Pig housing design significantly determines welfare outcomes - good design enables natural behaviour and reduces aggression, disease, and tail biting.
Housing design is a foundational welfare determinant for indoor pig production. Space allowance, pen shape, substrate provision, ventilation, and lighting all interact to determine whether pigs can perform natural behaviours, avoid aggression, and maintain good health. Minimum legal standards are welfare baselines, not welfare ideals. Higher welfare production systems that exceed minimum space requirements, provide bedding, and enable more natural spatial organisation of dunging and lying areas show consistently better welfare indicators. Good design costs less per pig to retrofit than addressing chronic welfare problems.