Investigation: Bourne Farm
Bourne Farm is operated by Allen (Hanford) Ltd. They exclusively supply Thames Valley Cabac – the “UK’s biggest pig marketing co-operative”, which then supplies retailers and producers. The business keeps 4,500 sows at any one time and sends 2,000 pigs to slaughter every week.
The footage shows: young pigs kept on bare slatted floors with just a chain hanging from the ceiling as ‘enrichment’ (the bare legal requirement); piglets fighting/playing hard enough to seemingly cause injuries which suggests that this basic enrichment is insufficient; dead and injured piglets in farrowing pens (one with ulcerated trotters); multiple bottles of medication/antibiotics (including one for the treatment and prevention of stress in pigs and an antibiotic to treat respiratory issues); very minimal enrichment in farrowing pens (just a handful of newspaper shreds); contraptions used for piglet mutilations (teeth/tail clipper and ear tagger), and evidence of piglet mutilations (severed tails scatted on gangway). Piglet mutilations are legal, but are used to ‘manage’ behaviours directly caused by these unnatural factory farmed conditions. They are painful and traumatic to the very young animals.
We have reported our concerns to the authorities.
We investigated this very same farm back in 2008 (watch the footage below). Clearly standards have not improved.
Don’t leave the protection of animals up to the Government. They sanction factory farms exactly like this one. Take charge yourself and save animals by simply not eating them.
