July 20, 2012
 

US food service provider, TrustHouse removes pig gestation crate from supply chain

US food service provider, TrustHouse Services Group, will be disposing pig gestation crates from its pork supply chain as part of its efforts to improve animal welfare.

The Charlotte-based company is the country's sixth-largest food service business, operating 670 dining locations in 44 states.

As part of its new initiative, TrustHouse is working with its suppliers to phase-out gestation crates within the company's supply chain by 2017. TrustHouse is also calling on the entire pork industry to set a timeline on eliminating gestation crates.

"American consumers clearly oppose the idea of confining a mother pig in a cage so small that she can barely move her entire life," said Mark Fortino, president of FitzVogt, a TrustHouse division. "Eliminating gestation crates within our supply chain is the right thing to do for the animals, family farmers, our company and our clients."

"TrustHouse is demonstrating once again that gestation crates have no place in our food system," said Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of The HSUS. "The Humane Society of the US applauds TrustHouse for their leadership on this issue. This announcement further underscores the need for the pork industry to develop plans for getting rid of gestation crates industry-wide."

For four months at a time, while pregnant, most pigs are confined day and night in gestation crates, cages roughly the same size as the animals' bodies, preventing them from even turning around. They are placed into another crate to give birth, re-impregnated, and then put back into a gestation crate. This cycle repeats, pregnancy after pregnancy, for their entire lives, adding up to years of near immobilisation.