Where You Have Livestock, You Have Dead Stock: What HSUS Doesn’t Tell You

I’m about to share with you an inconvenient truth: Only you can change the way livestock are reared on commercial farms in the United States. I said it when everyone was in an uproar about routine antibiotic use a few weeks ago and I’ll say it again. American consumers may like the idea of ridding the meat industry of {insert heinous commercial farming practice of the month here}, but they’re not ready for the reality. The pork industry — and every other agricultural industry — has become what it has become as a direct result of consumer demand. If American consumers didn’t demand cheap pork farmers wouldn’t produce cheap pork.

But I’m also about to share with you another inconvenient truth, because unlike the HSUS I don’t intend to blow rainbows and bunnies up your ass: Animals die. Some never live to begin with. Still born piglets– see the shocking image of a bucket full of dead piglets at 0:27 — are not uncommon. Even if you get rid of gestation crates animals will still die. Even on our farm where sunshine, pasture, room to move around, belly rubs and behind-the-ear scratches are the norm, some piglets are born dead; some get stuck in their amniotic sacks and die immediately after birth; still some others are simply not thrivers and die within the first week of life. It sucks, but it’s nature. There is nothing more gut wrenching than disposing of tiny bodies or more exhausting than tending night and day to an ill animal, but it’s part of raising them for any reason — including for meat. Where you have livestock, you have dead stock.

But HSUS and other “animal welfare” organizations wouldn’t have you know it. It’s too inconvenient to their mission. The truth doesn’t further their agenda so they hide it. They hide at 1:51 when the undercover agent whines about seeing piglets scream being one of the “worst things” he’s “ever seen”, that piglets scream the second they’re restrained. For any reason. When I pick up a piglet and cradle it like a newborn baby it screams all the way across the farm until I put it down again. It’s self-preservation. Pigs are prey animals, being physically restrained equals death. They do everything in their power to avoid physical restraint, including blood curdling screams. Which, by the way, are just one of many very loud noises pigs make for many, many reasons. Very few of which have anything to do with pain.

They don’t tell you that the bloody mess you see at 1:35 is a uterine prolapse or that such a prolapse can be caused by numerous factors, none of which are even related to the gestation crates they’re advocating against. Mycotoxins in the feed, genetic propensity for a weak uterine attachment, and constipation are common contributors; to name a few.

They don’t disclose when they tell you the dimensions of gestation crates that pigs are generally afforded more space per pig in crates than in pens (fourteen square feet versus nine). And when they quote the pew research council on the stress the crates cause the sows — which I’m not disputing, not at all — they don’t include that pen rearing can be just as stressful if not more so. They don’t tell you that the scrapes and scratches on the pig shown at 1:32 are probably from fighting with other pigs. (Look closely, that pig is in a pen with others. And those marks are classic fight scratches.) Or that fighting amongst a herd can leave the submissive animals in a constant state of not just stress, but fear.

They don’t tell you these things because these things muddy up the clear (but wholly misleading and inaccurate) depiction of commercial farms they wish you to see. They don’t tell you these things because these things don’t further their agenda. They don’t tell you these things because the truth leaves them without an entity at which to point a finger. Because releasing the real story — telling the public the truth, that these practices are necessary because they refuse to pay more than a couple dollars a pound for pork chops — isn’t something that would make them popular.

But I’m not concerned with being popular. I’m concerned with telling the truth. So I will. If you want pigs out of gestation crates stop buying pork from pigs that have been housed in gestation crates. Only you can affect change. Only your grocery dollars can make a difference; vote with them. These practices are employed because they are necessary to provide the pork products the public demands. Either stop demanding them or, as my mother would say, quit your bitchin’.