High mortality rates in commercial pig production reflect systemic welfare failures, with millions of pigs dying from preventable diseases and conditions each year.
Pig disease and mortality represent a massive, largely accepted welfare failure in industrial pork production. Piglet crushing by sows is the single largest cause of pre-weaning death — a problem linked to barren farrowing crates where sows cannot express protective nesting behavior. Disease burdens across the production cycle cause chronic suffering for millions of animals. ASF culling events cause mass death under often-poor welfare conditions. The economic framing of pig mortality as acceptable "production loss" obscures the underlying welfare reality: millions of individual sentient animals experiencing preventable death and disease. Transitioning to lower-density systems with better health management, enrichment, and pain management protocols would dramatically reduce this welfare burden.