Pasture was absolutely essential to the well-being of any animal on a farm, but as the prices to keep 'free range' or 'green' animals went up many farmers had to change to the modern way of caged beasts with no movement at all. Fortunately due to welfare reasons and for better prices lots of farmers have recently decided to raise more pastured animals.
Usually conventional farmed pigs or 'caged' pigs were fed whatever was left around and so their daily feed mainly consisted of very cheap grain and soya as well as corn. These highly processed grains are not a normal pigs diet and as well as being pumped with hormones and antibiotics, the animals can become very sick and sometimes die very soon afterwards.
Due to recent studies, grass-fed beasts have higher levels of nutrients such as vitamins; A, D, E and K. Also related to that, in other studies measuring the fatty acid content in wild pigs, it has been mentioned that their Omega 6 fatty acids are very much higher than those in cages (probably due to the amount of healthy fresh food that they eat).
Overdose of antibiotics in cage reared animals can lead to serious antibiotic resistant super bugs. Obviously due to a loss of profit if the actual stats come out, meat-industries in the US have tried to cover this up as much as possible. Antibiotics in meat farming is also used to ell promote growth in the already massive specimens of animal wonders, this however only seemed to increase the meat product by a mere 2%. Beasts who are set free to live, eat and breath in their natural habitat are always more likely to have a stronger immune system and they will be a much healthier weights, therefor they will not need (or only a little amount) of antibiotics in their considerably longer life times.
