An animal welfare group wants Maple Leaf Foods to offer a different kind of pork product.
“We want them to come out with a (product) line that is more humane and gives consumers more of a choice,” said John Youngman, director of the Canadian Coalition of Farm Animals.
When gestating, a sow is often kept in a stall that is two by 0.6 metres. The coalition said the stalls inhumanely restrict the animal’s movement. Pigs are social animals that need to fraternize, and the restricted movement also weakens their bones over time, the group said.
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“You don’t subject any feeling animal to that degree of confinement and boredom. We just feel it’s wrong,” Youngman said.
The coalition wants Maple Leaf to come up with a line of pork made from pigs raised through group housing, and label those products clearly so consumers can choose.
“We’re hoping that they’re going to do it because they’re responsive to their consumers, and (polls have) shown that consumers do indeed care about the welfare quotient of their food,” said Youngman.
The use of sow stalls is an ongoing debate, said Lynda Kuhn, spokesperson for Maple Leaf Foods.
“Research typically indicates that sows are pretty sedentary, and given the choice, they normally choose not to move around very much.”
“But having said that, the industry as a whole is trying to move toward a balance of providing the animals some opportunity to move around.”
Gestation stalls were introduced in the 1980s because they offered sows a longer life span and better health, she said.
They allow the producer to monitor the health of each sow individually, control the amount of feed each one needs, and protects aggressive sows from others, Kuhn added.
“So there were all kinds of benefits to animal health in introducing stalls versus pens.”
Harold Gonyou, research scientist at the Prairie Swine Centre, said that stall and group housing techniques have pros and cons.
“The biggest pro to group housing is the fact that the animals are living in a group, they have freedom of movement to move around the pen and to socially interact,” Gonyou said.
But social stress, particularly when new pigs are added to an existing group, can cause aggression.
“One of the reasons we keep them in stalls is to avoid the aggression that occurs when strange animals meet.”
The stalls also guarantee that the animals get the feed they need.
“Not all group housing systems do that. Some do, but not all,” he said.
The biggest negative of stalls is the restricted movement.
“It takes sows longer to stand up and lie down in stalls than it does in group housing,” he said.
Gonyou also said a study from Cambridge showed that bones and muscles weaken after five to six years of restricted movement.
Sow stalls are banned in several European countries, with a European Union-wide ban to begin in 2013. Some U.S. states also limit or ban the use of sow stalls.
“There is active research being done in Canada, and supported by industry including Maple Leaf, to look at alternatives to the present system,” Kuhn said.
