Born in a bad way, in the worst place

I entered the shed, the metal door opening with ease. It was fairly dark inside and it stunk, as all piggeries do. The sows inside the shed at that time were quite large, covered in scratches and sleeping on the filth-covered concrete floors. My presence did not seem to disturb them as I set down my backpack, opened up my tripod, turned on my camera and got to work. I was there helping to collect footage using a 360 camera, in order to later create a virtual tour. The idea was that the user would be able to walk between the points that we recorded, and experience, as close as practically possible, the reality of being inside of a piggery.

I was at Gowanbrae Piggery in Central Victoria. The farm is owned by SunPork, the largest pork producer in the country. Their products are sold in retailers and supermarkets around the country, including Coles and Woolworths.

I had begun capturing footage - moving my tripod with the camera to different points along the aisle of the sow group housing shed. I was almost halfway through the shed, when I came across a pen where something awful had recently occurred. I immediately went back down to the front of the shed and grabbed my camera from my bag. I had never seen this happen in this way before, and I knew I had to capture it.

Just in front of the vertical metal bars which made up the large cage, was a sow... and her newborn piglets.

Sows who are housed together in so-called 'group housing' have already been artificially inseminated. They spend the majority of their 16 week pregnancy confined in these dirty pens, with other sows. In a natural environment sows create nests during pregnancy to prepare for and to protect her newborn piglets.On pig farms however, sows are typically moved into a different shed on the property and confined to a different type of cage, called a farrowing crate, where they then give birth. Yet here she was, on a concrete floor, staring up at me in distress. There was a pile of afterbirth at the rear of her and five hungry piglets drinking milk from her teats.

One of the piglets lay pale unmoving at her back legs, this was the one that I had first noticed, prompting me to grab my camera. I filmed them, panning my camera around the dark pen and illuminating it with my light. I noticed another dead piglet who was further into the pen, nearer to the almost a dozen sows who lay quietly.  Her surviving babies struggled to walk, as they continued to feed from her body. Their umbilical cords still hung from their bellies and their tails were rolled up into little curls. A piglet near the sow's front two legs struggled for breath. Their eyes were closed and their mouth twitched open. I knew they were dying.  

One last piglet lay near her back, each of their legs were splayed outwards as though they had been crushed by the sow. Their body moved from side to side, as they struggled to free themself from underneath.

I looked up at the sow. Her eyes begging me to do something, anything. I thought through the options, but I knew that there was nothing I could do. I put down my camera, continued down the aisle and then disappeared into the darkness.

While I am investigating I have often thought of myself as an observer; there only to see and to document, not to intervene. There have only been a few times where I have felt that urge to act, where I have done something small to alleviate their pain, or seen suffering so horrible that I wished I could end it for their sake.  

When I saw those piglets, like when I see any pig on a factory farm, I knew that they are were all going to die. Whether it would be in one minute from now, one day from now, or six months from now; whether it was from being crushed by a poor sow, or at the hands of a worker smashing their heads into the concrete, or thrashing inside a carbon dioxide gas chamber; those piglets were doomed from the moment they were born.

Since that night almost two years ago, I have thought about what I could have done. But the burden of this guilt should not be mine to bear. The fault is not mine, it is of an industry that breeds, confines, mutilates, exploits and kills sentient animals for an unnecessary purpose. All that I can do to help them now, is to tell their story. What is most important is for this footage to be seen. If it can reach the right person, and they can have the courage to recognise that what is happening is not right and have the strength to change their mind, only then would their suffering be worth it. 

- Anonymous investigator

You can see where this sow and these piglets were, in the virtual tour of Gowanbrae Piggery uploaded to the Farm Transparency Project website. https://www.farmtransparency.org/tours/gowanbrae-vic