Luna’s Story
Millions of animals are hidden away from the public behind the doors and cages of factory farming. Each one of them has a story to tell and a life to show the world. Here is just one.
For a month, our hidden cameras followed Luna at Redcourt Farm, where we watched her confined to a narrow farrowing crate — a crate that for two months every year is her entire world, and will be for the rest of her life.
In a world-first, we witnessed what millions of mother pigs globally experience, as Luna and her piglets fought to stay as one family in a system designed to keep them apart.
Luna had been plucked from a production pen, artificially inseminated, and we joined her as she was confined to the farrowing crate before giving birth.
A month in Luna’s world
For a month, Luna was unable to turn around or take a single step. Here, she gave birth and became a mother, surrounded by bars that prevented her from caring for her piglets as she naturally would.
Denied her instincts to nest, nurse, and nurture her children, she was able to truly bond with them only when her tiny piglets wandered up through the bars within the crate and reached her face. For these short few moments, Luna could nuzzle them, look at them, and feel them pressed against her face.
The bars also left Luna powerless over what happened to her children. Without anaesthetic, their teeth were clipped and their tails cut. Those who had died were picked up and placed into bags. Throughout it all, Luna remained confined just feet away. And eventually, her piglets were taken for good.
What comes next?
The more efficiently an animal can grow. The more piglets a mother can produce. The more predictable the result. The more valuable that animal becomes to an industrial food system.
This is the logic of factory farming taken to its furthest point: if the system isn’t working for animals, change the animals to fit the system.