“Imagine being shoved inside a small closet with barely enough room to move. Your feet begin to ache from the hard floor so you contort your body just enough to sit down. But after a while, this position offers no more comfort and you struggle to stand up again.

The lack of room to walk or even turn around starts to atrophy your muscles, and festering sores on your feet make every movement agony. Now imagine spending six years like this—and you’ll begin to understand what life is like for nearly 300,000 pregnant or nursing pigs in Australia.

In our everyday lives, it may be hard to relate to the miseries endured by farmed
animals, but making the movie Babe opened my eyes to the intelligence and the
inquisitive personalities of pigs. These highly social animals possess an amazing
capacity for love, joy and sorrow that makes them remarkably similar to our beloved canine and feline friends. In fact, the scientific advisor to the British government says that pigs are smarter than dogs and even do better on intelligence tests than 3-year-old
human children.

That’s why it’s so heartbreaking that pigs used for breeding spend day after day, month after month inside concrete and steel ‘sow stalls’ and ‘farrowing crates’. These crates are so small that even basic movements, such as turning around or lying down comfortably, are impossible.

Reduced to mere piglet-producing machines, sows are scuttled from crate to crate in a miserable breeding cycle that lasts as long as six years. Such restrictive confinement leads to both physical and psychological suffering. Would you subject your dog or cat to similar conditions?

I am coming to Australia to provide my full support to Animals Australia’s SaveBabe.com campaign. Urgent change is needed to end the suffering of hundreds of thousands of pigs, just like ‘Babe’ and Bella in intensive facilities in Australia. Most people are unaware of what occurs in these facilities or that they are supporting these industries through purchasing their products.”

“Please help…”

James Cromwell