Thoughts on Gestation Crates, Electric Fences and Piglet Castration.
Have you seen the horrific video recently published by the HSUS? They are quite disturbing and show how unnatural gestation crates are and how unhealthy it can be for the pig. Extremely cruel too. I dislike HSUS’ approach, but we live in a sensationalist time where sex and violence sell, so I guess we get what we ask for. It would be nice if the discussion could also be about how brutal the Smithfield contracts are and how they give farmers absolutely no freedom to farm in a way let’s pigs be pigs.
As farmers that raise our animals outside, we are not immune to being targeted by animal rightists. In fact, Joel Salitin had the animal control authorities called on him because his animals looked “crowded”. This says more about our society than it does about how Joel farms, we like our farming to be hidden, and because so few of us farm, we have a very bizarre relationship with food and animals. We eat chicken breast but we do like like to eat beef on the bone. We treat our dogs like people, anthropomorphizing them, and then we force pigs, which are very thoughtful animals, into crates so small they are sickened because we do not want to be confronted with animal agriculture. OH, I digress.
Raising pigs on our farm has been a pure joy. They are such optimistic creatures. My father, who has worked on an industrialized pig farm in Denmark as a young man, is thrilled by how unstressed they are, and it is true. We have very calm pigs. I gave a tour to a friend, whose family were pig farmers in Iowa and she could not get over how there was no smell. Yes, we also have odorless pigs as well and this is all made possible by electric fences. WE are able to keep the pigs contained and healthy because of this modern technology and they are thriving!
Europe just passed a law that piglet castration with out the use of anesthesia should be banned. I wonder if we will follow suit (i doubt it). We have not castrated our piglets. We let them be (also we do not cut our lambs tails either). Boar taint is actually very rare in domestic breeds and it can be easily bred out of herd if you have a boar that does not have the taint.*
* we are still in the mist of learning all about this. Update here.