Since I have found that pigs are such endearing and friendly chaps, I don’t look at pork chops the way I once did. And there’s something else I’ve learned that has forever changed the way I feel about such things as bacon and ham.
What I have learned is that the pork farmers have by and large followed the lead of the poultry industry in recent years. Instead of pig farms, today we have more and more pig factories.
The result is not a happy one for today’s pigs.
Some of today’s pig factories are huge industrial complexes, with over 100,000 pigs. You might think that would require an awful lot of pigpens. But the pigpen, like the chicken yard, is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. Every day, more and more of these robust creatures are placed in stalls so cramped that they can hardly move.
If you were to peek inside one of the buildings in which these stalls are kept, you’d see row upon row upon row upon row of pigs, each standing alone in his narrow steel stall, each facing in exactly the same direction, like cars in a parking lot.
But you would hardly notice what you saw, because you’d be so overwhelmed by the stench. The overpowering ammonia saturated air of a modern pig factory is something no one ever forgets.
You see, many modern pig stalls are built on slatted floors over large pits, into which the urine and feces of the animals fall automatically. Thousands of this type of confinement systems are in operation, in spite of the fact that many serious diseases are caused by the toxic gases (ammonia, methane and hydrogen sulfide) that the excreta produce, and which rise from the pits and become trapped inside the building. Pigs have a highly developed sense of smell and their noses are, in a natural setting, capable of detecting the scents of many kinds of edible roots, even when those roots are still underground. In today’s pig factories, however, they breathe night and day the stench of the excrement of the hundreds of pigs whose stalls are in the same building. No matter how much they might want to get away, no matter how hard they might try, there is no escape.
The pig factory I am describing is unfortunately not an isolated bad example. It’s par for the course today. Just a couple of years ago, the owner of Lehman Farms of Strawn, Illinois, was chosen Illinois Pork All-American by the National Pork Producers Council and the Illinois Pork Producers Association. The Lehman farm is considered an industry model, and it is, in fact, one of the more enlightened swine management programs around today. But it seems to leave a little bit to be desired from the point of view of the pigs who call it home. When a “herdsman” at Lehman Farms, Bob Frase, was asked about the effect the ammonia saturated air had on the pigs, he replied:
“The ammonia really chews up the animals’ lungs. They get listless and don’t want to eat. They start losing weight, and the next thing you know you’ve got a real respiratory problem—pneumonia or
something. Then you’ll see them huddled down real low against one another trying to get warm, and you’ll hear them coughing and
gasping. The bad air’s a problem. After I’ve been working in here awhile, I can feel it in my own lungs. But at least I get out of here at night. The pigs don’t so we have to keep them on tetracycline . .