ANIMAL PEOPLE is the leading independent newspaper providing original investigative coverage of animal protection worldwide. Founded in 1992, ANIMAL PEOPLE has no alignment or affiliation with any other entity.

 

This site built and maintained by: GREANVILLE ASSOCIATESand CRESCENT COMMUNICATIONS •Rev. 12.1.05 Copyright ANIMAL PEOPLE, INC. 1992--2006

 

 

 

 

 
   

 
powered by FreeFind

ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS

MONTH: March 2007

Smithfield & Maple Leaf Farms will phase out gestation crates

 

SMITHFIELD, Virginia--Smithfield Foods, the largest U.S. pig farming conglomerate and a major producer abroad, on January 25, 2007 announced that it will begin a 10-year phaseout of gestation crates.

Gestation crates are used to keep pregnant and nursing sows immobile for more than three years of their typical four-year lifespan before slaughter. During that time the sows usually birth and nurse five to eight litters of about a dozen pigs each.

Smithfield captured 26% of the U.S. pork market in 2006, raising 14 million pigs at U.S. facilities, and killing 27 million of the 60 million who went to slaughter. Smithfield revenues came to $11.4 billion.

All 187 Smithfield-owned pig nurseries and all farmers contracting to raise pigs for Smithfield are to move to housing sows in group pens. Smithfield vice president for environmental and corporate affairs Dennis Treacy said that the company will house anywhere from six to 55 pigs in each pen, depending on what kind of retrofitting the design of each individual barn allows.

Smithfield staff will be retrained, Treacy added, to prevent fighting among pigs, often claimed as a reason for crating.

But there are more basic reasons for crating, noted Raleigh News & Observer staff writer Kristin Collins. "Because crated sows can't turn around," Collins explained, "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 sows are safely contained when it's time to artificially inseminate them."

Insisted Treacy, "We didn't do this in reaction to activists' requests, and no customer said they would take away business if we didn't do it. We are trying to be proactive and respond to what we think the customers want. This will not overly stress our system."

"Smithfield officials defended the use of the crates, but said their own research had concluded that they could be replaced by group pens without any long-term problems or cost increases," reported Washington Post staff writer Marc Kaufman.

The McDonald's restaurant chain and WalMart had reportedly asked Smithfield and other pig producers to quit using gestation crates, after a panel of outside experts appointed by McDonald's concluded that gestation crates are especially vulnerable to humane criticism and easily done away with. The panel, reviewing all animal handling practices of McDonald's suppliers, was appointed in fulfillment of a 1994 agreement negotiated with McDonald's by Coalition for Nonviolent Food founder Henry Spira, who died in September 1998.

"McDonald's hailed the Smithfield decision," wrote Kaufman, "saying it was in line with advice it got from panel member Temple Grandin in particular," a Colorado State University professor of psychology and agricultural science who worked closely with Spira for more than 15 years, initially seeking to reform kosher slaughter. Grandin identified stereotypical head-waving and gnawing on the metal bars of gestation crates as common signs of crated sows in distress.

"It's a big step, but it's not quick enough," Colorado State University professor of agricultural ethics Bernard Rollin told Lauren Etten of the Wall Street Journal.

"I can't think of anything more important in terms of humane treatment of animals that has occurred in the agribusiness sector," said Humane Society of the U.S. president Wayne Pacelle. "This decision changes the dynamic of the industry. It will be very hard for other companies to not follow Smithfield."

HSUS and Farm Sanctuary funded ballot initiatives that banned gestation crates in Florida in 2004 and in Arizona in 2006.

Neither Florida nor Arizona hosts many pig farms, but both are home to hundreds of thousands of retirees of the generations who eat by far the most pork per capita.

The United Kingdom banned gestation crates in 1999. The European Union has committed to phasing them out by 2013.

The Winnipeg Humane Society urged Manitoba pig producers to follow the Smithfield lead. Maple Leaf Foods, the largest Canadian producer, on January 31 agreed to phase out gestation crates in favour of group housing at the farms it owns, which supply about 120,000 pigs per year. Maple Leaf slaughters nearly half a million pigs per year, nearly a third of the Canadian total.

"This is the most significant farm animal welfare advance in Canadian history," said Canadian Coalition for Farm Animals director John Youngman, echoing Pacelle.

However, Maple Leaf is downsizing its pig-rearing operations. Only about 50,000 pigs per year will actually be raised in group housing, according to current company plans.

National Pork Producers Council chief executive Neil Dierks pointed out that the American Veterinary Medical Association continues to endorse gestation crating--which leaves the AVMA trailing behind the perceptions of the industry leaders. The AVMA in 2004 barred the Association of Veterinarians for Animal Rights from tabling against gestation crates at the AVMA annual conference, and then extended the ban to the Animal Welfare Institute in 2005. AWI had exhibited at the AVMA conference on various themes 21 times during the preceding 42 years.

CorcPork case

The Smithfield and Maple Leaf announcements overshadowed another in a series of legal setbacks for Farm Sanctuary in a multi-year effort to sue CorcPork Inc., of Corcorcan, California, for alleged cruelty to pigs in using gestation crates. Originally dismissed in 2005, the case was again rejected in the third week of January 2007 by the 2nd District Court of Appeals in Los Angeles. Farm Sanctuary pledged to appeal again, to the California Supreme Court.

Both the lower court and the 2nd District Court of Appeals held that Farm Sanctuary lacks standing to bring the case, under Proposition 64, a California law that bans private parties from suing a business unless the business has demonstrably harmed them personally and financially.

As the 2nd District Court of Appeals verdict was anticipated, the Animal Legal Defense Fund, East Bay Animal Advocates, and three individual activists filed a similar case against CorcPork, apparently hoping to find another way around the standing problem.

"Also named as a defendant is Clougherty Packing Co., which sells products under the Farmer John brand," reported Jim Doyle of the San Francisco Chronicle. "Clougherty, a Los Angeles-based subsidiary of Hormel Foods Corp., is the state's leading pork packer. The individual plaintiffs, who claim to have purchased and consumed Farmer John products, accuse the brand of fraudulent business practices by allegedly misleading consumers in ads that say that the pigs were raised in 'a family tradition since 1931.'"

Wiles case

The Humane Farming Association meanwhile succeeded in bringing cruelty charges against key personnel at a pig farm in Creston, Ohio, targeted in full-page ads in the December 2006 and January/February 2007 editions of ANIMAL PEOPLE.

Owner Ken Wiles, 54, was charged with two counts of allegedly depriving animals of veterinary care, food, and water. General manager Joseph Wiles, 22, was charged with six counts of cruelty for similar alleged offenses, plus allegedly carrying animals in a cruel or inhumane manner, and torturing, beating, mutilating, or killing animals in violation of the law. Employee Dusty Stroud, 18, was charged with two counts of beating and torturing animals.

Each charges carries a potential penalty of 90 days in jail and a $750 fine.

The charges "stem from incidents occurring between April 1 and November 9, 2005," summarized Wooster Daily Record staff writer Christine L. Pratt. "Activity at the farm was investigated after an HFA field investigator contacted the Wayne County Sheriff's Office in September 2005."

"This is a very important case. It's not every day you see a case of animal cruelty as serious as this," HFA president Brad Miller told Pratt at the arraignment. "There were piglets being smashed head-first into poles, and large hogs being slowly strangled."

HFA placed the same full-page ads that appeared in ANIMAL PEOPLE in Ohio newspapers to rally public opinion in favor of the prosecution.

"`We're very pleased that charges were filed," Miller told Bill Lilley of the Akron Beacon-Journal. "But we believe there finally should be jail time for animal abuse in Ohio. Right now it is just a misdemeanor, but in many states [this case] would warrant a felony charge.''

Pig farmers have previously been successfully prosecuted for deliberately starving pigs, a charge central to the Wiles case. Most notably, Piggy Bar Farms owner Daryl Larson, of Delmar, Iowa, ran into trouble for starving as many as 3,000 pigs in 1993, 1994, 1995, 1997, and 1998 on several different premises in both Iowa and Missouri. Eventually convicted in both states, Larson was fined more than $17,500. --Merritt Clifton