Smithfield farms

[Engler]

I know this isn't a beef topic, but since we're all going after the same market (meat on the table) I thought that some of you would find this interesting/have some reaction to this.

According to reports on the farm show on the radio(WHO out of Des Moines, IA) at noon today Smithfield Farms (maybe foods) anounced today that within the next ten years that they are going to eliminate all gestation stalls for sows. I believe that they said in the interview with one of the company VPs in an interview at about 12:45 this afternoon that this amounted to 1 million sows on 183 company owned farms. This is the largest pork producing company in the country.

According to the statement by the company this was a business decision that was not pressured by any outside influence.

I have no way of knowing this, but I've got to believe that they are getting pressure from someone else (McDonalds?). If this is the case and a company of this size can get pushed around what does that mean for the rest of animal agriculture?

 

[Brandonm2]

Smithfield probably needs to do this in order to keep exporting product. Having worked on those big farms, (some of whom now are Smithfield's) I don't think it would be a big problem at all too switch from gestation crates too gestation pens. We kept all the early weaners, late weaners, virgin gilts, and culls in pens in the boar barn anyway (this was pre-widespread A.I). Putting newly bred gilts in a crate for the first time was often extremely physically demanding. With decent management there shouldn't be a problem other than adding some floor space and that could be done just by dropping capacity. My big question is how much this will effect conception rates and farrowing rates. If they are doing it voluntarily you can almost bet that at some point in time everybody will have to do it mandatorily.

 

[hpm08161947]

Smithfield's big processing plant is a few miles down the road from my place. The last I heard they were processing over 30,000 hogs a day - maybe more. Seems like half the county is employed there. Looks like a small city not a plant. If they do away with gestation stalls I wonder what they would replace them with - sows just love to flop on their pigs. I also don't think of McDonalds as much of a pork buyer - but who knows. Most of their facilities are owned by the contractor (family farm) but I guess they do dictate the way their livestock is managed.

 

[Brandonm2]

He said gestation crate NOT farrowing crate. Those are two different things. The farrowing crate protects baby pigs from stupid sows (we still lose ~10% most too crushing even with the crates and the pig lamps (or mats). The gestation crates are just a management tool too keep as many sows as humanly possible in a barn as well as provide them with individualized care. I always thought the maintenance on all those steel cages was not worth the trouble.

 

[hpm08161947]

I gotcha - my fault - should have paid better attention.