Outdoor pig production systems offer significant welfare advantages over indoor confinement but introduce specific challenges around weather exposure, rooting damage, parasite management, and predator risk.
Outdoor pig production represents the most welfare-positive commercial pork production system available at scale. Sows that can root, wallow, build nests, and express the full range of natural behaviours show dramatically better welfare indicators than those in any form of indoor confinement. The welfare advantages of outdoor production are real and substantial — but they require active management to realise. Poorly managed outdoor systems with inadequate wallowing provision in summer, insufficient farrowing hut insulation in winter, or overstocked paddocks can have welfare outcomes that fall below well-managed indoor enriched systems. The welfare trajectory should be toward expanding outdoor pig production alongside improvements in indoor system enrichment and space allowances. Consumer demand for outdoor-reared pork provides the market signal that makes outdoor system expansion commercially viable.