Supermarkets and animal welfare

Pigs are some of the most intensively farmed animals in the world, crammed into barren environments, denied opportunities to express natural behaviours such as foraging and rooting, and subjected to painful mutilations.

Mutilations like tail cutting and teeth clipping are routinely carried out on piglets when they are less than a week old, without pain relief. These mutilations are performed as a quick fix for bigger problems, to stop unwanted, damaging behaviours like biting that occur when pigs are stressed and frustrated.

Routine tail cutting is banned in the UK, but a loophole means the cruel practice continues with over 70% of pigs having their tails cut each year.

But it doesn’t need to be like this. Improving welfare, such as giving pigs more space and access to manipulable enrichment like straw, has been proven to reduce instances of biting and therefore reduces the need for routine tail and teeth cutting.

In our new report into the public policies and reporting of the UK's top ten supermarkets, Who's Telling Porkies, we examine these welfare concerns for pigs farmed and imported into the UK.

* Since first publishing our ranking table, Tesco has highlighted to us an element of their import policy which brings imports in-line with UK standards and we are very pleased to see that this has lifted them to 4th in the ranking, as seen above.