Ventilation system failures on intensive pig farms can cause rapid heat stress and mass animal deaths. Understanding risks and safeguards is essential for pig welfare.
Heat stress in pigs causes acute suffering before death: animals exhibit open-mouth breathing, disorientation, collapse, and convulsions. Mass mortality events represent both a welfare catastrophe and a profound indicator of systemic risk in intensive farming systems. The concentration of thousands of animals in single buildings creates extreme vulnerability to infrastructure failure. Welfare improvements require mandatory backup ventilation power, temperature monitoring with automated alerts, maximum stocking density limits that reduce heat load, and on-farm emergency response protocols. At a systemic level, reducing building densities and providing access to wallowing areas would give pigs behavioural and physiological resources to cope with heat. Climate adaptation planning must be central to the future of pig farming.