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Shocking footage has revealed the brutal treatment of piglets at a farm as workers smash them to death on a concrete floor.

The hidden cameras set up in a German factory farm captured the animals being grasped by their hind legs before being thrown to the ground.

Disturbingly the crack of their skulls hitting the hard floor can be heard echoing throughout the barn.

The video recorded at least 15 incidents of gruesome death and torture in just a single day.

(Image: CEN/Schweinehochhaus) (Image: CEN/Schweinehochhaus)

Young pigs believed to be too sick or weak to survive are shown crushed and smashed against the abattoir floor.

Other sickening clips show them being kicked, battered, clubbed and stabbed with sharp objects while the piglets' mothers are seen with gaping wounds and injuries.

One mother is shown foaming at the mouth and another is apparently covered in sores with the hair missing from her rear flanks.

The darkened stalls are barely wide enough for the animals to stand up and many seem to have collapsed from sheer exhaustion.

Even if they manage to get to their feet, the video shows, they struggle to stand in layers of muck and faeces.

And in one part of the clip, a mother gives birth to a tiny piglet in the cramped enclosure, almost crushing it as she was unable to move.

(Image: CEN/Schweinehochhaus) (Image: CEN/Schweinehochhaus)

All the footage was recorded over just one working day at a high-rise, six-storey building in Maasdorf, Anhalt-Bitterfeld, in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany.

The gruesome concrete structure - known as the Schweinehochhaus, or Pig Skyscraper - contains up to 3,000 sows and their piglets.

Animal rights activists smuggled secret video cameras inside the building to record 500 hours of footage and handed it to wildlife welfare group Deutsche Tierschutzbur.

Some of the footage has been shared tens of thousands of times on the group's Facebook page.

One activist, Jan Peifer, 37, told German media: "There was absolutely no reason for them to kick the pigs, or to abuse them or beat them to death in the way that they did."

(Image: CEN/Schweinehochhaus)

Peifer led an earlier expose of the same building three years ago which ended in charges of animal cruelty against operating company HET GmbH.

Campaigners are now calling for more charges against the Pig Skyscraper, its managers and its staff.

But HET GmbH general manager Michiel Taken refused to comment on the new alleged cruelty scandal.

Furious Peifer added: "Officials need to do something about the situation here and finally close down this pig skyscraper."

But local government agriculture officials have cautioned that under German law this might not be possible, especially as the facility passed its most recent welfare check just three months ago.

Their strongest censure is to remove and confiscate animals, but only if the most serious abuse is confirmed.