Meat+Poultry - March 2020 - 94

FROM THE CORRAL

Signs of trouble
There is a huge difference between the
best sow farms and the worst. I was
really impressed with the excellent
sow farms I visited recently that were
part of the operations of Clemens Food
Group. The animals were clean and
the stock people really cared for their
pigs. At a recent conference with Tyson
Foods, their animal welfare officials
informed me that getting good labor
was not an issue for them. The secret
to successful animal welfare practices
include providing workers better pay
and establishing a corporate culture
that values teamwork. This is the
good news about animal welfare on
pig farms.
And then there is the bad news.
Within the last 18 months, I have
been contacted by three animal science
interns and one veterinarian who all
worked on large hog farms with poor
conditions. The interns came from
three different universities and the
farms were located in various locations
all over the US.
I was recently at a college making a
presentation about cattle handling and
a student raised her hand and said she
hated the pork industry and she would
never choose it as a career. I asked
her why. She told me she interned
on a poorly managed farm where

the equipment was broken and the
management was poor.
In another instance, I was called
by a swine veterinarian who could
not get her sow farm client to do
anything right.
The most disturbing call came on
the day I decided to write this article.
The third intern in animal science
worked last summer at a large sow
farm that was a mismanaged mess
with broken fences and broken slats.
Underpaid, overworked workers just
did not care. Some of the serious
problems she observed included: live
piglets thrown in a garbage can; sows
farrowing in the gestation housing;
piglets nursing a dead sow for two
days; broken flush manure removal
system in farrowing; piglets falling
through broken slats; and neglected
severe injuries from broken equipment
and rough handling. She compared her
experience with another internship she
did at a beef operation, and thankfully
she had a much better report. Based
on her experiences, she may pursue a
career in the beef industry.

HIDING BEHIND BIOSECURITY
One problem hog production operators
have is that some farms are not being
inspected frequently enough and
biosecurity is used as an excuse. There
are ways to have both good biosecurity
and frequent inspections. One method
is to always use clean rental vehicles.
The recent "60 Minutes" broadcast

focusing on antibiotic-resistant
Salmonella made the pork industry
look really bad, in large part because
the health department was not permitted to visit a suspected farm. The TV
producers then shifted the focus of
the story to the unrelated topic of high
chain speeds in slaughter plants.
Antibiotic-resistant Salmonella
is a farm problem and not a plant
problem. The bottom line is: Some
segments of the pork industry are doing
a fantastic job while others are simply
terrible. The main issues are often:
poor management, understaffing and
low pay.
A single report from a single student
would not motivate me to write this
article. Unfortunately, four separate
recent bad reports from the field could
no longer be ignored. I do not go
looking for these problems. They come
and find me.
T E M P L E G R A N D I N | m e a t p o u l t r y @ s o s l a n d .c o m

94

MEAT+ POULTRY | 03.20 | www.meatpoultry.com

littlewolf1989 - stock.adobe.com, Rosalie Winard

Some segments of the pork industry are doing a
fantastic job while others are simply terrible.
http://www.meatpoultry.com
Meat+Poultry - March 2020

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