16 Better pork August 2016 MAIN FEATURE FREE GÉDIS ROD WITH FAST TERMINAL SEMEN. Try the GÉDIS rod free with the purchase of Fast terminal semen for two months. Contact Dallas Reimer (519) 754-7432 for more details. The GÉDIS rod is an exclusive product of CIPQ. 64% of the doses ordered from CIPQ are in GÉDIS rods. • Time Saving • Easy Management • Less Semen Reject behind sow housing changes. “It’s more what the processors say,” Geene said. “Instead of having to pay for an added-value product they (packers) are just trying to ... make it the norm and pay us the same prices for it.” He quickly added that he likes loose housing. “But I’m not going to say that somebody in stalls is bad management. I think a lot of pigs do better in stalls than they do in loose housing,” Geene said. So what’s driving the changes? Prairie Swine Centre researcher Jennifer Brown, who heads a national information program on group housing for sows, describes “changes in societal views and ex- pectations regarding animal care.” “Whether you blame Walt Disney, PETA or urban ignorance, these views are based on a chang- ing perspective on animal man- agement,” Brown said. “Instead of focusing primarily on animal health and production, more em- phasis is placed on the animal’s mental state, including the ability to do a variety of behaviours, or the absence of abnormal behav- iours,” she said. “Retailers and packers are responding by requiring changes in production, and sadly, it has fallen on producers to implement these changes with basically no support from packers or retailers,” Brown said. BP “Whether you blame Walt Disney, PeTA or urban ignorance, these views are based on a changing perspective on animal management,” says Jennifer Brown, Prairie Swine ethologist. Brown was commenting on changing societal views about animal care.