Man does not always know best

Two years ago, researchers at the Danish University of Copenhagen cracked the code to interpret how pigs feel via their sounds. The researchers used AI technology to interpret over 7,000 audio recordings of more than 400 pigs.

With the help of 15,000 sound recordings on different types of farms in Denmark, they have found out how Danish pigs feel. The different farm types are conventional farms, organic farms and farms where the pigs are free-range. On organic farms in Denmark, the pigs have three times as much space indoors as on conventional ones.

The expectation was that the pigs living on the free-range farms would do best to be followed by the pigs on the organic farms and that the pigs on the conventional farms would do the worst. However, the result turned out to be different.

On conventional farms, 25% of pig sounds were "highly stressed," while on organic farms, almost 50% of pig sounds were stressed. This means, according to the researchers, that the pigs have high stress levels on both types of farms, but highest on the organic ones. The researchers cannot answer why the results turned out the way they did.

However, it became clear that the human assessment of what constitutes a good life for pigs does not match the pigs'.