Research on pig cognition has revealed that pigs are among the most intelligent domestic animals, with welfare implications for the barren, restrictive conditions of industrial pig farming.
Pig intelligence research fundamentally challenges the welfare adequacy of barren intensive systems. Animals capable of symbolic learning, social play with rules, and optimistic emotional states are experiencing profound cognitive and social deprivation in battery-style pig farms. The gap between pig cognitive capacity and the environmental complexity they experience in standard systems is stark. Enriched systems - straw, rooting material, social stability, space - allow expression of cognitive capacity and produce measurable positive welfare states. The same intelligence that makes pigs interesting research subjects makes their confinement in barren systems a significant moral concern.