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The world's leading foodservice company, Compass Group of Great Britain, has pledged to no longer rely on sourcing from pigs that use gestation cages by the summer of 2024. The decision, which only concerns the US market, is causing a stir because it was back in 2012 that the firm originally committed to eliminating gestation crates. Meanwhile, the third largest pork processor in the world, Smithfield Foods, is being sued for allegedly making false claims about phasing out the use of such crates. We look at why gestation cages are so controversial.
The world's leading foodservice company, Compass Group of Great Britain, has pledged to no longer rely on sourcing from pigs that use gestation cages by the summer of 2024. The decision, which only concerns the US market, is causing a stir because it was back in 2012 that the firm originally committed to eliminating gestation crates. Meanwhile, the third largest pork processor in the world, Smithfield Foods, is being sued for allegedly making false claims about phasing out the use of such crates. We look at why gestation cages are so controversial.
In his 2016 text entitled "Antispéciste," published in 2016, former journalist and French politician Aymeric Caron recounted the misery endured by pregnant sows confined in crates so small that they have no room to turn around; these installations are indeed barely larger than the animal's measurements. Moreover, if the animal feels the need to lie down, it will have no choice but to touch the sow in the next crate, or at best the metal bars that imprison it. And they endure such living conditions for 16 weeks at a time, while sows are inseminated twice each year... The living space of the sow gets slightly enlarged only when she is about to give birth. Various videos have made consumers increasingly aware of the concrete horrors of these cages, such as one by the association Animal Equality Italia, which revealed conditions at transalpine pig farms in September 2019. The use of these cages has been partly explained as a method to prevent sows from crushing their piglets. Their continued use can largely be explained by economic incentives. "Gestation crates were first promoted to the industry in 1969, but it wasn’t until the 1990s following rapid expansion and consolidation of the industry that they became the norm," explains the World Animal Protection association.
Such sow stall installations are prohibited in the United Kingdom and Sweden, while the Dutch only allow it for four days after insemination. In Denmark, this period is reduced to three days. In Germany, so-called "maternity cages" are to be outlawed by 2035. During a webinar held by the association Compassion in World Farming (CIWF), a deputy from France's Alpes-Maritimes region revealed that 90% of pregnant sows in the country give birth in cages. In the United States, ten states, namely Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Ohio, Oregon and Rhode Island, have banned gestation crates.
Will there be better protection for these animals in the future?
Presented in October 2020 to the European Commission, a citizens' initiative launched by the CIWF association calling for the end of cage farming had collected 1.4 million signatures. Brussels responded to this step by indicating that it would “put forward a legislative proposal by the end of 2023 to phase out and finally prohibit the use of cages for all the animal species and categories referred to in the initiative.”
There are other types of installations that could be used to replace these gestation cages. For farrowing sows, these are called "free-range pens." While the mortality rate of piglets is slightly higher with this type of installation (0.5 piglets per litter on average), suckling is better and piglets are healthier, explained an association in France, L'Action Agricole Picarde, last year. According to France's Institut du Porc, an envelope of one billion euros would be necessary to get the transition to free farrowing systems underway in the country.
