Guidance

Pigs: on-farm welfare

How to keep and breed pigs, and your responsibilities for housing, feeding and looking after them.

Documents

Details

The legislation covering on-farm welfare for pigs is:

The code of practice for the welfare of pigs provides guidance on how to comply with this legislation. It’s intended to help all those who care for pigs to practise good standards of stockmanship to safeguard pig welfare.

You and any staff working with pigs must read, understand and have access to this code. Welfare codes are not law, but if you do not follow them they can be used as evidence in court to show breaches of legislation.

Some of the references to legislation in the codes are out of date. You should refer to the animal welfare legislation listed above and relevant wider legislation as needed.

For more information on legislation and codes of practice for other species, see farm animals: looking after their welfare.

Updates to this page

Published 26 February 2020
Last updated 5 October 2023 + show all updates
  1. Created new HTML version of the code of recommendations for pigs to match the PDF version laid in parliament.

  2. Added the code of practice for the welfare of pigs

  3. First published.

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