The fact is, most animals in our food system live under dismal conditions, and the pitifully low bar for their treatment was set in directives from the same industry’s leaders who today are so upset about being vilified. “Forget the pig is an animal—treat him just like a machine in a factory,” recommended Hog Farm Managementin 1976. Two years later, National Hog Farmer advised: “The breeding sow should be thought of, and treated as, a valuable piece of machinery whose function is to pump out baby pigs like a sausage machine.” And farmers, eager to squeeze every dollar from their crops, complied. Today, nearly 5 million of these smart, social animals (representing over 80 percent of all sows in pork production) are confined to tiny gestation crates—cages so narrow the animals can’t even turn around. They spend their lives lined up like cars in a parking lot, barely able to move an inch and driven insane from the extreme deprivation. When the Prairie Swine Center, a pork-industry research firm, compared confined housing to “group housing,” which allows pigs greater freedom of movement, it found that the “animals unable to exercise due to stall confinement have lower bone strength, muscle mass, and decreased physical fitness and cardiovascular health.”
Posted on: Wed, 16 Jul 2014 06:51:25 +0000
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