Outdoor pig farming systems provide significant welfare benefits including rooting, wallowing, and natural social behaviour, but also present management challenges around parasite control, weather, and predation that require skilled husbandry to navigate successfully.
Outdoor pig farming represents one of the closest approximations to pigs' natural behavioural repertoire available in commercial production. The opportunity to root in real soil, wallow in mud, and interact with a complex and changing environment provides genuine positive welfare states that indoor systems cannot replicate. The management challenges — parasites, weather, predation — are real but manageable with skill and experience, and do not negate the substantial welfare benefits. Consumer support for outdoor-bred pork is one of the most direct market mechanisms available for improving pig welfare at scale.