13,000 PETA Supporters Object to NSW Mega-Piggery

We don’t need any more factory farms: that’s the message 13,464 PETA supporters gave the Hilltops Council as we submitted our petition opposing plans for an intensive piggery near Harden in New South Wales.

If approved, the facility will imprison more than 25,000 pigs, most of whom will ultimately end up on dinner plates before they’re even 6 months old.

On pig factory farms like the one proposed, mother pigs are kept in crates so small they can’t turn around or comfortably lie down. They’re constantly impregnated, and their beloved babies are torn away from them. Piglets’ teeth and ears are cut, their tails are chopped off, and male piglets’ testicles are ripped out – all without painkillers.

As well as violating the rights of pigs, the proposal has sparked grave environmental concerns. The facility would be built in a groundwater zone, with pig sheds and subsequent manure ponds located adjacent to an ecologically sensitive creek system.

In 2017, the council and the state government refused an application by the same company – Blantyre Farms – for an intensive pig farm on this site on environmental grounds.

Building a piggery at a time when Australians are increasingly taking steps towards eating vegan – during a pandemic born out of animal use – is not a smart long-term investment for Harden or the state as a whole. Compassion and logic must prevail, before it’s too late.

Pigs are clever, playful individuals, and mother pigs sing to their babies, who prefer to sleep nose to nose. They simply don’t deserve to be locked up in these putrid prisons and we will continue follow the development process with Hilltops Council and the State Government to see that this ghastly facility never opens.

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Hannah Gregus/ Sympathy at Slaughter