Pork industry moves to group pens at great cost to producers … and consumers to feel it, too
March 22, 2012 at 1:04 am in Grand Forks Herald
Under pressure from animal rights activists and sensing a shift in consumer sentiment, several major pork producers have agreed to phase out gestation crates and switch to more open pens.Experts say at least some of those expenses are likely to be passed on in the price of ham, bacon, chops and sausage. Continue Reading
“The McDonald’s announcement was a tipping point in the debate about gestation stalls versus pens. … That announcement has fundamentally changed the way people are looking at this debate,”
This story is a fantastic example of how the market regulates itself. No new government regulation. No new federal department of pig welfare, just a MAJOR customer saying: if you want my business you will make these changes.
A baseline of regulation is needed to support health & safety. Beyond that let the market work.
Tired of antibiotics & steroids in your food? Get WalMart to say they will not buy anymore animal products that are treated & viola, everyone just went organic & the government was not involved.
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If one’s definition of “animal rights activist” is sustaining a belief that one’s meat ought not be tortured, then at least 80 percent of the nation is an “animal rights activist.”
My heart just weeps for these poor pig producers, whose days of stuffing conscious beings into crates seem to be numbered. What a tragedy.
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I would like to see a video of a few of Smithfields top executives stuffed inside gestation pens. Leave them in there for a week or two so they can get a feel of what it is like to sleep standing up…not being able to turn around…and just be bored out of their minds.
My quote of the week comes from the new show Duck Dynasty on A & E. “Food from the grocery store scares me.” The food in my freezer comes from the wild. I prefer venison, grouse, and walleye.
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Far more piglets will come to an untimely end because of this. The purpose of those gestation pens is to allow the piglets an opportunity to get away from the sow when she lays down. It’s ironic that the animal rights crowd will be responsible for the early deaths of thousands more animals, flattened by their mothers.
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Brain: your logic is a little shaky. Are you telling me no piglet lived to maturity before sows were caged or that pig farming will become the new America’s deadliest catch?
My cousin & her husband have been farming pigs for 20 years. They have several hundred head at any given time. They have never caged preggies! They simply put them in the smaller pens away from “general population” as it were. Yes, they have had mama trample a piglet but only rarely. Mama sows also fight, but again nowhere near as often as you are making it sound like.
My cousin told me those cages are usually only found on large agribusiness farms. They help keep personnel cost down. It has nothing to do with all this other nonsense.
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There farm is in NE. Maybe ND is different.
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Learn the difference between a gestation stall and a farrowing crate before you comment. No piglets are going to be impacted by discontinued use of gestation crates and nobody in the chain of industry is advocating to eliminate farrowing crates.
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Do you think the far left animal rights extremists care? To them there is no difference.
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I wonder if the animal rights crowd will have any sympathy for the hog farm worker attacked by an unrestrained angry sow set off by a squealing piglet? Let me guess. No!
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A sow being confined in a farrowing stall is interested in having enough food and water and that’s about it. The animal rights extremists are equating human emotions and feelings to a hog.
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It has been scientifically documented that mammals have essentially the same structures and chemicals in their brains that produce emotional responses in humans. In mammals, that part of the brain is fully developed.
Hogs respond to intense confinement in ways that clearly demonstrate boredom, stress, and anxiety.
A more accurate way to view emotions would be to acknowledge that humans are animals and that some animals evolved emotional responses. Animals — including people — evolved emotional responses to help them learn to survive. We crave and enjoy what is good for us and we become upset, fearful, or stressed at what is harmful to us. So do nonhumans…and yes, that includes hogs.
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I used to raise hogs when I was a kid and that is not at all the response I saw in sows in farrowing stalls. They were content and happy as long as they had food and water and nice dry bedding to lay on. Hogs aren’t human but some humans are hogs.
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“Sows in stalls tend to display behavior often associated with animals experiencing extreme boredom or stress. The sows spend significant time biting the bars in front of them, chewing without food and pressing their water bottles obsessively — but never rooting in dirt, which makes up much of instinctive pig behavior.
In a report by veterinarians that led to the pending EU legislation phasing out sow stalls, the authors concluded that abnormal behaviors “develop when the animal is severely or chronically frustrated. Hence their development indicates that the animal is having difficulty in coping and its welfare is poor.”
http://www.pmac.net/AM/pigs_in_crates.html
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Oh for cripes sake.
Raise them, kill them, make patties outta them.
Who really gives a hoot about an animal that really has no other purpose in life than to die and be eaten?
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That’s what the Germans said about the Jews.
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The Germans were EATING the Jews???!!
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