February 15, 2012
McDonald’s plans to begin working with its pork suppliers to phase out the use of so-called gestational crates—the tiny stalls in which sows are housed while pregnant.
Animal-rights advocates have singled out the use of crates, also known as sow stalls, as cruel, and several U.S. states have moved to ban or restrict their use not only in pork production, but also in the production of eggs and veal.
“McDonald’s believes gestation stalls are not a sustainable production system for the future,” said Dan Gorsky, senior vice president for supply chain management for McDonald’s in North America. “There are alternatives we think are better for the welfare of sows.”
The sow stalls, which are a little more than 2 feet by 7 feet, are too small for a pregnant pig to turn around in. Being confined in a stationary position for the four months of an average pregnancy leads to a variety of health problems, including urinary tract infections, weakened bone structures, overgrown hooves and mental stress, animal rights advocates say. About 60% to 70% of the more than 5 million breeding sows in the United States are kept in the crates.
Several large suppliers, including Smithfield Farms and Cargill, have already begun reducing their use of the crates, but a large portion of the U.S. pork supply still comes from pigs born from sows raised in crates, said Bob Langert, McDonald’s vice president for sustainability. “When we were looking at this over the last year, we could see more needed to be done.”
McDonald’s asked its five direct suppliers in the United States of bacon, Canadian bacon and sausage to provide their plans for reducing reliance on sow stalls. The company will assess the plans and announce in May what steps it will take.
“It’s not a simple process,” Mr. Langert said. “We buy a finished product from our suppliers, who are buying from a processing facility that is buying from producers and farmers who raise the pigs, who in turn are buying piglets from farmers who have the sows. There are lots of stakeholders and collaboration that are going to be involved.”
Chow time
Jodi Sterle, a specialist on swine reproductive management at Iowa State University, said no easy alternative to sow stalls existed because feeding pigs was complicated by their hierarchical nature. “When they are raised in groups, there is competition for food, water and space, and especially for food,” she said.
Producers have tried a method called trickle feeding, in which small amounts of food are put into feeders throughout the day, but dominant sows camp out by the feeders and push away more passive animals.
Another technique uses a microchip embedded in an ear tag to manage a sow’s diet and feed her in a “cafeteria,” but animals sometimes find ways to overcome that technology, too. “There’s no science that provides the perfect answer right now,” Dr. Sterle said.
The National Pork Producers Council, a U.S. trade association, said in a statement it supported the effort by McDonald’s. “Pork industry customers have expressed a desire to see changes in how pigs are raised,” the council said. “Farmers are responding and modifying their practices accordingly.”
Over the past decade, the Humane Society of the United States has worked to raise awareness of the problems caused by restrictive crates in the meat and poultry industry. Several U.S. states, including Florida and California, have passed laws banning the use of restrictive crates in meat and egg production.
The Humane Society has been in contact with McDonald’s about the crate issue for several years but stepped up the intensity of its discussions over the past month, said Wayne Pacelle, president of the society.
Big name
The buying power of McDonald’s adds a significant new dimension to efforts to challenge the practice. “This announcement by McDonald’s today does more to put the writing on the wall for the pork industry than anything that’s happened previously,” said Paul Shapiro, senior director for farm animal protection at the Humane Society.
McDonald’s buys about 1% of the pork produced in the United States, but its influence is much larger than the percentage suggests. When the company required its egg suppliers to increase the amount of cage space devoted to their hens in 1999, for example, other fast-food chains followed suit. Soon, the vast majority of egg producers had given their chickens more space.
Burger King was the first large fast-food chain to reduce its purchases of pork produced in facilities that use gestation crates, taking that step in 2007 at the same time it began adding cage-free eggs to its supply chain.
Before that, celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck announced he would stop serving foie gras, which is the liver of force-fed geese, and that he would no longer buy veal, pork or eggs from producers that use restrictive crates.
In 2007, Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest pork producer, pledged to end the use of gestation crates in its facilities by 2017, a date it postponed during the economic downturn. The Humane Society then released a video of pigs in Smithfield’s stalls, and the company once again pledged to stop using the crates by 2017.
The Humane Society said Cargill was now 50% crate-free, and Hormel Foods recently said it would match the pledge by Smithfield.
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