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California voted to improve pig welfare. The pork industry is facing a reckoning

By August 13, 2021September 1st, 2021No Comments

Document type : Article published on the National Geographic

Author: Natasha Daly

Californians voted to ban the sale of meat from pigs born to sows who spent their pregnancy in small crates. The law, which goes into effect in January 2022, affects pork production nationwide.

Stand up, lie down, turn around, and stretch their legs. Pregnant pigs should live in large enough spaces to do those things, Californians have declared.

So have the people of Massachusetts. Whole Foods concurs, as do McDonald's, Walmart, and more than 50 other companies that sell pork.

But the majority of the country's six million breeding sows spend a significant portion of their four-month pregnancies-if not all-in gestation crates: seven-by-two-foot metal cages they can't turn or stretch in. By keeping pigs isolated in small spaces, pork producers can keep more pigs in a single building and prevent sows from potentially injuring each other, they say.

Nine states have banned the use of gestation crates. In 2018, California voters passed a ballot initiative that took it a step further. As of January 2022, California prohibits the sale of meat produced anywhere in the U.S. from pigs whose mothers were kept in gestation crates and from calves who have been confined in veal crates. The initiative-nearly identical to one Massachusetts passed in 2016-also bans the sale of eggs laid by caged hens.

Veal and egg producers are on track to comply, the AP reports, but most pork producers are not. Only 4 percent of the country's 66,000 pork producers currently meet the new laws' minimum space requirements of 24 square feet.

Though the law was passed at the state level, it's having national consequences. It's been hailed by animal welfare advocates as a groundbreaking improvement-and it's been attacked by much of the meat industry as an overreach that'll make meat more expensive for everyone. For example: An Iowa pig farm would have to overhaul its pig housing if it wants to sell pork in California, even if some of the pigs it raises still end up in other states.

Pork is a $23 billion industry in the United States. Trade groups have challenged the law in federal court, but so far, the courts have sided with California voters. With less than five months before the law goes into effect, opponents are running out of options.

From the National Geographic website