“The footage you’re about to see was recorded with a hidden camera…”
That’s how most exposing-abuse videos released by animal rights groups begin. The last in a long line is titled “Walmart Cruelty,” a video released by Chicago-based Mercy For Animals.
Dr. Anna Johnson, Associate Professor of Animal Behavior and Welfare at Iowa State University, has reviewed the video and says the practices in it meet pork industry standards.
Furthermore, she adds, “those standards are arrived at by input from experts, veterinarians, animal scientists, people working in the welfare field in conjunction with pork producers who take these practices very seriously, and also want to make sure that what they’re doing is in the best interest of the animal both short and long-term.”
What about the specific practices and conditions in the video? Tail-docking and castration without anesthetic, blunt force trauma as a form of euthanasia, mother pigs with uterine and rectal prolapses, and piglets with open wounds on their legs.
Johnson starts with tail-docking. Pigs, she says, are curious animals. When they’re young, they like to nibble on things — including each others’ tails. For a pig, tail-docking is preferable to the alternative.
“In the long term,” she says, “it actually cuts down on tail biting, which in extreme cases can actually lead to the entire tail to be bitten off.”
Bitten-off tails can lead to medical complications. For the producers, tail-docking is usually a better choice.
Dr. Johnson says producers castrate male pigs for two reasons; firstly because of “boar taint,” which manifests as both a foul odor and taste in meat from non-castrated pigs. The second reason comes into play when male pigs are older.
According to Johnson, “[older male pigs] can become rather rambunctious and aggressive to each other as well as to producers who are working with those animals. So, it’s a welfare debate for the animals, but we also have to consider the welfare of the producer or caretaker as well.”
Watching a worker in a pork production facility hurl a defenseless piglet against a concrete floor is difficult. While such an act may seem unconscionable, Johnson says it’s very humane.
“Blunt force trauma, when done correctly like all euthanasia methods, is actually a very humane method to euthanize that animal. It doesn’t look good. People don’t like how the animal is moving through the air and making contact. So, there are other options.”
Normally euthanasia is reserved for sick or dying animals; some producers use carbon dioxide on piglets, rather than blunt force trauma. Even when animals are sick, such as sows with uterine or rectal prolapses, Johnson says most larger producers have veterinarians on staff to treat and check the animals multiple times per day. Only when treatment does not work, she says, does euthanasia become an option.
With jarring images and the right soundtrack, videos from animal rights groups like Mercy for Animals cast pork producers as uncaring, neglectful, or violent, and Johnson says that’s simply not fair to the producers.
“They care,” she says. “They went into the profession because they love the animals.”
