Activists were out in force to protest outside a controversial farm in South Warwickshire where they say livestock are being forced to live in "squalor".

Footage obtained by pressure group Animal Justice Project was published in the Daily Mirror earlier this month exposing the gruesome conditions pigs are kept in at Bickmarsh Hall Farm.

Around 50 activists headed to the Alcester Farm on Saturday (April 1) carrying placards with images taken during the investigation.

Images - which were also featured on ITV - were held up on placards, while demonstrators also gave speeches and lay flowers in memory of the pigs which have died there.

The farm, which is Red Tractor assured and supplies Cranswick Foods - one of the UK's leading producers of fresh pork - produces pig meat for supermarkets, and houses over 8,000 pigs from breeding sows and piglets to fattening pigs.

Footage taken at the end of 2022 at the farm captured some staff kicking and slapping pigs when moving them around.

The investigation found dead animals in bins at the farm (image via Animal Justice Project)

One scene shows a pig, with a raw and bleeding rectal prolapse, cannibalised by pen mates.

Other pigs were unable to walk from lameness and unable to bear weight on all four legs as they were loaded up for the slaughterhouse.

Ayrton Cooper, spokesperson for Animal Justice Project, said: "The pens, barren of any enrichment; pigs so caked in mud and faeces they are unable to stand; wilful neglect and absence of compassion by staff; mother sows confined in crates for weeks on end; bins full of dead pigs; and months of endless boredom and frustration resulting in cannibalism do not highlight one 'bad apple' of a farm, but the brutal reality for most pigs farmed in Britain today."

Cameras also snapped dead animals piled up in bins.

They also showed the pens at Bickmarsh contained no bedding or comfort, only hard slats. Many were filthy, with thick excrement covering the pigs. The animals were documented biting and fighting each other.

Campaigners say the animals are being wilfully mistreated (image via Animal Justice Project)

Dr. Alice Brough, who viewed the footage and was present at the demonstration, said: "Having worked with hundreds of commercial pig farms, I must say that the scenes at Bickmarsh Hall are devastatingly common in the British pig industry – the filthy, cramped conditions, the barren cages and the disease - and a damning indictment of any assurance schemes in place to retain consumers.

"People deserve to know what they're being fed, and the pigs deserve to be free from such profound suffering."

Following the report published in the Daily Mirror, Cranswick said it takes animal welfare seriously and made an unannounced audit of Bickmarsh Hall after seeing the footage.

While Red Tractor said it found the farm was compliant with its animal welfare standards, following an investigation.

(Image by Animal Justice Project)

(Image by Animal Justice Project)