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Will unilateral action pre-empt politically enforced laws?

andybob

Well-known member
Make room for a new kind of pork production

By ANDREA JOHNSON, Assistant Editor
Thursday, March 29, 2007 3:16 PM CDT



Dennis Treacy, Smithfield Foods vice president of environmental and corporate affairs said the decision to move away from gestating sow stalls was customer driven.
Change is occurring in the pork industry.

Customers are asking pork producers to consider sow housing options other than keeping gestating sows in stalls.

“The decision to move away from stalls certainly falls into a broader picture, but the exact reason for the decision was market driven - it was customer driven,” said Dennis Treacy, vice president of environmental and corporate affairs for Smithfield Foods. “The reason the decision was made was very simple - the customer is always right. The customer has asked us repeatedly ‘Is there another way to raise animals successfully?' Our answer is ‘yes.'”

Smithfield Foods announced on Jan. 25, 2007, that it would begin the process of phasing out of individual gestation stalls at all of its company-owned sow farms and replace them with pens or group housing over the next 10 years.





With its Murphy-Brown hog-raising entity, Smithfield Foods is the largest hog producer and pork processor in the world. Annual sales are $11 billion, making Smithfield the leading processor and marketer of fresh pork and processed meats in the United States.

Their customers ask about animal welfare every single day, Treacy said.



The company already has implemented an Animal Welfare Management System that drew on experts from many disciplines to make sure animal well being issues were being evaluated and carried out.

The Animal Welfare Management System is now serving as a model for other companies in the livestock industry.

Treacy told attendees at the National Pork Industry Forum, held in Anaheim, Calif., that Smithfield now talks to “anybody and everybody that wants to hear from us.”

“Our customers come to us more and more and more about the issues I'm talking about,” said Treacy. “Many of those customers do environmental audits at our plants and our farms. They do animal welfare audits themselves. They do a social audit where they come in and evaluate our social programs - How well are we treating our employees. How well are we treating the community?”

Treacy expects their customers - which includes many major food retailers - to continue to ask questions about the issues of environment, social consciousness and especially animal welfare.

“I don't think you can draw the line to stop it,” he said. “The question is, ‘How are we going to adapt to it?'”

Smithfield/Murphy-Brown has spent two years studying and using pen gestation systems in three of its North Carolina barns. Each gestation pen holds 6 to 55 sows. Sows are kept in stalls through farrowing and nursing, and until they are confirmed re-bred.

The company will continue its study of pen gestation for one more year. They've also conducted a literature search.

“We believe that penning systems are just as humane as stalls if they are managed properly,” said Treacy. “Pens produce just as high a quality animal as an animal in a stall if it is managed properly and trying to keep the pens designed appropriately.

“We have never once said that the stall system is inhumane. We have never suggested that we want everybody else to do it,” he added. “It was a customer-based decision based on repeated interaction with customers.”
 

Mike

Well-known member
It's really hard for me to understand those who have the utmost empathy for animals, yet know their heads will be cut off and placed on the table.

I'm not saying mistreat them but think of the final result.
 
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