Consumers are asking for more humanely raised meat and food companies are trying to provide it. Now pig producers are promising more humane measures in the way they raise pigs. But just what those measures will be and how they’ll be rolled out remains a question in an industry still dominated by the sow gestation crate, says the San Francisco Chronicle.
“Within the next five to 10 years, major food companies such as McDonald’s and Smithfield Foods will hit self-imposed deadlines to stop buying or selling pork produced with gestation crates, the tight metal stalls that keep sows in one position for the majority of their lives,” the article says. “That has opened a Pandora’s box of questions about how to transition the animals to group housing — and how to humanely raise animals at a large, sustainable scale.”
The story focuses on the University of California-Davis, where Kristina Horback, an assistant professor of applied ethology, or the study of animal behavior, is studying pigs. “These sows have been bred to perform well in crates,” she told the Chronicle. “And now we’re asking them to negotiate these social situations.” Horback is looking at how different enclosures, and even toys, can better suit pigs’ social behavior, intelligence, and physical needs.
Gestation crates are used to produce 83 to 90 percent of American pork but have been banned in California and nine other states, although only one of those states, Ohio, is a major pork producer, the paper says.
One pork company, the Clemens Food Group, has incorporated open barns, where sows hang out “like cliques in the middle school cafeteria,” the article says. Bon Appetit Management Co., a Palo Alto-based food-service company, now buys about 3.5 million pounds a year from the producer.