Danish bacon: what happens when you push pigs to the limit?
(The Guardian Denmark)

Denmark´s industrial pig farms are stunningly productive, but there is another side to their successLast year, Ole Kjaer was the number one pig farmer in Denmark. Unsurprisingly, in the land of Danish bacon, this is a pretty hotly contested award.The biggest factor in his high profit rate? The astonishing productivity of his pigs. Each of Kjaer´s sows produces an average of 41 piglets a year.In the UK, the average sow produces 25.8 pigs a year. In the US that number rises to 26.4. But in Denmark, the world´s laboratory for industrial pig farming, the average sow produces 33.3 piglets - and some farmers, like Kjaer, manage to push that figure even higher. Some believe that one day they could even reach the magic number of 50. Continue reading...