely more forwards or backwards, let alone turn around. When she gives birth, she is kept in this crate for another four weeks, restricting her natural maternal instincts to physically bond with her young. These cages are routinely used on British factory farms and are entirely legal. The industry argues they protect new-born piglets from being crushed by their mums, but data from countries such as New Zealand, where the practice is banned, demonstrates otherwise.

Perhaps the worst thing about Flat House Farm is that it is not just that ‘one bad apple’. It is a typical factory farm, exposing the reality of where animal products come from and shows us just how vital Viva!’s End Factory Farming Before It Ends Us campaign truly is.  

Factory farming prioritises profit above everything else. In its determination to produce cheap meat, fish, dairy and eggs whatever the cost, factory farming has established itself as one of the most destructive industries in the world. It is a leading cause of antibiotic resistance, one of the most significant contributors to the climate crisis, ravages the natural world and poses serious risks to our health and our future. 

We tend to think that factory farming is limited to land animals, but fish farming (otherwise known as aquaculture) has been increasing rapidly in recent decades. Many people mistakenly believe that fish do not feel pain and are not offered the same ethical consideration as other animals such as pigs or cows, or that the health and environmental issues that plague animal agriculture just don’t apply to the marine world.

In response, Viva! made headlines in recent months with two ground-breaking investigations into fish farms. Our most recent focused on supposedly ‘high welfare’ rainbow trout farms, supplying Waitrose, Abel & Cole, Harrods and Fortnum and Mason. Instead of the promised crystal-clear chalk stream water, the trout were found severely overcrowded in filthy ponds suffering from extreme stress, abrasive injury and predation.

• THE TIMES: Test Valley Trout Farming staff kick live fish along floor

Video footage from a Test Valley Trout farm, endorsed by Jamie Oliver, also captured workers throwing live trout, kicking them with frustration, and bashing them around the head with a wooden priest (a short blunt baton). This is an extremely ineffective way to kill fish, which prolongs a painful death.

Since the release of our rainbow trout investigation, one of the four farms has been stripped of their RSPCA Assured certification. Despite shocking conditions exposed across all sites, action was only taken as a result of capturing appalling abuse at the hands of ‘trained stockmen’ – once again demonstrating a general acceptance for the filth of factory farms.

As with any other farmed species, cruelty is rife across fish industries. Viva! also exposed Scottish salmon farming at the end of 2020 at farms supplying the Co-op, Sainsbury’s, Lidl, Aldi, Morrisons and M&S. Putrid conditions lead to frequent invasions of flesh-eating parasitic lice, who feed on the skin, flesh and mucus of thousands of caged salmon with nowhere to escape. Like factory farms on land, these fish farms are a breeding ground for disease and cause widespread suffering. Viva! showed the public that fish is not the alternative to meat, no matter what sort of ‘welfare scheme’ the farms boast.

• DAILY MIRROR: 'Putrid' salmon farms infested with flesh-eating lice threaten wildlife in oceans

For all the reasons outlined above and more, Viva! launched our End Factory Farming Before It Ends Us campaign. It has never been more urgent for the government and consumers to take action today and we won’t stop fighting for animals until we see a vegan world. Find out more and help us help animals by donating to the cause and create a world where all animals are free from pain, fear and suffering.

Will Sorflaten is a Senior Campaigner at Viva!, a leading campaigning charity for veganism that recently celebrated its 26th anniversary. Learn more here.

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