Remember two months ago when the animal rights group Mercy for Animals released a disturbing undercover video from an industrial farm in Iowa run by the fourth-largest pork producer in the nation, Iowa Select Farms?
You know … the one with workers stepping on, tossing and head-bashing piglets, the one with giant, pregnant mama pigs stuffed into metal gestational crates where they apparently spend almost their enti
re lives. And let’s not forget about the piglets that had their tails removed with dull clippers.
I’d really like to forget.
I’m sure many of us who were so appalled by the footage, if we could stand to watch it at all, turned right around that weekend with nary a grimace and purchased bacon, pork tenderloin or gourmet charcuterie, or we had some at a local restaurant.
Yum. Right?
Maybe we waited a week to buy factory-farmed pork just to let the stink of the scandal fade away.
I’m ashamed to admit: I’m not sure I made it even that long.
In the shining light of the grocery store, American food is awash in myths and all the lies we tell ourselves.
“Most farms aren’t like that,” we think.
But, unfortunately, much of what happens to the pigs in the Mercy for Animals video isn’t illegal, unusual or even frowned upon in the industry.
We just aren’t used to seeing it.
According to a story on Meatingplace.com, a publication for North American meat and poultry producers: “Both castration and docked tails are general practice and often are conducted within the first 24 hours of birth; anesthetics have not been approved for swine; and the small confines of the gestation stalls prevent the sows from fighting.”
Another passage of the article, written in response to the video release, goes like this: ” ‘The vast majority of sows in the United States are raised in gestation crates,’ Dave Warner, director of communications for the National Pork Producers Council, told Meatingplace. Warner, who has seen the video, said that although the council fiercely supports proper animal handling practices, one apparently cruel practice – tossing piglets across the room – is something the industry decries. ‘That’s the only thing that would be considered mistreatment,’ he said.”
Similar reports and videos have come out of other farms, including those operated by Smithfield, the world’s largest pork producer, based in Virginia.
Factory farms, which result in economies of scale as well as gestational crating practices and constant confinement, are the norm, simply what is required if Americans want to enjoy billions of pounds of cheap pork every year.
It’s just not very pretty in the holy age of organic.
If big companies didn’t force pigs to spend their lives pregnant nearly all the time in small boxes, we would complain mightily about the cost of our breakfast or, perhaps, there wouldn’t be enough meat to go around because no company could sell meat at prices that high.
Iowa Select Farms sells its pork to Brazil-based JBS, which sells to Costco, Safeway, Kroger or Hy-Vee. I wonder why we need a Brazilian company to buy American meat and sell it back to us?
When the Mercy for Animals video was released, retailers connected to JBS, including Costco, said publicly they would stop using meat from the farm in question, via JBS, until a thorough investigation was completed and the supplier’s issues were resolved.
But when will that happen? And what will that change?
Craig Wilson, vice president of quality assurance and food safety for Issaquah-based Costco, said he did not know when Iowa Select would be selling that farm’s meat again to JBS and, by extension, to Costco.
“We’ll be notified when it’s ready to go,” he said.
Costco met with representatives of both Iowa Select and JBS in Issaquah in July. Workers at all of Iowa Select’s farms, not just the one in question, will receive updated animal welfare training, Wilson said.
“They’re going to get a lot better and we are going to work with them make sure they get better,” Wilson said of the farm’s practices.
Mercy for Animals’ chief complaint with the pork industry is gestational crates, which are banned or are being phased out in a handful of states, including Oregon.
Mercy for Animals wants all the crates phased out and replaced by group housing, which allows the animals to move around, by 2017.
When Costco met with Mercy for Animals representatives shortly after the video was released, Mercy for Animals asked the corporation to make a public pledge to not purchase any pork in 2017 that might be coming from producers still using gestational crates.
But Costco can’t do that because it can’t control the entire industry, Wilson said.
“We work with all the major pork producers, Tyson, Smithfield,” he said. “Costco sells a lot of pork. We have a huge pork appetite.”
Wilson said gestational crates have been used to protect workers and pigs for 60 years and that most pork in the United States comes from animals raised in gestation stall containment systems.
In 2007, Smithfield said it would phase out the use of gestation crates by 2017. In 2009, the company said it could no longer meet its self-imposed deadline.
There is some hope, perhaps: On Smithfield’s website, there is a chart showing movement toward group housing.
“We have maintained this commitment through the recession and are on track to have converted 30 percent of gestation stalls to group housing by the end of 2011,” according to the website, which includes a progress chart and some photos of the housing.
That’s something, I suppose.
Some scientists believe that pigs’ overall welfare in group housing isn’t much better than that of pigs raised in gestational crates. Click here for a fascinating story on that.
No matter what the science says, I think allowing piglet-producing sows a space no larger than 7 by 2 feet doesn’t seem right.
And it can’t be good for the animals, and, by extension, human health and food safety.
Some health authorities have linked swine confinement to the recent outbreaks swine flu. After seeing the unhealthy pigs in the Mercy for Animals video and others, that doesn’t seem like much of a leap to me.
Animals that we eat must die. We must kill them. It’s not pretty.
But I’m in the camp that livestock raised for food should have one bad day, not a lifetime of bad days.
If you want to find out where to buy clean, green pork, check out the very end of my post here on my struggle to find pork that is free of ties to factory farms.
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