Following today’s announcement that Cranswick plc CEO Adam Couch’s pay package has increased from £4.7 million to £5.3 million, Animal Justice Project (AJP) has condemned the revelation that his full annual bonus was awarded in part because the company commissioned an independent Animal Welfare Review and implemented its recommendations following the organisation’s undercover investigation inside Lincolnshire’s Northmoor Farm.

Secret filming continued throughout the year, uncovering a catalogue of animal welfare abuses across multiple farms supplying the UK’s largest pork producer. Just one day after Cranswick announced at its 2025 AGM that the controversial practice of piglet slamming had been banned across all its farms, AJP filmed the killing method still being carried out at one of the company’s suppliers.

The company’s other Executive Directors all receive pay packages above £3m, while the company’s pre tax profit was £220m.

The announcement of Cranswick plc’s Annual Report – detailing the pay increase – comes just a day after AJP brought its nationwide Turn Off The Gas campaign to Cranswick’s headquarters in Hessle yesterday, where campaigners attempted to present Couch with an “Outstanding Achievement Award” for “his contribution to misleading the public and helping keep Britain’s gas chambers out of sight”, along with a “Last Breath Canister” symbolising the suffering pigs’ experience during gas slaughter. Cranswick declined to meet with campaigners or accept the items.

The Turn off the Gas tour also brought a giant mobile ‘gas chamber’ installation to Cranswick’s Preston abattoir yesterday, where around 35,000 pigs are currently killed each week. The site is expected to expand, increasing its capacity to up to 50,000 pigs a week.

On Tuesday AJP visited a Cranswick abattoir in Watton, where they filmed pigs being transported into the slaughterhouse in temperatures of 31 degrees and showing signs of heat distress, including panting and foaming at the mouth. Norfolk Police attended, and Cranswick staff were handed out water outside of the abattoir – yet refused to offer water to the pigs when asked by AJP campaigners.

Claire Palmer, director of AJP, comments: “Animal Justice Project has repeatedly documented shocking animal suffering on farms supplying Cranswick. The fact that the chief executive’s bonus package appears to have been boosted, in part, because the company commissioned an animal welfare review following those revelations sends a deeply troubling message. It is remarkable that a CEO can receive a multimillion-pound reward partly because campaigners uncovered serious welfare failures within his company’s supply chain. Rather than being penalised for an animal welfare scandal, Cranswick seems to have rewarded its chief executive, at least in part, for managing the fallout.
“Meanwhile, Cranswick continues to operate intensive farming systems in which pigs are confined in large sheds, subjected to painful procedures and routine on-farm killing, while around 35,000 pigs each week are killed using CO₂ gas. Just a day after Cranswick announced that piglet blunt force trauma had been banned on its farms, Animal Justice Project filmed this very practice taking place at one of its suppliers. That raises serious questions about how much these reviews and corporate commitments are really worth.

“At a time when many households are facing significant financial pressures, it is extremely difficult to justify a £5.3 million pay package for the chief executive of a company with such a deeply concerning animal welfare record. It is, quite simply, disgraceful.”

The Turn off the Gas Tour has visited key locations connected to the pig industry this week as part of a high-profile tour backed by actor Peter Egan and cross-party MPs. The campaign is calling on the Government to deliver its long-promised consultation on ending carbon dioxide (CO₂) gas slaughter for pigs and to consider phasing out the use of gas chambers altogether.

In December 2025 the Government’s Animal Welfare Committee ruled CO₂ slaughter should be stopped as it causes avoidable pain, fear and respiratory distress before animals lose consciousness – yet no consultation has been launched, with no timetable in sight, and AJP says pigs are continuing to needlessly suffer.
On Monday, the tour visited Defra’s headquarters in Westminster, alongside actor and animal advocate Peter Egan, as well as Sainsbury’s HQ. AJP is calling on Sainsbury’s – which has signed a ten-year partnership with Cranswick – to support mandatory slaughter-method labelling so consumers know own-brand ‘pork’ products come from pigs who were gassed to death.

Approximately 10.4 million pigs are slaughtered in the UK each year, with around 90% killed using carbon dioxide (CO₂) gas systems, according to Defra and industry figures.

More than twenty years after Government advisers first recommended phasing out aversive gas systems for pigs, ministers have committed to consulting on the future of CO2 pig gassing. AJP says the consultation must now be delivered within this Parliament and before the next General Election, not left for a future Government to decide.

However, there are concerns that the consultation will simply seek to replace the use of CO₂ with argon – which some scientists and advisory bodies consider to provide welfare improvements compared with high-concentration CO₂.

While argon is generally regarded as less aversive than carbon dioxide, pigs remain conscious during the induction phase and may still experience distress, loss of coordination, intensive convulsions and oxygen deprivation before losing consciousness. Animal welfare experts have noted that pigs still die from brain hypoxia when argon slaughter is used, and air hunger and gasping may still be evident, as with CO2.
AJP believes that rather than simply replacing CO₂ with a different inert gas, the public deserves a broader conversation around the slaughter of pigs. The organisation also says the public is largely unaware of the issue despite its scale.

Several MPs have provided their support for calls to end carbon dioxide slaughter, across parties including Labour, Liberal Democrats, the Green Party and several independent MPs. Iqbal Mohamed MP, independent candidate for Dewsbury and Batley in the Yorkshire and Humber region comments: “The fact that only a small minority of the public know how most pigs are killed in Britain raises important questions about transparency and accountability within our food system. As ministers prepare to make decisions about the future of pig slaughter, it is vital that the public is fully informed about the practices currently being used and has confidence that animal welfare concerns are being taken seriously. Greater scrutiny, openness and less cruel farming practices are essential.”