WOULD you cram a dog into a crate for her entire life, never letting her out, until you took her to the pound to kill her?

Of course you wouldn’t, and yet that’s effectively what happens to most mother pigs in this country. They spend their lives in what are called gestation crates, tiny stalls that house pregnant sows. They cannot even turn around, and are immobilized in these crates until they are taken to the slaughterhouse.

Pigs are smart animals — the brainiacs of the barnyard, basically. They have outperformed dogs on tests of behavioral and cognitive sophistication. In fact, they learn rudimentary video games as quickly as chimpanzees, one of our closest living relatives.

The primatologist Jane Goodall writes that “farm animals feel pleasure and sadness, excitement and resentment, depression, fear and pain. They are far more aware and intelligent than we ever imagined ... they are individuals in their own right.”