Heat stroke is a seasonal welfare emergency in pigs that can kill animals rapidly, yet many commercial pig facilities lack adequate cooling infrastructure, particularly in regions experiencing increasingly severe summer heat events.
Heat stroke in pigs is a particularly severe welfare emergency because pigs cannot sweat, rely heavily on wallowing for thermoregulation, and have dense bodies that retain heat. A pig in a poorly ventilated building during a summer heat wave faces rapidly escalating hyperthermia with no behavioral way to cool itself. The physiological distress of heat stroke — elevated heart rate, panting, collapse — is extreme. As climate change increases the frequency and severity of summer heat events, the welfare consequences of inadequate cooling infrastructure in commercial pig facilities will intensify. The availability of effective cooling technologies makes the persistence of inadequately cooled facilities a preventable welfare problem.