An end to fully slatted floors in Austria is still not in sight. The amendment to the Animal Welfare Act that came into force on June 1 introduced only a “slightly modified version.” However, the consequences of this form of keeping animals on concrete with a minimum of 0.8 square meters of space per animal are only one part of what an “industrial production, where everything is automated,” means for these intelligent mammals during their short lives.

In an interview with APA, Martin Balluch from the Association Against Animal Factories (VGT) explained further side effects of industrial livestock farming, such as open hooves, scratch wounds, swollen joints, or parasites. However, the most common suffering resulting from these living conditions is pneumonia. This illness was diagnosed in just over 45 percent of cases during a veterinary examination, Balluch reported, based on data from 3,777 “slaughter body inspection forms” created at a slaughterhouse in southern Styria and passed on to VGT. “On average, pigs kept on fully slatted floors suffer from around 1.3 illnesses. That means they are all sick in some way” — and according to the animal welfare organization, mortality among these animals is three times higher compared to pigs kept on straw.

Sent to the slaughterhouse at five months

It should be noted that these animals are sent to slaughter at about five months of age, and thus before entering puberty. Normally, life expectancy would be 13 to 15 years, according to Balluch — with heart failure, due to breeding-induced oversizing, being the most common cause of death. “This keeping system is therefore capable of turning these animals into physical wrecks in a short time,” Balluch states.

When these animals meet the small minority of their free-range counterparts at the slaughterhouse, the difference is immediately apparent. He personally witnessed this at such a facility in Linz. The animals from “conventional” keeping moved “as if they had stiff legs,” and due to their previous living conditions, also showed reduced self-confidence. He also observed that some animals, including those with pus-filled abscesses, were further processed: “If you’ve ever seen what goes into a sausage like that, I can’t imagine you’d want to eat it anymore,” he concluded.

Tics and cannibalism as consequences of confinement

The life of around 2.5 million pigs — the approximate “living stock” in Austria — already begins unpleasantly before it ends in the slaughterhouse and the animals end up as lunch or in a sandwich: their teeth are shortened, their tails often docked by “burning off,” because the limitations of this housing lead not only to psychological consequences such as tics but also to aggression and even cannibalism: “They bite off each other’s ears, they bite off tails, they have scratch wounds because they injure each other, because with every step they step on another pig’s toes.”

Thus prepared, the fattening process begins under artificial lighting. “The pigs never go outside, never get fresh air, never eat plants, but almost always just ‘this’ mush,” Balluch notes from experience. It is a life “on a completely soiled floor, because these animals usually also suffer from diarrhea — and that ends up on the slats.” The idea behind it is actually that the animals, crowded closely together, stomp their feces down through the slats.

A greenhouse for animals with bad air

“Of course, most of it sticks, and so the animals basically lie in their own feces all the time,” says the VGT chairman. This not only results in a corresponding parasite burden, but the excrement, which ends up in the slurry pit under the pigs as intended, mixes there with urine. From this mixture emerges the pungent-smelling gas ammonia, “which rises up and creates terribly bad air.” Air whose components not only harm the animals’ lungs but, according to several studies, this housing-induced air pollution also affects farmers and people living near such fattening farms.

Balluch dates the origins of this “animal husbandry,” which almost functions like a greenhouse for animals, back to the 1960s. “With the industrialization of agriculture, the idea of the fully slatted floor was born,” he explains. It is the equivalent of the wire floor used in traditional battery cages for hens — again, the floor serves automatic waste disposal. Once the pigs are in their pen, not much remains to be done: “You close the door and flip the switch for feeding and ventilation outside.”

Conditions of industrial farming widely unknown

The public is largely unaware of the conditions of industrial animal farming. Balluch criticizes the role of “the entire pig industry, including the Chamber of Agriculture and the Ministry of Agriculture,” which he says spread falsehoods. The message that reaches consumers is: “Austrian meat is actually quite good in comparison.”

Yet a Eurobarometer survey just last year showed that the Austrian and European population, on the whole, strongly support good conditions for farm animals. “The only thing missing is politics listening to the majority. And that’s not happening right now,” Balluch states, seeing mandatory labeling of husbandry conditions as another way to address this form of factory farming.

Mandatory labeling as a possible way out

“Gastronomy must be held just as accountable as processors,” says Balluch, pointing out that while caged hen farming has been banned in Austria since 2020, products from countries where this is still allowed continue to be imported. As a positive side effect, the ban in Austria has raised the self-sufficiency level of fresh eggs from about 60 to over 90 percent. Labeling rules, as required for eggs in the EU since 2004, would be a first step — ideally leading to a ban on fully slatted floors. A change is needed; we cannot continue watching pigs live this way, “that’s simply unacceptable for a modern society where animal protection is enshrined as a constitutional state goal.”