IATP Hog Report - Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy

Section 6
persist in milk and some scientists believe this may increase the risk of
breast and prostate cancers in humans drinking the milk. 38
Welfare of the Breeding Hog
Despite evidence of the importance of humane handling 39 to pigs' wellbeing,
they may never experience it in a hog factory. The emphasis on
mechanization allows hog factory owners to hire the cheapest possible
labor with the consequence that hired workers in many animal factories
are low-paid, unskilled at animal handling, and apathetic. Permanently
restrained in their crates, sows are easy targets for abuse by angry, bored,
frustrated or apparently sociopathic workers. In July 1999, a North
Carolina grand jury handed down felony indictments against factory farm
workers whom an undercover investigator from People for the Ethical
Treatment of Animals videotaped beating pregnant sows on several
occasions, skinning and cutting the leg off a conscious sow, and removing
a stick that had been forced up a sow's vagina. 40 The indicted workers'
employer, Belcross Farms, owns 22 other factory hog facilities.
In the vast majority of hog factories, pregnant females are stored inside
long, low buildings, in metal "gestation" crates on slatted floors
constructed over manure pits for their nearly four-month pregnancy. The
crates measure approximately 2 feet by 6 or 7 feet, and mature animals
often are forced to hunch their backs continuously to fit them. They cannot
walk, turn around, socialize freely or root in a bed. They may get little, if
any, sunlight. Feeding is restricted and animals that would otherwise
spend many hours in the day foraging for food gobble up all the
concentrates that are provided in a few minutes and suffer chronic hunger
for the rest of the day.
Lesions on the shoulders and backs of breeding hogs are acquired from
lying in one position on bare cement floors and/or being abraded by the
bars of crates. As such lesions do not seem to affect production they
seldom are treated. However, animal scientists at Iowa State University
recently determined that the presence of lesions affects the way in which
sows lie down, potentially endangering small pigs that may be crushed
beneath their mothers, spurring a search for solutions. 41
When it is time for sows to farrow, or give birth, they are transferred from
the gestation crates to farrowing crates. A farrowing crate is
approximately the same dimension as the gestation crate. Some have
movable bars to restrict the sow's getting up and lying down movements.
The farrowing crate also has side extensions for piglets to get away from
the sow when she is lying down. The crate is elevated over a shallow
manure collection pit that continuously emits anaerobic gasses, and the
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