A Guardian investigation has uncovered claims of violence on a Lincolnshire farm. The owners deny this, and have launched an inquiry. But do working conditions in this intensive industry bring a risk of mistreatment of livestock?

One morning in May, Matthew’s phone beeped. “Watch Sky News now. Pigs!” The footage was brutal; farm-workers kicking pigs in the face and head, jabbing them with pitchforks and laughing as they slammed a gate on to an animal’s head.

The owners of the farm – the Godfrey family – immediately launched a full RSPCA-backed investigation. Four people at Fir Tree farm lost their jobs. The Godfreys said: “We are shocked by the actions of those involved as their abhorrent behaviour does not represent our business. We are a family-run farm where the care and welfare of our pigs is paramount.”

A few weeks earlier Matthew had been working at Grange de Lings, one of the other farms belonging to the Godfreys’ company (Elsham Linc, one of the UK’s biggest pig producers with an annual turnover of £21m). While working there he’d seen treatment of the pigs that amounted, he believed, to serious neglect and abuse. He had some pictures he thought showed overcrowding on his phone: after watching the Fir Tree film he sent the photographs to his former manager, with a letter about his worries.

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“I got a letter from the Godfrey family saying that they had shown my pictures to the RSPCA and they didn’t believe it was neglect,” he says. “They said to call them with any further concerns. I called several times and they never got back to me.”

Speaking to the Guardian over a number of conversations and meetings, Matthew alleges he saw frequent rough treatment of pigs, sometimes verging on violence. One example was how pigs were moved around. “The contract says [to] move pigs at their own pace, quietly, but everybody walks around clapping and shouting.

“One day [a colleague] had to move a pig into a horrible, rat-infested barn. The pig had backed itself into a corner and he stood over the pig, beating it over and over again in the ribs and on the snout with a board.”

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He also claims he saw animals dying in pain because workers were not trained properly in humane killing. Matthew says he saw one pig being shot a number of times without being successfully killed: “It was on the floor … it was horrible to see.”

The Godfrey family strongly deny his allegations. They declined to speak directly to the Guardian, communicating through Liam Herbert, their PR manager, and Zoe Davies, chief executive of the National Pig Association. Both said full investigations, including interviewing staff at Grange de Lings, showed none of the allegations were true. They insisted that Matthew is an unreliable source.

Matthew does not believe the Godfreys knew what was going on. And neither does Ash, another source with professional links to farming who has also spoken to the Guardian. This individual believes that the footage of Fir Tree farm didn’t tell the full story of how widespread poor attitudes were. Ash saw examples of violence, such as pigs being hit over the head with wooden boards. “I saw workers put their fingers in pigs’ eyes while moving them … it was just to make them move.”



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Matthew had lost his stockman job after falling out with management, partly over an injury he says he received while using the wrong equipment to detag a pig. He has opened a legal case against the farm. Both sides have their own version of events.

But after the Guardian spoke to the Godfrey family about the allegations, Matthew did get a phone call from Alex Godfrey asking what had happened on the farm.

He listed what he claims were the issues on the farm. “He listened to everything and wanted to hear what I had to say.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Pigs in cramped conditions at Fir Tree Pig Farm, April 2018. Photograph: Courtesy of Animal Equality International

Speaking on the family’s behalf, Davies is passionate in their defence: “I know the family – these are good people, the impact on them has been immense. As soon as [allegations] came to light they acted very swiftly to identify and deal with shortcomings. They were absolutely horrified to find out things at Fir Tree hadn’t been the way they expected. All the farms were checked, all the staff individually interviewed.”

Responding to specific allegations of mishandling, she said checking the way pigs are physically moved around is difficult.

“There are very strict guidelines on how you should behave with animals but when actions go outside that, it’s difficult. An audit wouldn’t pick that up, people won’t behave like that when you do an inspection.” Video monitoring is being considered.

But she dismissed the idea that untrained staff would euthanise animals.

“That is a total breach of Red Tractor [quality assurance] standards. You have to have documented evidence that there are people on that farm trained to euthanise pigs. You would never have a farm situation where nobody was trained to euthanise an animal that was in pain.”

‘Stockmen are working … in shitty conditions’

Since the Fir Tree footage, a number of stories about alleged animal mistreatment on UK farms have emerged. In July, the Times ran “Farm animals tortured under Red Tractor label”, pointing to poor welfare conditions at seven different pig farms operating under the Red Tractor quality assurance mark. In August footage came to light from an organic dairy farm in Somerset that appeared to show calves being force-fed and hit.

There is no openly available information on similar incidents. Red Tractor keeps data on farm performance but doesn’t publish it.

But a contributory factor to abusive behaviour towards animals could be the impact of the conditions in intensive farms on the mental health of their workers. Farm workers nationally struggle with mental health. According to the Office for National Statistics, rates of farmers taking their own lives are among the highest for any occupational group. The risk was almost twice the national average among those working in specific agricultural roles such as rearing animals.

Ash says: “Pig farmers, stockmen … are working in shitty conditions on a shitty wage. [It is the] perceived lowest of the low in farming. And I think they blame the pigs for their situation … that’s how I can put it.”

Some believe that large-scale farming will always bring with it the risk of poor conditions. One organic farmer in Lincolnshire told the Guardian that this, rather than cruelty, was to blame. “You can’t blame owners … It’s a knock-on effect of being that big, of having that scale of farm. I look out the window now and our pigs’ tails are wagging in the sunshine. But it’s very difficult to make a living farming as we do.”

Critics say standards regime is failing

The revelations of the past few months raise serious questions around the current inspection system for farm welfare standards.

Davies says owners want to know what is going on at their farm and says that the Godfrey family were pleased the original Fir Tree whistleblower came forward. “The family believe that the whistleblower did the right thing. They don’t want to know who it is. They don’t want [a] culture where staff don’t feel they can come forward.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Tail-biting injuries at Fir Tree farm. Photograph: Courtesy of Animal Equality International

She argues that workers such as Matthew who want to report their employers have options open to them.

“[The industry has] a confidential reporting service, and there are posters up. If you are unhappy with anything in terms of welfare or someone you are working with you can call and report. We have had no calls to that number so I am disappointed an adult would choose to go to the media.”

Matthew says he had no idea a reporting system existed and, as a new recruit in a small team, he didn’t feel there was anyone he could speak to.

The industry also has food labels and logos to inform consumers about what they are buying. But these stories bring the effectiveness of such measures into question.

Red Tractor is run and paid for by food producers and promises consumers “peace of mind” and a “cast iron guarantee” of high-welfare meat. But as the Times revealed, only one in 1,000 Red Tractor visits are currently unannounced. Red Tractor has now said that it will bring in unannounced visits, although only after concerns are flagged up to its inspectors on pre-arranged inspections.

Critics of the current standards regime say this is not good enough.

Toni Shephard, head of Animal Equality, the organisation that filmed the footage on Fir Tree, told the Guardian that the public are often unaware of the realities of large-scale farming. She believes that much of what Matthew found distressing is – sadly, in her eyes – normal practice on British farms.

“We are told we have the highest welfare standards in the world. But we get fairly regular calls from concerned individuals who have had professional contact with a farm and were shocked by what they saw. Workmen, electricians, all sorts of people get in touch and are shocked at the reality of factory farming. We have to tell them it’s completely legal.”

Matthew admits that his expectations of working with farm animals didn’t match the reality. “I did my college training on a farm where the public could come and meet the pigs. They treated the pigs nicely, didn’t clip their teeth, didn’t keep them in crates.”

Shephard laughs at the idea that pigs would be treated like that in high-intensity farming. “We kill 10 million pigs a year in Britain – my garden would be full of pigs, there would be pigs everywhere if we wanted to give them that sort of space.”

Names and identities have been changed