Neglect of a Pet Pig in Minnesota

According to a report on L.A.'s KNBC.com (here), a woman in Minnesota named Michelle Schmitz is pursuing charges against another women with whom she entrusted her pot-bellied pig named Alaina Templeton (left). Apparently while in the other woman's care the pig grew from 50 pounds to 150 pounds. I'm not sure why one would expect a pig not to grow, but apparently that isn't really the issue here, for the pig-sitter left the pig's collar on, which wound up embedded in its neck, requiring surgical removal. The pet-sitter is facing a charge of animal neglect and a claim from Schmitz for the resulting $1,000 veterinary bill.

Speaking of neglect, as hopefully someone has noticed, I've fallen quite a bit behind on this blog in the last couple of weeks. Things have been a bit crazy, suffice to say. I'll try to make some progress here now that I'm finally approaching the end of the semester. Just in time for the holidays and the joys (believe it or not) of sporadic internet access. More soon, then...

What's Organic About Organic Pork?

The Ask Umbra column at grist.org took on the vexed issue of what constitutes organic pork last week. You can find the full discussion, with lots of comments, some interesting, some asinine, here. She points out that just because pork might be produced under organic guidelines, these rules "do not guarantee that a pig has experienced any piggy fun such as snorfelling merrily through the grass, making its own bed from straw, biting its farmer, or staying far from its own excrement. It is possible to meet the organic guidelines, and pass the yearly inspection, but still run a variant of a confinement operation."

The column mentions other possible standards, including those devised by the Food Alliance and the Animal Welfare Institute. I'd add that it's worth looking at the niche pork site (a project of the National Pork Board) and the Niman Ranch pork page as well. I like her recommendation about visiting a farm to check on the way they treat the animals that become the meat you eat, but that's something awfully difficult to do for the vast majority of us. Besides, there's not that much one is allowed to see in an era of concentrated operations with full biosecurity.

Some Bad News For Pigs

A couple of news items greeted me on my return from spring break in Florida. More than 3000 pigs died in a fire at a Hutterite hog farm outside of Winnipeg, Saskatchewan on Saturday. Authorities think the fire was caused by a faulty exhaust fan. The fire spread rapidly through three structures thanks to other exhaust fans. According to the CBC (here), the pig operation is the main source of income for the 85 members of the Vermillion Farms community. If, like me, you are curious about the Hutterites, you can consult their official website here.

In Tularosa, New Mexico Leanne Barkemeyer kept approximately 20 pigs on her land. While this in itself is not a crime, she apparently couldn't take care of all the pigs, leading sheriff's deputies to shoot and kill eight of her pigs. According to Deputy Nobert Sanchez, "She stated that she could no longer take care of the animals, that we needed to do what we needed to do with them." The pigs were shot after one of them charged a deputy. According to KOAT 7 News (here) the rest of the pigs will be rounded up and shipped to sanctuaries in Florida or Arizona. The Alamagordo Daily News has a good article as well (here) that provides more detail about these "half-feral" pigs, which were both pot-bellied pigs and domestic pigs.

Change at Burger King

Andrew Martin had an article in yesterday's New York Times about Burger King's decision to begin buying eggs and pork from producers that do not confine their animals. The immediate goal is for 10% of the fast food chain's pork to come from hog farmers who don't use gestation crates (2% of its eggs will come from "cage free" hens). The company expects these percentages to rise over time; in fact, they hope to have 20% of their pork sourced in this manner by the end of 2007. The lack of a greater supply of meat and eggs produced without confinement testifies to how much of the industry is dedicated to an industrial model of food production.

Apparently these changes were made after consultations with the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), although the company notes that it was ultimately an internal decision. You can find the HSUS and PETA reactions here and here. Burger King's announcement follows that of Wolfgang Puck a week or so ago, although the former is expected to have much more of an impact on producers' practices. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this story involves the contrast between Burger King's current marketing (think of their tv commercials linking manhood and meat consumption, for example) and this animal welfare initiative. As a corporate spokesman noted, it is not likely that the company will trumpet this decision: “I don’t think it’s something that goes to our core business.” I agree: I'd imagine that Burger King's customers generally don't think much about animal welfare as they are chomping into their "Enormous Omelet Sandwich" (above), which contains two slices of cheese, two eggs, three strips of bacon, and a sausage patty.

National Pork Industry Forum

Two weeks ago (March 1-3, 2007) I attended the National Pork Industry Forum, the annual business meeting of American pork producers, as it was held nearby at the Anaheim Hilton. Pork Act Delegates are producers or importers that are nominated by their state associations then appointed by the Secretary of Agriculture. 154 producers and 8 importers were appointed for 2006; these delegates, representing the 70,000 U.S. pork producers, in turn make nominations for the National Pork Board, make decisions about the Pork Checkoff program, and adopt resolutions that provide direction to the National Pork Board. As you might imagine, the meeting looked like one of Congress, with delegates apportioned by states depending upon the amount of checkoff dollars collected from the state they represent. The biggest delegation came from Iowa, for example, which produces more pork than any other state.

I found the meeting incredibly interesting. It began with a series of presentations to the producers about the industry's failure to defeat Proposition 204 in Arizona and the rise of public concern about corporate responsibility (or, more exactly, the perception of a lack thereof) in agriculture. Much discussion took place around the question of sow housing in the wake of Smithfield's decision to phase out its use of gestation crates, as there were presentations about various European models and an experiment with group sow housing at one large production facility in the U.S. While there were other industry issues addressed, especially the question of corn prices with the recent push for more ethanol production, animal welfare issues were at the fore. Friday's presentations centered around the meeting's theme: "Accountability, Trust, and Social Responsibility: Defining Pork Production in the 21st Century." To make a long series of provocative presentations and discussions short, the delegates ultimately decided to encourage all producers to participate in PQA Plus, a certification program that includes an animal well-being component. You can find information about PQA Plus here via the National Pork Board site.

As part of the discussions about the breakdown in trust between the industry and its customers, Steve Murphy, CEO of the National Pork Board, noted that the industry traditionally falls back to scientific rationales when customers express concern about whether they are doing the right thing. By the end of the weekend's deliberations, 87% of the delegates supported the addition of "doing the right thing" to their science-based standards for animal welfare. While the main showpiece of the meeting was the approval of PQA Plus, there were some other resolutions adopted, including a call for more research on porcine circovirus and feed costs and swine diets, and support for the pork racing program.

I met some great people and learned a lot at the National Pork Industry Forum. I left feeling sympathetic towards today's pork producers, who are increasingly caught between a popular fantasy that pigs are raised on a slightly larger yet still idyllic version of Old McDonald's farm and the modern reality of intensive, confinement-based production systems. The NPB is doing a lot of work to convince the public of producers' concern for their animals--an interest in their pigs' well-being that is quite genuine, by the way--but the public is increasingly demanding a different version of the human-pig relationship. All you need to do is refer to yesterday's post about the op-ed in the New York Times, where Nicolette Niman notes that more and more Americans want livestock to be treated in ways similar to their dogs and cats. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that these broader changes in Americans' ideas about their companion animals will increasingly cause problems for the meat industry.

New York Times Op-Ed on Pig Confinement Systems

Today's New York Times contained an op-ed piece critical of confinement systems called "Pig Out" by Nicolette Hahn Niman. As you might have guessed from her last name, she's married to Bill Niman of Niman Ranch fame, a fact she doesn't try to hide in her editorial. While there isn't really any new information in her piece--she makes all the usual arguments against confinement systems and gestation crates, including the resulting use of antibiotics, environmental issues related to animal waste, and animal welfare concerns--her essay may mark the emergence of this issue on the national political stage. As Niman writes:

Such sentiment ["that Americans believe all animals, including those raised for food, deserve humane treatment"] was behind the widely supported Humane Slaughter Act of 1958, which sought to improve treatment of cattle and hogs at slaughterhouses. But it's clear that Americans expect more--they want animals to be humanely treated throughout their lives, not just at slaughter. To ensure this, Congress should ban gestation crates altogether and mandate that animal-cruelty laws be applied to farm animals.

I have yet to blog about my weekend at the National Pork Industry Forum in Anaheim, but in brief, speakers and industry officials were clearly worried about further legislation at the state and federal level concerning confinement systems in the wake of recent legislative defeats in Florida and Arizona. I'll post more later about that meeting and about the Pork Quality Assurance Plus program unveiled at Anaheim, partly in an attempt to be proactive and forestall legislative action.

By the way, today's illustration by Jonathon Rosen accompanied the NYT op-ed.