In a dilapidated farrowing house at Calvesley Farm, an expectant sow was four days overdue. She was restless, confined to a crate that allowed her almost no room to stand, let alone turn around. She lapsed into stereotyped behaviour, gnawing at the metal bars trying to escape her terrible confinement and her agonising sadness was heartbreaking. This mother had to give birth onto an unforgiving hard floor with not a shred of bedding.

Due to selective breeding, pigs now give birth on average to an astonishing 13 to 14 piglets but for this sow there were just four. It's likely that such a small litter would be her last. As soon as a sow is deemed unprofitable here, she's marked with a green cross and moved to the cull pen.

Each newborn piglet is pulled from the farrowing crate and ruthlessly thrown into a metal trough. Investigators captured workers using a barbaric hot knife to slice the piglets’ tails back to a bleeding stump and a pair of pliers to clip away their teeth – all without pain relief. These cruel acts are supposed to prevent tail biting, a behaviour that manifests from distress and lack of stimulation. 

One of the most distressing scenes captured by Viva! Campaigns shows a farm worker ‘knocking’ young piglets – killing them by slamming their tiny heads onto the concrete floor. It's a brutally cruel act, which is followed by the worker dumping the bodies aside – presumably because these animals were considered too small to be profitable.  

As if all this wasn’t bad enough, our team also stumbled upon the farm's incinerator in an open-ended shed. Most days there were piles of dead piglets – some in empty feed sacks, others dumped on the ashes from previous burns – discarded like rubbish. The door had been left wide open. Next to the shed there were more dead piglets awaiting their turn to burn, writhing in maggots.

These practices are in complete violation of the government’s guidance on how to handle ‘fallen stock’, which states: ‘While waiting for your fallen stock to be collected, you must ensure that animals and birds cannot access the carcase.’

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Morrisons Exposed – Calvesley Farm: https://youtu.be/YhL8dB7sgNY 

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