MINNEAPOLIS —
As pork producers build new barns and retrofit old ones to give hogs more space, they say consumers opposed to keeping pregnant sows in tight cages can expect to pay for their clearer consciences with higher food prices.
Under pressure from animal-rights activists and sensing a shift in consumer sentiment, several major pork producers have agreed to phase out gestation crates and switch to more open pens. Major pork buyer McDonald’s recently announced its suppliers will have to stop using them as well.
“The McDonald’s announcement was a tipping point in the debate about gestation stalls versus pens. … That announcement has fundamentally changed the way people are looking at this debate,” said Dennis Treacy, executive vice president and chief sustainability officer for Smithfield Foods Inc., the world’s largest pork producer.
But the move to group pens requires building new barns and renovating old ones, more labor and more training for workers. Veterinary costs can go up because sows tend to fight and sometimes injure one another. Experts say at least some of those expenses are likely to be passed on in the price of ham, bacon, chops and sausage.
“We may as a society be in the process of deciding we’re more than willing to pay those costs, but people ought to know what’s involved in their decisions,” said Blake Hurst, president of the Missouri Farm Bureau and a former hog farmer.
Smithfield had converted 30 percent of its company-owned farms by the end of December and is on track to switch all of them by 2017, Treacy said. A global food company with about $13 billion in annual sales, Smithfield expects the cost of switching to open pens to reach $300 million.
Paul Willis, who farms in Thornton, Iowa, said customers are willing to pay premium prices for the pork he and more than 500 other farmers raise according to standards followed by Niman Ranch Inc., which supplies restaurants and supermarkets with humanely raised pork. One major customer is Denver-based Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc.
“We think our system may be the best and most efficient in the long run for the animals, for the people, for the farmers and the environment,” he said. “Sometimes there’s more to farming than just how much money you make.”
