March 1 is National Pig Day, a day meant to honor these social, intelligent, playful, gentle, sensitive beings. But how does the animal research industry “celebrate” pigs?
By incarcerating them.
By torturing them.
By reducing them to tools for profit.
In 2023 alone, U.S. animal research laboratories reported using 73,536 pigs* — bred, brutalized, and discarded for everything from organ harvesting to traumatic brain injuries. (*And that number doesn’t even touch the unreported many subjected to “agricultural” research, their suffering completely hidden from us by legal loopholes.)
We’d like to introduce you to four of them.
Identified only as Animal #3969, Animal # 3970, Animal #3971, and Animal #3973, these “four adult male pigs” never had names — only numbers.
In photos obtained by Rise for Animals, they stare into the camera from behind metal bars.
Their faces and bodies bear the marks of violence: “wet” lesions, deep scratches, purple bruises. Only these injuries weren’t even part of an experiment — they happened secondary to whatever horrendous experiments the pigs endured.
According to their tormentors, the pigs sustained these injuries while struggling to “recover” from anesthesia — “attempting to move”, struggling “to stand”, thrashing in confusion and pain against the unpadded “metal parts” of their cages.
These unnamed victims remind us that violence and suffering is part and parcel of everything that happens to animals inside animal research facilities — even their “recoveries”.
This National Pig Day, we ask you to look through the bars, past their battered bodies, and into the beckoning eyes of these victims.
Then, honor them the only way that truly matters: by fighting to end the suffering they endured, and the suffering that continues behind closed doors.