Around half of the meat consumed in the world is pork, with approximately 250 million pigs reared each year in the European Union for meat. In the UK, nearly ten million pigs are slaughtered annually, whilst there are approximately 432,000 breeding pigs (sows, gilts and boars). 

There are many ways of housing and raising pigs, including both indoor and outdoor systems. Both can provide good living conditions, but some farming methods have ignored the pigs’ needs by treating them as production units rather than fascinating and intelligent creatures with important behavioural and physical needs.
 

We’re working in lots of different ways to try to improve the conditions in which all pigs are reared, transported and slaughtered.

As well as the information on these pages, we've also produced The welfare of pigs information sheet January 2013 (PDF 1,015KB).