Pig farmers ignore EU animal protection laws

Pregnant sows kept alone in small cages for months, unable to lie down or turn around: the EU estimates a third of German pig farmers are not observing its animal protection laws.

Der Spiegel magazine recently met a group of activists secretly breaking into Germany's pig farms in the dead of night to document wide-spread flouting of laws designed to improve conditions for pigs kept in large-scale livestock compounds.

The magazine uncovered shocking scenes, including a dead piglet left lying on a walkway and a sow covered in wounds from the bars of a narrow cage in which she could not lie down.