In my last post, I wrote to you about CAFOs and swine. One particular hot button topic in the realm of swine operations is the use of gestation crates. These are not to be confused with farrowing crates, which are crates that are used when the sow is giving birth. Farrowing crates keep the piglets safe because mothers have the tendency to roll over on them and kill them without noticing. Farrowing crates allow the piglets to still suckle on the mother without running the risk of getting rolled over. Gestation crates are metal enclosures that hold a pregnant sow through the duration of her pregnancy. She can move forward and backward but she cannot turn around. Those against the use of gestation crates argue that it is inhumane to keep an animal in such a small enclosure and unable to interact socially with other animals. Proponents of gestation crates will tell you that it is easier to monitor the health of the animal, give her the exact amount of food she needs to have a healthy pregnancy, and that they reduce the amount of litters lost. I think the jury is still out on this one. Even as a member of the animal agriculture community, I can see how the general public has a hard time wrapping their heads around this one. But I can also see the benefits to individual attention given by using gestation crates. The best compromise I have found so far are free-access gestation crates. They have little doors on the back that drop down when the pig enters the stall, and if they want to exit the stall and return to the open area, all they have to do is back up and the door will open. The funny thing about these, though, is that even given the free choice to an open area, you're still going to find most of the sows in their crates. Which makes me wonder, what environment do they actually prefer? Are we forcing them into open areas when they would rather be closed in? Or are we closing them in against their will? I don't think the debate about using crates will ever be put to rest. But I can tell you from firsthand experience that, crates or no crates, American pork producers are working every day to create the best product possible with the best animal environment possible.
Hi friends! One concern that we as livestock producers hear a lot about is the use of antibiotics in the treatment of our animals. I'm sure you've even seen labels on your meat products at the store that advertise them as "Antibiotic free." Well, the truth is, ALL the meat that you buy is antibiotic free! You see, antibiotics have to be administered to livestock under what is called the "Veterinary Feed Directive," which means it is illegal to use medically-important antibiotics for any extralabel use. Antibiotics can only be administered under veterinary care! Under these guidelines, an animal has to wait a specified period of time (as directed by the label of the antibiotic) for withdrawal before the animal can go to slaughter to be processed for food. This means that the antibiotics have to work their way out of the animal's system before it is fit to eat. And then you have advertisements like this one here from Perdue, which tells you that their an
One intricacy of livestock production that has people worried is how livestock produce greenhouse gases that could be impacting our environment. This is a very legitimate concern, as the world's production of these gases increasing daily. However, agriculture as a whole, not just livestock production, only accounts for 9% of the total greenhouse emissions, a mere one-third of what the transportation industry produces. But still, there's always room for improvement! Researchers are always working to find the best combination of supplemental minerals and feed combinations that will lower the amount of methane produced by livestock. And we are getting pretty good at it! One way we are currently reducing emissions is the fact that we now can produce far more product with a far smaller animal population than we could throughout the 20th century, thanks to feeding techniques and breeding strategies that help us get more product from each animal. Compared to 1960, today's egg prod
The media these days love to focus on CAFOs. But what are they, really? CAFO stands for concentrated animal feeding operation. Most people, if they have heard this term, have an instantly negative connotation of it. I, myself, was even fooled into the fear of them by a well-meaning but misinformed biology professor back in the day. CAFOs are a little different for every species. For instance, beef animals start in a cow/calf operation, where they are on pasture, move to a stocker/backgrounder operation, where they are still on pasture, until they are about a year old, and then for about the last 3 months in a concentrated feedlot. Swine, on the other hand, spend most of their lives in a "hog house," an indoor feeding and care facility. Why are hogs raised indoors? Simply because it is easier to monitor each individual animal's health that way. Pigs have a tendency to get sick and to hurt themselves and each other. Having enclosed pens with only a few animals per pen makes
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