Gestation stalls still common in the U.S.

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Meanwhile, gestation stall use in the United States is still widespread according to a study conducted by University of Missouri economist Ron Plain. He surveyed 70 operations with 1,000 sows and over, representing 3.6 million of the nation's 5.7 million sows, and found that sows in only 17.3 per cent of them spent part of their gestation in open pens. The rest of them were crated all of the time.

There are concerns about how the U.S. industry can manage a conversion to meet the expectations of customers, who have asked suppliers to assure that all of the pork they produce will be from non-gestation stall operations by 2017, barely five years away.

The National Pork Producers Council commissioned the study. It confirms their concerns about the decisions food companies have made to buy only pork from operations that are gestation-crate-free. There will be difficulties and costs in sorting, segregating and tracing pigs and pork to meet the needs of these customers. Traceability isn't as far along in the United States as it is in Canada, some producers here note. BP