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On Smithfield announcement, Grandin says “it’s time”

Yesterday Smithfield Foods announced they were requesting their contract sow growers to convert their facilities from gestation stalls to group housing systems for pregnant sows.  While Smithfield declined to comment further, they did direct Brownfield to speak with livestock industry consultant Temple Grandin, an animal science professor at Colorado State University.

Grandin says it’s time for the industry to phase out gestation stalls. “And the real progressive people in the industry have pretty much said the train has left the station on this issue,” she says.  “Two-thirds of the public consider keeping a sow, in a stall for most of her life where she cannot turn around is a degree of confinement that’s just not ethical.  That’s shown up in two scientific surveys.”

She says this is the beginning of changes to the hog industry.  “When things change, there’s all the sudden a point when there’s a tipping point,” she says.  “Then all the sudden things are going to change and things are going to change fast.  Now sow stalls haven’t quite gotten to the tipping point yet – but it’s going to happen.”

So why was Smithfield first?  “Look at the map of the country and mark down where the major corporate offices are,” she says.  “Smithfield’s right next to DC.  That has something to do with it.  Heat softens steel.  And then, it bends.”

At the end of 2013, 54 percent of Smithfield company-owned operations had been converted to group housing systems.

AUDIO: Temple Grandin, Gestation Stalls (8:00mp3)

  • I have lost ALL respect for Temple Grandin. There is MUCH more involved in raising animal based food than the whims a a VERY few people who have never even been on a farm, let alone raise food animals. FARMERS should be the ones who decide how they want their animals to be raised based on the costs involved as well as time constraints and labor costs and just how much their animal products should be sold for. It is past time to to tell these pompous arrogant middlemen corporations to go take a flying leap and either tell them to pay FARMER originated prices or cut back drastically and let people go hungry. Enough is enough. Perhaps when food is scarce, the silent majority who are fine with the way farmers produce their products will stand up to these bullies and join farmers to have the constitutional rights and freedoms to conduct OUR business as we see fit instead of allowing evil animal rights goons to dictate how we should live .

  • Years ago my husband and father had open sow lots. Have you ever seen the “boss” sows get bigger and bigger? The sows at the bottom of the pecking order get skinnier and skinnier. Sows have some pretty ferocious teeth, and they’re not shy about using them. Have you seen the skinny sows with bloody rear ends because they didn’t move quickly enough? What is being done to protect the smaller, weaker sows so that they get their fair share? All animal herds have a pecking order, and, believe me, sows do more than “peck”

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