PIGS and chickens raised on Australian factory farms are held in worse conditions than European animals and a new campaign aims to change that using confronting imagery.

Australia lags the European Union, which over the past decade has passed the world's toughest animal cruelty laws. They include banning the most cramped battery cages for hens and making it more difficult for farmers to tie up, castrate and slice the tails off pigs.

The Voiceless advertising campaign.

Guidelines for factory farming in Australia allow a hen to be kept in an area smaller than a sheet of A4 paper.

''If I treated a dog the way pigs and chickens are treated on these farms, I'd likely be prosecuted,'' Weaving says.