Farrowing crates that confine sows during and after birth have been shown to compromise welfare while providing piglet safety benefits, spurring development of alternative systems that improve sow welfare without increasing piglet mortality.
The farrowing crate debate illustrates a genuine welfare trade-off between sow and piglet welfare that simplistic positions often fail to acknowledge. Farrowing crates do prevent crushing deaths in naive management systems, but confine sows during a period of high motivation for locomotion and nest building, causing significant welfare compromise. The welfare resolution is not to accept crate confinement as necessary but to invest in alternative farrowing systems that have demonstrably solved both problems simultaneously. Well-designed loose farrowing pens with appropriate pen geometry, sloped flooring, heat provision, and stockmanship achieve low piglet mortality without crate confinement of sows. The Swedish example, where farrowing crates have been banned for 35 years with continued commercial production, demonstrates this is commercially viable at scale.