February 14, 2007

 

Debate continues on uncaging pigs

 

 

The recent outcry over sows in overcrowded cages has prompted leading US pork firm Smithfield Foods to announce phasing out the crates.

 

Over the next 10 years, the company will move to a system where most of its 1.2-million breeding sows could run around in group pens.

 

Canadian pork producer, Maple Leaf Foods, followed suit.

 

Smithfield, though does not regard the crates inhumane. Company officials said abandoning them was a simple business decision, prompted by requests from major customers such as McDonald's.

 

Though the practice continues in most of the country's corporate farms, animal rights activists are hopeful it is the beginning of a shift that will lessen the suffering of some animals that produce dinner.

 

The Humane Society, the country's largest animal rights group, has mounted a national campaign to draw attention to caged farm animals, including veal calves, egg-laying hens and breeding sows.

 

Some restaurants are now avoiding meat that was raised on so-called factory farms, where animals live crowded in barns and are often fed antibiotics.

 

The widespread use of antibiotics in animal production has also raised concern in recent years. Its use was leading to resistant strains of bacteria, which could attack humans as well as animals. In addition, practices such as cutting off pigs' tails or shearing hens' beaks are routine.

 

However, many in the pork industry paint a different picture of the crates.

 

Bundy Lane, who keeps 4,800 Smithfield sows on his Gates County farm said for pigs, it is the case of survival of the fittest. They would rather be in crates to protect them from each other.

 

Sows in cages eat, drink and rest peacefully, he said.

 

Because they can't turn around, their waste falls neatly through the slatted floor under their back feet and never contaminates the food trough that runs through the fronts of the cages.

 

And the animals are safely contained when it's time to artificially inseminate the sows. That is how pigs conceive on most large farms.

 

By contrast, Lane said, pigs in pens are constantly jockeying for dominance, fighting for food and wallowing in their own waste.

 

Opponents of corporate farms say the issue is simple, forcing an animal to stand at one place for most of its life is cruel.

 

Paul Willis, a manager at a California company that buys pasture-raised pork from small farms all over the country, said pigs have strong instinctual desires to root, build nests for their young and to socialise with other pigs. Denying them those things, he said, makes them aggressive.