by Heide Brandes
On the screen, the images are hard to watch. Pigs, all lined up in tiny
narrow metal cages, gnaw incessantly at the bars as they display agitation and fear. The next photo shows a sow gazing through the bars with defeat in her eyes. She no longer gnaws and fights against the confinement she suddenly found herself in months before — the despair has set in, and it is obvious that she has simply given up.
In Oklahoma, more than 220 million head of livestock live in cruel and extreme confinement, and 100 percent of those animals are female. In the last 30 years, the pigs that produce almost all pork in the United States remain their entire lives in confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs), resulting in a high level of painful orthopedic problems. More than four million pigs raised in Oklahoma each year are confined to such small spaces that they cannot turn around or stretch throughout their adolescent and adult lives.
It doesn’t have to be that way, say animal advocates. At the Oklahoma Conference for the Humane Treatment of Pigs, held on National Pig Day, March 1, 2023, advocates and animal-welfare experts joined the Kirkpatrick Foundation to discuss the abhorrent treatment of swine and ways to make the industry more humane.
Educating and Offering Solutions
The Oklahoma Conference on the Humane Treatment of Pigs was designed to educate the public and concerned citizens about the harmful practices of extreme confinement systems while offering solutions that work for the animals and for agriculture.
“Oklahoma is lagging in its approach to the basic well-being of pigs as part of the food system,” said Louisa McCune, executive director of the Kirkpatrick Foundation. “Research and personal experiences
have shown pigs to be social, intelligent creatures, capable of playing video games, building complex nests, and singing to their young. We can and must do better when it comes to the humane treatment of these animals.”
The industrial use of crates in CAFOs was adopted when many family farms were taken over by large corporate farms, she added. “Justified by the need to monitor each pig and decrease any aggressive behaviors, gestation crates became the answer of the pig industry to raise the most pigs with the most efficient use of resources and space. It’s also the most cruel treatment of any species in Oklahoma — and at the greatest scale.”
The conference featured numerous guest speakers, including Mark Essig, author of the book Lesser Beasts: A Snout-to-Tail
History of the Humble Pig. Other speakers included Lesa Staubus, DVM, senior program officer at the Kirkpatrick Foundation, who specializes in farm-animal welfare issues.
“Improving the housing systems for animals in concentrated animal-feeding operations is the most immediate issue for farm animals in Oklahoma,” she said. “Intensive confinement of any species leads to welfare concerns.”
What Can Be Done?
John Kirkpatrick, an Oklahoma animal advocate, established the Kirkpatrick Foundation in 1955. The foundation has a vision for animal funding or animal programming to make Oklahoma the safest and most humane place to be an animal by 2032.
The pig industry uses gestation crates to raise the most pigs with the most efficient use of resources and space. The use of gestation crates is also the most cruel treatment of any species in Oklahoma. Photo courtesy of the Kirkpatrick Foundation.
May / June 2023 • TulsaPets 23
Although the organization has made strides in initiatives for small animals, the corporate livestock model of raising and producing meat is still a challenge. “You would be amazed at how talking about animals in agriculture really provokes a lot of people. They all want you to just talk about cats and dogs,” said McCune. “We asked Oklahomans in a poll in 2017 what they feel is a reflection of a good place to live. Fourth on the list was strong laws to protect animals from cruelty. The top 1 percent said that requiring farm animals to have enough room to stand up, stretch, and turn around was important.”
However, for the majority of pigs raised in corporate livestock operations, that is not the case. From birth to market — usually a span of six months — the pigs never see real daylight. The breeding sows are moved from confinement crates to gestation crates where they are unable to move or turn around. After the sow births one litter, the whole process starts over and continues until the sow is unable to breed anymore.
For social animals such as pigs, the isolation and confinement are akin to torture, said Staubus.
“What are our options? One option is to not eat this animal. Other options are giving them more space simply by increasing
the size of those pens,” she said. “Another option is to have pigs raised outdoors in sunshine where they are in a more piglike environment or to adopt the practice of pastured pigs that are carefully moved from one area to another to let them do their thing on the land.”
Other states such as California have laws that require that all meat sold in the state comes from animals that have a certain amount of space to live in. Already, advocates are lobbying Oklahoma leaders to pass similar laws.
Even though “big ag” claims that instituting bigger pens or adopting more humane practices will result in higher prices for consumers, advocates say that is not the case.
Oklahoma State University Professor of Agribusiness Dr. Bailey Norwood, author of the book Compassion, by the Pound: the Economics of Farm Animal Welfare, said surveys show that the majority of consumers think animals should be treated better, but when those people shop, their choices do not reflect that concern for animal welfare.
Education about how the animals that consumers eat are raised is key in making changes, he said.
“Once you educate consumers, they love the idea of not having gestation crates once
they learn about the crates. They discover that it doesn’t cost that much more to have bigger pens, and they are happy to pay that extra cost,” said Norwood. “Hog producers would be happy to not use the gestation crates because now they’re getting a premium. All this can happen voluntarily.”
A Leap Forward
The conference also featured small farmers who have pasture-raised pigs, the National Women in Agriculture Association, legal experts, and thought leaders who discussed working solutions on how swine can be raised more humanely without affecting consumer prices too dramatically. “In Oklahoma, all 100 of the attendees at the conference celebrated National Pig Day with a first-of-its-kind symposium comprising lawyers, veterinarians, farmers, animal advocates, journalists, students, and philanthropists,” said McCune. “Be assured, this convening was an important leap forward for the future of real animal husbandry in Oklahoma. We know from research that humane agriculture policies do not significantly increase the cost of meat and eggs. You’ll be hearing more from us on that in the future.”
For more information, visit https:// kirkpatrickfoundation.com.
