Cranswick

In 2025, Cranswick was found to be killing piglets illegally by "thumping" them, also known as smashing their heads into concrete walls or floors.⁵

Workers at that same Lincolnshire farm also kicked piglets and hit them with boards and paddles, apparently targeting sensitive areas such as their snouts and eyes.⁶

Injured pigs with open wounds were packed into pens covered in faeces, with some animals left writhing in pain. One pig suffered appallingly as his pen mates cannibalised an open wound for 33 hours until finally he died.⁷

Cranswick slaughters pigs in CO₂ gas chambers,⁸ which is highly distressing and is known to cause significant suffering,⁹ but it is the cheapest option¹⁰ so the industry just carries on.

The company seems partial to a bit of “humane washing”, claiming high welfare standards,¹¹ despite consistent evidence to the contrary.

At its most recent audit (March 2024), Cranswick’s Suffolk slaughterhouse racked up four “non-compliances” relating to animal welfare laws, while its Norfolk slaughterhouse (audited October 2024) managed five. Great work, Cranswick!

Residents living near one of Cranswick’s pig farms report being forced to live with the stench of ammonia that causes irritation to their eyes, noses, and throats. Even Environment Agency workers who visited the site reported feeling unwell.¹²

Cranswick has lobbied the government to weaken planning laws,¹³ which would allow it to build more farms, house more animals, discharge more pollution, and further impact people’s lives.

It also engages in “revolving door” practices, with its chairman being the former head of a government agency, and now returning to sit on the government’s Food Strategy Advisory Board.¹⁴ Something smells rotten here, and it’s not just their filthy farms.

When communities started fighting back, opposing the proliferation of factory farming, Cranswick announced that it was working with the authorities and planning officers to bring “clarity and a smoothing out of the process". ¹⁵ And we all know what that means.

Cranswick breached environmental permit regulations at least 90 times over a seven-year period,¹⁶ including polluting waterways with slurry and polluting both the ground and air from the dead animals it left outside.¹⁷

In 2022, the company was fined for discharging contaminated “liquid” from one of its pork processing sites into a brook.¹⁸

A 2025 investigation into pig farms linked to Cranswick and other companies found filthy conditions, antibiotic-resistant salmonella and evidence of a lot of antibiotics being used. This included injectables as well as drugs administered to the animals via their feed and drinking water. That same investigation revealed that the meat at Cranswick’s processing plant and on supermarket shelves also contained salmonella.¹⁹

And, as a logical consequence, in January 2026, a woman was awarded £38,000 after eating salmonella-infected chicken from a Cranswick farm. She was left with “uncontrollable” diarrhoea and vomiting, and says her digestive issues have never resolved.²⁰

Cranswick operates four slaughterhouses where, according to their latest audits, they find abiding by hygiene regulations just a little tricky.²¹ Their Norfolk plant seems to struggle the most with three “major” breaches relating to the contamination of meat entering the food chain and cross contamination.

Seven Cranswick workers were hospitalised and three died during the coronavirus pandemic,²² with reports that workers were told not to wear masks and that social distancing was not possible throughout the factory.²³

In 2009, a Cranswick worker had to have his hand amputated after it became trapped in the rotating knives of an industrial tenderiser.²⁴

Just three months later, another Cranswick worker severed the ends of two fingers while feeding plastic into a packaging machine at the exact same site. Cranswick was fined just £14,000.²⁵

In 2017, Cranswick was prosecuted and fined again for safety breaches after a worker fell and fractured his skull.²⁶

Unsurprisingly, a survey of its workers found that Cranswick was rated below average in all four categories: happiness, purpose, stress-free work, and job satisfaction.²⁷