Although several countries currently report a “zero production” of pigs, only a handful can be said to have abolished pig farming altogether

If we look at the world through a vegan lens, ‘abolishing pig farming’ should mean that no pigs are bred, raised, exploited, or killed for human use at all, not merely that some intensive systems have been tweaked or that particular cages have been phased out (such as gestation crates). Yet globally, there are still between 780 million and 1 billion pigs farmed, most of them in highly intensive systems, which shows that true abolition is very rare indeed.

To discover where pig farming has actually disappeared, we have to combine farmed animals statistics with legal and cultural information and then look for countries that report no pigs at all. The FAO‑based global dataset on pig numbers shows a long list of countries with sizable pig herds, but also a smaller group that consistently reports a population of zero pigs, suggesting no pig farming occurs there anymore.

Whether through strict legislative bans or cultural shifts that have made the industry obsolete, several jurisdictions have effectively reached an official “zero-farmed-pig” status — although it is possible that some pig farming still happens there unofficially. 

Pig Farming Bans

In some nations, pig farming is legally restricted. These laws often stem from a blend of religious heritage (such as Muslim or Jewish traditions that ban the consumption of pig flesh) and national identity.

Israel: Perhaps the most famous example of legislative restriction. In 1962, the Knesset passed the Pig-Raising Prohibition Law. This law banned the raising and slaughtering of pigs for food across most of the country. However, geographical exceptions for certain areas with high Christian populations (such as Nazareth) are allowed, but for the vast majority of the sovereign territory, industrial pig farming is banned  — regardless if it may still be practiced by secular people and members of other religions. Some people in the country have been finding loopholes in the law, though, and have continued farming pigs. In the early 1990s, the Israeli government came under renewed pressure to ban pig farming completely, but the Israeli Supreme Court declared pig-flesh to be a legal commodity, so the exceptions and loopholes continued. In 2010, the BBC reported on a Kibbutz that farmed pigs because it maintained that the primary purpose of its herd is for medical research (which it claimed made the operation legal). Since 2012, the pig farming in Israel has started to be regulated for minimal standards for pig protection. Current reports show an annual production of around 200,000 pigs.

The Maldives and Afghanistan: These nations follow strict Islamic law (Sharia), which considers pigs haram (forbidden). In these jurisdictions, the importation and commercial farming of pigs are prohibited by national religious mandates, resulting in a recorded population of zero farmed pigs.

The Nations Without a Pig Industry

Many Muslim-majority countries prohibit the consumption of pig flesh under Islamic law, but this does not equate to a ban on farming pigs. In practice, pigs are still raised in several of these countries for non-Muslim minorities, export markets, or legacy agricultural sectors. However, from the point of view of “pig production”, they may be considered nations without a pig industry by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations because the number of pigs traded is relatively small (or “zero”).  

There are around 35 countries where pig farming is very small or practically non-existent (based on their current reporting):

The Middle East & North Africa 

In these jurisdictions, pig farming is either legally prohibited by religious mandates or absent due to a lack of domestic demand and cultural practice.

• Afghanistan (Legal ban/Zero population)
• Algeria (Negligible/Zero industrial production)
• Bahrain (No domestic production)
• Iran (Legal ban on commercial farming)
• Iraq (Zero reported farming)
• Jordan (Zero reported farming)
• Kuwait (Strict legal ban on farming and imports)
• Libya (Zero reported farming)
• Mauritania (Zero reported farming)
• Morocco (Negligible/Zero industrial production)
• Oman (Zero reported farming)
• Pakistan (Zero reported farming)
• Qatar (Zero reported farming)
• Saudi Arabia (Zero reported farming)
• Sudan (Zero reported farming)
• Syria (Zero reported farming)
• Tajikistan (Zero reported farming)
• Turkmenistan (Zero reported farming)
• Tunisia (Negligible/Zero industrial production)
• Uzbekistan (Zero reported farming)
• United Arab Emirates (Zero domestic farming; all pig flesh is imported)
• Yemen (Zero reported farming)
• Palestine (Zero reported farming)
• Western Sahara (Zero reported farming)

Island Nations & Asia-Pacific

Small island nations often have no history of pig farming due to space constraints, delicate ecosystems, or religious demographics.

• Anguilla (Zero reported farming)
• The Maldives (Strict legal ban)
• Comoros (Zero reported farming)
• Djibouti (Zero reported farming)
• Brunei (Zero reported industrial farming)
• Marshall Islands (Negligible/Zero)
• Tuvalu (Negligible/Zero commercial production)

• The Gambia (Zero reported industrial farming)
• Mali (Zero reported farming)
• Niger (Zero reported farming)
• Somalia (Zero reported farming)

Sub-Saharan Africa (Majority Muslim Jurisdictions)

Unique Cases

• Israel: The Pig-Raising Prohibition Law of 1962 banned pig farming across the vast majority of the country’s sovereign land, with specific geographic exceptions and loopholes exploited, but pig farming has nevertheless continued.
• Vatican City: A sovereign state with a permanent pig population of zero.

Not all Muslim countries are in this list. In Egypt (a predominantly Muslim country) a 2009 culling (due to H1N1 fears) decimated the pig population, but pig farming by the Coptic Christian minority (Zabbaleen) has resurfaced, with current estimates suggesting several hundred thousand pigs. Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan have significant Russian/Slavic minorities, so Kazakhstan maintains a pig population of roughly 700,000 to 800,000 head, and Kyrgyzstan also has an active, though smaller, pig farming industry.

In Asian countries with a majority Muslim population (such as Indonesia and Malaysia), the industry of pig farming may be small, but it is not banned at a national level, although there may be local bans.

Some Himalayan and Buddhist‑influenced regions also resist pig farming for spiritual reasons, although not always completely. In Bhutan, a country often portrayed as strongly guided by Buddhist ethics, indigenous pig populations have been shrinking fast, partly due to increasing religious objections to raising and slaughtering pigs. However, pigs are still present, and their flesh is still consumed, often imported, so abolition has not yet been achieved. Here we see a transition that may one day lead to the end of pig farming, but for now remains incomplete.

Therefore, approximately 18% of the world’s countries have banned or do not significantly participate in the pig farming industry because of having very few pig farms (if any), but only a handful of them can be said to have abolished pig farming (but none of them for animal rights or welfare reasons). These would be the ones where pig farming existed before but is practically gone, with no prospect of returning. There is still a long way to go to abolish pig farming in the world.