I HAVE just watched an obscene video and I feel sick and extremely angry.

It showed torture, mutilation and endless suffering and no one cared a jot -- particularly not the Government, who were asked to intervene but declined.

The video is called Pig In Hell and has just been released by the animal welfare group Viva! and shows the life of factory farmed pigs -- which is almost all pigs.

Suddenly, I knew why farmed animals are so disease ridden and why foot and mouth and swine fever gain hold so rapidly.

Exposing conditions on 18 typical farms, the video reveals a terrifying picture of filth, overcrowding, dead and dying animals and widespread animal abuse.

Despite many complaints, all the farms operate with the Government's approval and three supply meat for "quality assurance" schemes.

Some of the scenes shown in Pig In Hell require a strong stomach. They include dead and rotting piglets alongside living siblings, dead pigs left in the open to decay, dead piglets beneath a sea of writhing maggots, an imprisoned sow covered in flies and blood, etc.

What is staggering is that these aren't a few carefully selected cases -- this is modern farming and it shows how cruel and unhealthy methods of production have become commonplace behind the walls of Britain's factory farms.

Most sows are imprisoned in metal crates to give birth and feed their young and are unable even to turn round. In an act of complete insanity, their young are removed at just three weeks old, before their digestive and immune systems are properly developed.

We have to stop shedding tears for the farmers and start demanding real changes in agriculture. Factory farming is cruel and unsustainable but it also a growing threat to human health. If we don't end it quickly it might well end us!

Mary Gavin, Viva! member,

Ashfield Road, Blackpool.