Paul Shapiro
2007-04-03 07:00:00.0
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BALTIMORE -

Whether the issue is health care or the death penalty, Maryland legislators have a number of items on their agenda this session sure to generate controversy and heated debate. But there’s one issue pending before them that is so basic and moderate, it deserves the universal support of our delegates and senators in Annapolis.

Both the House of Delegates and the Senate are currently considering legislation (respectively, HB 1246 introduced by Del. Saqib Ali, and SB 821 introduced by Sen. Gwendolyn Britt) that would require the pig industry to give breeding sows merely enough space simply to turn around. It truly is hard to imagine something more elemental, but the unfortunate reality in the world of factory farming is that granting animals the ability to turn around is often too much mercy to request.

Although most pigs used for pork production endure bleak conditions, factory farms abuse breeding sows in ways that are so terrible that the cruelty is among the most egregious factory farming abuses. Most of these sows — social, intelligent animals — are confined in gestation crates only 2 feet wide, preventing the animals from even turning around or walking for months on end.

Pigs confined in these crates suffer immensely, unable to exercise or engage in nearly any of their natural behaviors. The forced immobilization takes a serious physical and psychological toll, leading to both leg and joint problems along with psychosis resulting from extreme boredom and frustration.

Farm animal expert Dr. Temple Grandin said, “Gestation crates for pigs are a real problem. ...Basically, you’re asking a sow to live in an airline seat. ...I think it’s something that needs to be phased out.”

Confinement in gestation crates is so abusive that the entire European Union has is phasing it out, with a complete ban taking effect in 2013. On this side of the Atlantic, both Florida and Arizona have also banned the practice, each through ballot initiatives approved by overwhelming margins. And just months after Arizona’s landslide vote last November, Smithfield Foods — the nation’s largest pig producer — announced that it is phasing out its use of gestation crates. One week later, Canada’s largest pig producer announced it’s doing the same.

C. Larry Pope, chief executive officer of Smithfield Foods, cited growing consumer concerns for animal welfare as a reason for the switch, explaining that “they have told us they feel group housing is a more animal-friendly form of sow housing. ...While this will be a significant financial commitment for our company over the next 10 years, we believe it’s the right thing to do.”

Farm animals are completely at our mercy, yet too often we abuse them absolutely mercilessly. Forcing them to endure total, permanent confinement to the extent that they can’t even turn around is indisputably cruel and inhumane, and such egregious abuse ought to be banned.

Maryland’s legislators should act quickly to pass these commonsense bills and add our state to the growing list of those taking action to prevent the worst factory farming practices. Giving breeding pigs enough room to turn around may not prevent all cruelty toward these animals, but it would be a significant step in the right direction — and truly the very least we owe these animals from whom we take so much. Both our state and the pigs would be better off for it.

A lifelong Maryland resident, Paul Shapiro is the director of the Factory Farming Campaign of the Humane Society of the United States.