Controversial pig farm to close for housing

8 hours ago

Alec BlackmanWest Midlands

The owner of Hogwood Farm says the investigations by the vegan campaign group Viva!, along with the loss of a crucial supermarket contract, and his son moving overseas, has led to the decision to close the pig unit

Google The gates of Hogwood Farm at Oxhill in south Warwickshire. They are wide aluminium gates leading to a silo on the right of picture with a low black-painted barn on the left. — The owner of Hogwood Farm says the investigations by the vegan campaign group Viva!, along with the loss of a crucial supermarket contract, and his son moving overseas, has led to the decision to close the pig unit

A pig farm described by a vegan group as a 'horror' is to close its doors, expected to be replaced with housing.

Hogwood Farm in Oxhill, south Warwickshire, has been investigated by vegan campaign group Viva! four times since 2017, and have applied to close the 2.7 hectares (6.7 acres) pig unit and replace it with 10 new homes.

In documents supporting a planning application, the site's owner Brian Hobill said the targeting of the business by the charity, and his son moving overseas instead of taking the business over, was behind the decision.

In a statement, Viva! founder and Director Julia Gellatley said the closure was a victory for every single person who "refused to accept the status quo."

Hogwood Farm was taken over by the current owner in 1996 but hit the headlines in 2017 when Viva!, a vegan campaigning charity, carried out an undercover investigation into conditions at the site.

Over the next two years, the group says it found instances of pigs eating other pigs, overcrowded furrowing sheds, sick animals being abandoned in gangways and the routine mutilation of piglets.

In 2019, the charity installed hidden cameras and said footage showed workers hitting animals with poles and sticks. That investigation led to the supermarket giant Tesco dropping the farm as one of its suppliers.

It also led to the loss of Red Tractor accreditation, which is supposed to give shoppers assurances that the products they are buying have met agreed welfare standards.

In November 2025, The farm's owner decided to reduce the breeding herd to 300 sows and once their piglets were weaned, all the adults were sent to slaughter.

The remaining piglets will be fattened and finished by September 2026, at which point they too will be sold and the piggery shut.

The remaining 73.6 hectare (181.8 acres) site would continue to operate as a farm.

However, this is the third planning application to run the pig unit into housing. Both previous attempts were refused by the district Council.

Gellatley welcomed the decision to end the pig business at Hogwood Farm.

"What we found at Hogwood was not an anomaly. It was a window into an industry that works very hard to keep the public from seeing what happens behind locked gates."

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