Meat + Poultry - December 2005 - 61

Dr. Temple Grandin's From the Corral

Taking a stand
There are some people in the industry
who think I am an animal rights activist,
and there are some in the animal rights
community who think I am a sellout
to the industry. Since my most recent
book, "Animals in Translation," was
published, some animal activists have
criticized me for not taking a stand on
housing issues such as sow stalls and
veal crates. Several people wrote some
very nasty letters to the editor in response to the book reviews and said I
did not care about animals.
I am now going to address the most
pressing housing issues of sow gestation stalls, which is where pregnant
sows spend most of their lives in stalls
that are too small to allow the animals
to turn around. Making an animal live
in a stall where it cannot turn around
is a degree of confinement that most
of the public finds unacceptable. I
was really surprised to read George
Will's article in Newsweek in which
he described an article he had read
in The American Conservative. The
American Conservative is not the type
of publication that would normally
publish articles about animal issues.
One quote from the story said, "400to 500-pound mammals are trapped
without relief inside iron crates, seven
feet long and 22 inches wide."
Airport test
As an industry, we need to ask ourselves, whether or not our operations
would pass the 10-people-from-theairport test. How would 10 nonindustry people react? A well-run slaughter
plant will pass this test. I have taken
many nonindustry people to the stunning area, and the most common reaction is, "It's not as bad as I thought it
would be." Sow stalls, however, do not
pass this test. Most people find groups
of pigs on a slatted floor acceptable,

MEAT&POULTRY

December 2005

but sow stalls really upset them. I have
shown pictures of sow stalls and pigs
on slatted floors to many people on airplanes, and almost everybody thought
the group housing on slats was acceptable. For the sow stalls, one-third
hated them, one-third had no opinion
and one-third was uneasy and said this
is not right. One man told me that he
would never house his hunting dogs

they can lie on their sides. People
make up plenty of excuses why group
housing will not work. We need to
figure out how to make it work better
than stalls. The industry can be very
inventive when it has to be. Brilliant
things have been invented to improve
food safety, but unfortunately the innovations come in response to crises,
not before.

The industry needs to start
ripping out overstuffed stalls and
converting a section of the barn
to group housing.
in a box where they could not turn
around. The pictures I used showed
stalls that were wide enough for sows
to lay comfortably on their sides.
There are two big issues: Whether or not a farm has sow stalls and
providing stalls wide enough for the
sow to lay on her side. I have been on
farms where the stalls were so narrow
that sows are forced to lie on their
chests. On some farms, up to 20 percent of sows are in these overstuffed
stalls. All the research studies were
done with stalls that provided plenty
of room for full lateral recumbency.
Overstuffed stalls are just plain cruel.
The industry needs to start ripping
out overstuffed stalls and converting
a section of the barn to group housing. In most barns, the stalls can be
unbolted without damaging the floor.
This would bring the farm into
compliance with the National Pork
Board's welfare guidelines. The
board's guidelines state sows and
pigs should have sufficient space so

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Now for the final kicker, Matthew
Scully, a former special assistant and
deputy director of speechwriting for
President Bush, authored the article
that George Will wrote about. "Fear
Factories: The case for compassionate conservatism-for animals" was
published in the May 23, 2005, issue
of The American Conservative and
can be found online (www.amconmag.com/2005_05_23/cover.html). You
may want to read it. Scully also has
authored a book about factory farming, "Dominion: The Power of Man,
the Suffering of Animals, and the Call
to Mercy."
Dr. Temple Grandin operates Grandin
Livestock Systems, Inc., Fort Collins,
Colo., and is a faculty member in the
animal science department at Colorado
State Univ.
We would like to hear from you - your comments
and questions about this article are welcome.
E-mail the author at: meat&poultry@sosland.com

http://www.amcon http://www.mag.com/2005_05_23/cover.html http://www.MEATPOULTRY.com

Meat + Poultry - December 2005

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