Pigs are among the most cognitively sophisticated farm animals, a fact with profound implications for how we evaluate the ethics of their treatment.
The cognitive abilities of pigs challenge the assumption that farm animals experience the world in simple, unelaborated ways. Research documents that pigs form social relationships, experience positive and negative emotions, learn from each other, and show behavioral flexibility indicating rich inner lives. Confinement systems that deny them social contact, environmental complexity, and behavioral expression are therefore not merely inconvenient but constitute profound deprivation for animals capable of experiencing it acutely.