Organic
Both sows and fattening pigs can roam freely between outdoors and shelter. Piglets are weaned no earlier than 40 days, meaning they have much more time with their mothers than intensive systems. No GM food.
Free Range
Both sows and fattening pigs can roam freely between outdoors and shelter. Piglets are usually weaned later; 7 to 8 weeks as opposed to 3 or 4. There is no official logo for free range, so look for the words ‘free range’ on the packaging.
Outdoor Reared/ Bred
Sows are free range meaning that they can roam freely between outdoors and shelter for their whole lives and are never confined in crates. Sows have access to large bedded huts that provide shelter and a dry lying area. Sows give birth to their litters outdoors in individual straw-bedded shelters called arcs from which they come and go freely. The piglets are free-range with their mothers until weaning (up to ten weeks), when they are moved indoors. Piglets are likely moved into an intensive system post-weaning unless the RSPCA logo is present as well, in which case they go into a straw-based system. There is no official logo for outdoor reared, so look for the words ‘outoor reared‘ on the packaging.
Red Tractor Assure Food
Very little different between Red Tractor and minimum legal UK production standards. It Allows for intensive production and is not a guarantee of good animal welfare. Sows are confined in farrowing crates for up to five weeks during each pregnancy and offspring are permanently indoors with inadequate environmental enrichment, routinely docked tails and routinely clipped teeth.
EU pork with no welfare labels
Will almost certainly have come from a factory farm. Sows are kept in ‘sow stalls’ for up to the first four weeks of pregnancy then are kept in farrowing crates until the piglets are weaned (a further five weeks). Fattening pigs are kept permanently indoors on slats with no bedding. Routine tail docking and routine teeth clipping/grinding has been illegal in the since 2003 but remains commonplace. castration is also commonplace.
Information taken, with permission from https://farmsnotfactories.org/resources/labelling/