Animal welfare expert urges more consumer outreach

January 4, 2008 — Peter Shinn

The Colorado Pork Producers Association late last month decided to voluntarily phase-out sow gestation crates over the next decade. The group joins Smithfield Foods, the nation's largest pork producer, in taking such a step. Banning sow gestation crates has become a rallying cry for animal rights extremists, who successfully mounted ballot initiative campaigns against the practice in Florida in 2002, and more recently, in Arizona in 2006.

And Dr. Temple Grandin, associate professor of animal science with Colorado State University and an animal welfare expert who has worked with the livestock industry for decades, told Brownfield ending the use of sow gestation crates in pork production is the right thing to do. According to Grandin, the public just doesn't like sow gestation crates and that's reason enough to stop using them.

"I think we have to say to ourselves, if you took your Christmas guests or your Thanksgiving guests or your Hanukkah guests, or whatever kind of guests you got from out-of-town, and you showed them what you did," Grandin posited, "are you going to be squirming, or are you going to proud of it?"

Sow gestation crates, Grandin said, don't pass that test. She noted that an informal survey she has conducted on consumer attitudes about sow gestation crates found nearly two-thirds oppose them, with one-third very strongly opposed. On the other hand, Grandin said it's generally not difficult to defend sow farrowing crates, because consumers understand the need to protect piglets from other swine. But Grandin also insisted the livestock industry needs to do much more to improve its overall public image.

"Public opinion does matter," Grandin said. "I think there's some things we can educate the public. I think we've done a really poor job in communicating with the public," she added. "I think we need to be putting up video tapes up on the Internet showing exactly how a farm works."

Grandin pointed out that the only Internet videos on animal handling readily accessible by consumers on such sites as YouTube tend to show examples of the worst kind of animal abuse. And she said consumers can even handle visuals of slaughter facilities that are managed properly.

"I can tell you right now - a well-run slaughter plant that works really well passes the out-of-town guest test," Grandin emphasized. "I've taken people there. They're kind of amazed at how quietly it works."

In the meantime, Grandin said the elimination of sow gestation crates means the pork industry will have to work harder to cull aggressive, back-biting sows and create breeding programs that produce less aggressive swine. That's why Grandin strongly backs a ten-year phase-out of sow gestation crates. But she also predicted the pork industry will adjust to the absence of sow gestation crates, as the industry did to their introduction three decades ago.

"I've been around the industry for 35 years, and you know, we've got a lot of young people in the industry now that don't know anything different than sow stalls, but in the '70s all the sows were living in pens and they were just fine," said Grandin. "And Smithfield switched over and things have been working fine."

Source:
Brownfield Ag News, January 2, 2008
by Peter Shinn