Animal welfare advocates have said that sows should be kept in open housing, rather than crates, to improve their quality of life.
However, Maple Leaf Foods, which is switching all of its barns in Canada to open housing, is learning that sows aren’t the only ones who benefit from the switch.
“Humans that are also in those barns are happier,” said Greg Douglas, Maple Leaf’s vice-president of animal care.
Maple Leaf began converting its barns from gestation stalls to a loose housing system for sows in 2013. In a sustainability report released early this month, the company said it has moved 14,500 sows to loose housing and hopes to have 35,000 sows in the open system by 2017.
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“We are going to transition every barn, every sow barn that we have in our control, to open sow housing. We’re going to do that as expediently as we possibly can,” said Douglas, who joined Maple Leaf in July.
He was formerly the chief veterinarian in Ontario and before that the chief vet in Saskatchewan.
Maple Leaf says it hired Douglas because the company wants to be an industry leader in animal welfare.
“The humane treatment of animals for food production is a social and ethical priority and a responsibility that we take extremely seriously,” said president Michael McCain.
The conversion is going smoothly and has improved employee en-gagement as barn workers adopted a hands-on approach in the new system.
“We have found it’s led to all kinds of benefits, in animal care, in husbandry … (from) being able to work closely with the animals,” Douglas said.
As well, removing the stall equipment has enhanced the workplace environment.
“The openness and brightness inside the barn is far better than in a barn where we have a lot of (sow) crates,” Douglas said.
However, open housing also produces a different set of animal welfare challenges. One of the biggest concerns is aggressive behaviour, where sows battle to establish a social hierarchy.
The humans and hogs inside Maple Leaf barns are learning to adjust to the new system.
“The construction piece is probably the simplest: picking your electronic feeders and what kind of flooring you’ll have,” Douglas said.
“It is a training of the employees, but it’s a training of the sows and gilts as well. The sows have to be trained (on) how the feeders work (and) how they move through. They develop a pecking order. They socialize differently.”
Maple Leaf shared details of its conversion to loose housing in the sustainability report, including a video showing sows in a loose housing barn.
Providing a peek inside barns is part of Maple Leaf’s new strategy and a response to consumers who want more information about livestock and animal care.
“More and more, all food manufacturers are being asked how they raise their animals,” Douglas said.
“We all need in agriculture and food production to be more transparent…. We have to do it in ways that resonate with their values and the questions that they’re asking.”
However, Douglas isn’t convinced Maple Leaf or Canada’s pork industry needs a branding program, in which pork chops come with a “humanely certified” sticker.
“Transparency transcends branding,” he said. “Maple Leaf is on the road to telling (its) story and being more transparent.”
All hog producers in Canada will soon need to follow Maple Leaf’s lead. The Canadian code of practice for the care and handling of pigs requires that all new buildings and renovations accommodate sows in groups during gestation by July 1, 2024.
