How the remarkable cognitive abilities of pigs raise the moral weight of their welfare and what this means for production standards.
The scientific evidence for pig cognition and emotional complexity has profound implications for how we assess the welfare costs of standard pig farming practices. Animals capable of boredom, social empathy, problem-solving, and play have correspondingly greater capacity for suffering in environments that deny these capacities expression. The gap between what pigs are capable of and what commercial farming environments provide for them is large and growing in significance as cognitive research advances. Recognizing pigs as cognitively sophisticated beings should raise the moral weight assigned to their welfare and strengthen the case for meaningful welfare reform in pig production systems.