Achieving High Productivity in Group HousedSows

摘要

Over the last several years our industry has had to grapple with the reality that pork processors, under pressure from various activist groups, are more often than not requesting that pork producers supply pork from sows which have been raised in group housing rather than individual stalls. As everyone is likely aware, this started with certain segments of our society believing that the individual confinement of animals is inhumane, and should not be tolerated in our food chain. Obviously, this ideais still very controversial and personally, I do not agree that stall housing is not animal welfare friendly. I have, over the years, moved many farms out of group housing because of what I thought at the time were situations not conducive to animal welfare. In fact, in my experience, moving sows from pens to stalls always resulted in an increase in sow productivity. That has been my career bias until recently. The rest of this paper details my movement away from this bias.