Pigs have cognitive abilities that rival dogs and exceed those of young children in some tasks, yet most are raised in conditions that ignore or actively frustrate their behavioral and cognitive needs.
The cognitive sophistication of pigs makes their welfare in barren, confined, commercial settings a matter of serious ethical concern. A species capable of empathy, self-recognition, and learning in complex tasks experiences cognitive deprivation in standard production environments with an intensity that reflects their intellectual capacity. The research on pig intelligence does not change the conditions most pigs live in, but it does change our moral responsibility to those conditions.