Keep your pigs vegetarian!

Commonly called swill, foods that should not be fed to pigs include all meat, meat products and any food that has been in contact with meat. You cannot remove meat from a sandwich or salad and then feed the rest to a pig.

Swill can infect pigs with viruses that are not currently found in Australia, such as foot-and-mouth disease, and African swine fever. An outbreak of disease due to swill feeding could devastate Australian livestock industries.

People food is not pig food. Never feed swill to pigs.

Feeding swill to pigs is illegal and there are serious penalties. Food products that are prohibited for feeding pigs include:

• meat and meat products
• dairy products from overseas
• pies, sausage rolls, bacon and cheese rolls, pizza, deli meats and table scraps
• household, commercial or industrial waste, including restaurant food and discarded
• cooking oils
• anything that has been in contact with prohibited pig feed via collection, storage or transported in contaminated containers (such as meat trays and take-away food containers).

It is OK to feed pigs:

• commercially prepared pig feeds
• grains
• milk, milk products and milk by-products of Australian origin
• eggs
• dry meal made from meat, blood or bone (processed by commercial hot rendering and purchased from a reputable produce store or feed merchant)
• non-meat bakery food substances
• fruit, vegetables and cereals that have not been in contact with swill.

You can report swill feeding to the Emergency Animal Disease Hotline on 1800 675 888.

More information

For further information read prohibited pig feed - don’t feed swill to pigs PDF (160.8 KB).