Animal Care & Pasture Claims Bulletin · No. 2 · Hog sellers · October 2026 · From Farm Animal Transparency (FAT)
The note for farms selling pork direct, on what farm websites say about pig care
By Dirk Adams, with the assistance of AI
Bulletin No. 1 read what beef ranches say about their cattle. This issue asks the same questions of 750 farms that raise hogs and sell pork directly by the half or whole hog, by the cut, or at market. As before, we recorded what each farm’s own website says, word for word, about how its pigs are cared for, and counted separately what it says about where the pigs live.1
Who this covers. 91% of these farms also sell beef. They are small, diversified farms found through the same buy-local and direct-sale directories as the beef survey. Most U.S. hogs are raised under contract on farms that do not sell to the public and do not keep a sales website; Iowa, the largest hog state, contributed only 12 farms. So this bulletin describes the farms a shopper can actually buy a half hog from, not the commercial pork industry.
1 Why two counts: “pasture-raised” says where a pig lived. It does not say whether its mother was kept in a crate, whether its tail was docked, or how far it travelled to slaughter.
What hog farm websites say about care
Almost half the sites name something specific, but most of it is about the breed or the pig’s freedom to root: “heritage Berkshire,” “pigs being pigs,” “free to root and wallow.” Those are real features of how these farms raise pigs, but they describe the animal and the ground, not the practices a buyer would most want to know about. Fewer than one site in five names a husbandry practice such as straw bedding, no farrowing crates, late weaning, a short haul to a local processor or a herd-health plan.
Table 1. What 750 hog farm websites say about the care of their pigs (share of farms)
| Claim on the website | Farms | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Shows a welfare certification seal for its pork | 8 | 1% |
| Names a husbandry practice (crates, bedding, weaning, tails, transport, vet, shelter) | 133 | 18% |
| Names only the breed, or that pigs can root and wallow | 215 | 29% |
| General words only (“humanely raised”) | 165 | 22% |
| Says nothing about care | 229 | 31% |
| Number of farms | 750 | 100% |
Each farm is counted once, in its highest category. Percentages may not add to 100 because of rounding.
The practices that matter most are rarely mentioned
The practices most debated in hog production — keeping sows in gestation or farrowing crates, docking tails, clipping teeth, castrating piglets without pain relief — are almost never mentioned on these sites, for or against. A small farm that keeps its sows outdoors may never use a crate, but only a few say so.
Table 2. Care practices named on 750 hog farm websites (number of farms naming each; a farm can name several)
| Practice named on the website | Farms |
|---|---|
| “Heritage” or named breed | 182 |
| Pigs free to root or wallow | 173 |
| Shade, water or shelter provided | 63 |
| Straw or deep bedding | 33 |
| No farrowing crates | 26 |
| On-farm slaughter | 14 |
| Group housing | 13 |
| Short haul / local processor | 13 |
| No gestation crates | 11 |
| Late weaning (age stated) | 9 |
| Herd health or vet plan | 7 |
| No nose rings | 6 |
| No tail docking | 5 |
| Pork Quality Assurance (PQA Plus) trained | 4 |
| No teeth clipping | 4 |
| Pain relief at castration, or no castration | 0 |
Where the pigs live · and where they were born
Outdoor living is the main thing these farms advertise. 77% say their pigs are on pasture, in the woods or have outdoor access; 6% say the pigs live outdoors their whole lives. Only 16 sites describe barn housing. Several “pastured” farms explain on another page that pigs move into barns or bedded pens in winter, which is reasonable husbandry but not what the headline suggests.
Table 3. Where the pigs live and where piglets come from, as stated on 750 hog farm websites (share of farms)
| Statement on the website | Share |
|---|---|
| Outdoors their whole lives (“never confined”) | 6% |
| Pasture, woods or outdoor access, no whole-life statement | 71% |
| Hoop barn, bedded barn or confinement barn (stated) | 2% |
| Land or rotation talk only | 2% |
| Nothing about where pigs live | 19% |
| Piglets born on the farm (sows kept) | 13% |
| Young pigs bought from other farms | 6% |
| Does not say where piglets come from | 81% |
The missing birth story. 81% of sites never say whether their piglets are born on the farm or bought in as weaned feeder pigs. A pig bought at eight weeks may have been born in a conventional farrowing barn. “Pasture-raised” can be true of the months on the farm and silent about the start of the animal’s life.
Seals and contradictions
Seals. Only 8 farms show a third-party welfare certification for their pork, mostly Animal Welfare Approved. Several others display a seal that belongs to their beef, their eggs or the slaughter plant they use, and were not counted. None has yet been checked against the certifiers’ own lists.
Contradictions. On 31 sites the farm’s own words pull in two directions: “never confined” beside a barn photo or a farrowing-house description, “grass-fed” pork (pigs cannot live on grass alone), or “heritage” beside commercial hybrid breeds. About 30 farms were set aside because the pork they sell is raised on someone else’s farm.
Farmer to farmer
If your sows farrow on pasture, say so. If you never dock tails, say so. If your piglets are born on your place, say that too — it is the one fact that makes “pasture-raised” mean the whole life of the pig. A sentence a buyer can check is worth more than “happy pigs.”
How the survey was done: hog farm websites were read October 28–29, 2026. Farms were taken in listing order from FindBeefLocal, Half a Cow Club, state buy-local directories, Appalachian Grown and FAT’s beef survey list, never from searches for welfare or pasture words. Resellers, butchers, dead sites and sites that block automated reading were set aside. Every claim is recorded verbatim; in a random re-check of ten farms, every quoted passage was found on the farm’s site. The survey reports what websites say. It is not an inspection and makes no finding about how any farm treats its animals.
Farms that state what they do appear in the FAT App — the free iPhone app that reads a meat label at the counter and tells the shopper, on the spot, what the producer discloses about how the animal was raised, fed and processed. It is the only label scanner built around producer disclosure rather than brand marketing, and direct sellers who disclose are what it exists to surface. Free on the App Store: apps.apple.com/app/id6757405468
Farmer to farmer — I’m Dirk Adams, a 40-year cattle rancher near Wilsall, Montana. Farm Animal Transparency (FAT) is a nationwide, free, public-interest research project on what meat labels claim and what producers actually disclose. It carries no advertising and charges nothing. More FAT research on meat labels and what producers disclose is at farmanimaltransparency.com/fat-research. If anything above misreads your farm, email me at dirkadams@farmanimaltransparency.com.
Dirk Adams
Farm Animal Transparency