Environmental enrichment for farmed pigs dramatically reduces stress, aggression, and destructive behaviors while improving welfare outcomes, yet most commercial pig facilities provide little or no enrichment due to cost and management concerns.
Enrichment is one of the highest-value welfare interventions available for commercial pig production because it simultaneously reduces multiple serious welfare problems. Tail biting, which can cause severe injury and death, drops dramatically with even simple enrichment. Aggression during mixing is reduced. Stereotypic rooting of floors and walls decreases. The behavioral evidence indicates that pigs in barren environments experience chronic frustration of strong foraging and rooting motivations that enrichment partially satisfies. The extremely low cost of basic enrichment makes the absence of any requirement in US commercial pig farming a policy choice rather than a practical necessity.