Of all the campaigns we’ve come across to expose the harsh realities of factory farming, the most recent we’ve discovered coming from an organization called Animals Australia is indeed the most powerful. Without the often used shock and gore, the Animals Australia campaign instead appeals, not only to our sense of humanity, but also to our sense of reason. For embodied in the key message of the campaign, “You are Our Hope for a Kinder World,” is both a plea for compassion as well as a challenge to our perceptions of the intelligence of farm animals.

We know from analyzing our web site activity that new discoveries in farm animal intelligence is a hot topic for our visitors and readers. Many of us who have pets or farms have suspected greater intelligence for generations, but now for the first time peer-reviewed, science-based research are proving it. Authors like Jonathan Balcombe, Jane Goodall, Duncan Searl, Zhanna Reznikova, Ph.D. Marc Bekoff are all revealing how much we’ve underestimated and misunderstood animal intelligence, which often serves as a justification for our horrendous treatment of them on factory farms.

Perhaps the most powerful part of the Animals Australia campaign is the 55-second TV ad which you can watch here, depicting an exhausted pregnant sow lying down in a gestation crate and speaking directly to the viewer in the voice of a 3-year old human child. At first this may come across as some kind of sick joke—until we learn that it is commonly accepted that in fact an adult pig possesses the intelligence of a 3-year old child. And then the mental and physical anguish that this voice describes becomes all too human to ignore. In fact, this “personification” of the pig becomes so hauntingly real, it resonates with you far after watching it, compelling us to rethink our perceptions of how animals think and feel and inducing empathy that we once bestowed only to those of our own kind (and perhaps to our pets).

There is  a universal sensibility to this ad that crosses cultures and nations—a call for compassion in the presence of real suffering, particularly suffering that could easily be prevented. Gestation crates are still used today for pregnant sows in US factory farms but they are expected to be phased out in the next 5-7 years according to most estimates. In any case, the pork industry here will continue to attempt to delay and obstruct these measures. Yet public perceptions and action will demand that this phase out move forward. It would be a modest step in the direction of alleviating unnecessary and unacceptable suffering.