Outdoor pig systems offer significant welfare advantages when well-managed but can fail on specific welfare dimensions.
Outdoor pig systems are welfare-positive by design — rooting, wallowing, complex social structures, and behavioural freedom are all accessible. But outdoor does not automatically equal good welfare. Poorly managed outdoor systems with inadequate shelter, overstocked paddocks, and no rotation cause welfare problems of a different kind: thermal stress, parasitism, and loss of rooting substrate. Certification schemes that verify management quality, not just housing type, distinguish genuinely high-welfare outdoor systems from nominally outdoor but poorly managed ones.