Group housing systems for pigs offer significant welfare advantages over individual confinement when appropriately designed and managed with adequate enrichment.
Group housing for pigs provides welfare benefits that individual confinement cannot — social interaction, movement and behavioural expression are all enabled. The management challenges of group housing are real but solvable. Electronic feeding systems address resource competition; adequate space reduces chronic aggression; enrichment provision reduces redirected behaviour. The persistence of individual sow stalls in major producing countries represents a regulatory failure where welfare science has clearly identified better alternatives that are practically and economically implementable.