Before the onset of modern factory farming the importance of pigs having exposure to fresh air and natural sunlight was widely recognised as a means of reducing sickness and promoting health. Not so with modern factory farms where pigs are raised in sealed buildings with artificial ventilation, temperature and cooling controls. Here, the belief that technology can replace and replicate the innate power of nature to promote health has resulted in levels of disease and death previously unknown.

Natural pig raising farming believes in the positive power of nature to provide a healthy environment for raising pigs. Our sties are open sided allowing the pigs to experience real weather conditions from a sheltered environment. Sunlight (but as we are in a very hot country not direct exposure to sunshine), blue sky, cooling breezes and views of the natural world and the activity taking place in it. Pigs get to breathe fresh air and the health benefits exposure to the natural world brings.

The result: healthy pigs, healthy living environment and absolutely no danger of new virus?s developing that may pose threats to mankind, unlike the factory farm systems (my view). We have no respiratory disease and our pigs have no need of daily doses of anti-biotics to keep our pigs alive and healthy. Pig growth is maximised as growth is not delayed or slowed due to pig illness.

Natural pig farming deep bed operations also have the huge benefit of causing no smell pollution even though the sties are open sided. This is due to the power of nature which enables the rapid breaking down of fecal matter. The deep bed litter floor is sweet smelling, dry and fluffy. People live happily right next to natural pig farming pig raising operations.

The cost savings of the natural pig farming system v factory farming system are significant:

• No expensive sealed buildings
• No expensive ventilation systems
• No expensive electricity bills to power the ventilators
• No expensive need for routine feeding of anti-biotics
• Low / no incidence of sickness and therefore lower vetinary and medical bills (to treat sick pigs)
• Lower number of pigs ill and therefore lower losses due to delayed growth rates that result
• No smell so no related adverse publicity or issues related to foul odors

Modern pig factory farming has become such a pig health and human health concern many factory farms keep their pigs in a totally sealed off environment (these buildings are full of virus's and mutating bacteria that could develop into the next swine flu / bird flu epidemic). No windows, no fresh air, no natural sunlight (in-fact many factory farms deliberately keep their pigs in pitch dark conditions to discourage any pig aggression the inhumane conditions they are kept in may provoke). They are also sealed off to prevent decent human beings seeing for themselves the unacceptable way factory farms raise their pork.

Not only are the factory farms breeding grounds for new airborne virus?s (one which will cause the death of millions of people once it learns to cross the species barrier to infect humans), they sentence pigs to live in an environment unfit for any life. The range and prevalence of pig sickness in these factories is quite horrifying in scale. The air is so foul air that huge electric air ventilators must run 24 hours a day to keep the pigs alive. Where such ventilators have broken down in the USA, even for just 30 minutes, the result has been lethal with whole factories of pigs suffocating to death.

Modern factory farms expose pigs to high levels of respiratory problems totally absent from other more humane forms of pig raising. This is caused by the high levels of ammonia in the air due to the sheer quantity of pigs being kept and the quantity of fecal matter they expel. As a result an ailment known as pig cough is prevalent (a sickness totally absent from natural pig farming and free range systems of pig raising). The obnoxious smell from the pig farms is also a huge problem for people living close to a pig farm.

Such environments are clearly unhealthy for the pigs, which need daily does of anti-biotics to survive in them. They also pose grave risks to mankind as ideal breeding grounds for adaptive viruses, and because routine use of these anti-biotics is creating bacteria and virus?s that are anti-biotic resistant. When the next epidemic comes along the ability of humans to protect themselves with anti-biotics may not be available due to this. Is the supposed benefit of cheaper pork really worth the deadly health costs to pigs and the potential millions of human deaths in any resulting pandemic? Absolutely not!

NEXT ==> Disease prevention and health

Stable family groups      Low stocking density       Deep bed floor      Mud wallows      Sow welfare     Weaning

No pig mutilation      Boar welfare     Castration     Fresh air and sunlight     Disease prevention & health     Pig husbandry

Feed     Natural growth       Slaughter      Quality of meat      Environmentally friendly