United States-Animal Welfare rhetoric and reality.

UNITED STATES-ANIMAL WELFARE.

-Economic recession isn’t eroding the public’s willingness to pass legislation in favor of animal-welfare standards that carry

substantial costs for meat producers and consumers, as voters support such

moves even in hard times.

Several farmers and scientists worry, though, that broad-based animal-welfare

measures may fall short of their ultimate goal while adding financial pressure

to livestock operations already reeling from last year’s record feed and input

costs atop global economic contraction.

On Feb. 17, the California Senate Food and Agriculture committee will hold a

hearing on "setting a course for improved farm animal welfare in California,"

following a ballot initiative passed in November by 63% of California voters,

banning veal crates, battery cages for poultry and gestation crates for sows.

Such cages are used to restrict sows’ movement during pregnancy and nursing

and to isolate and micromanage hens’ diets and health care to maximize laying

capacity. To some degree, the restraints are used in both species to keep the

animals from fighting and getting injured as "pecking order" is established.

The move to cageless systems "would raise costs of California producers by at

least 20% relative to its out-of-state competitors" and usher in the end of the

state’s major egg production, but retail prices would stay fairly steady as

existing out-of-state suppliers would fill the gap, according to a paper

published last summer by an academic panel from the University of California,

Davis.

However, if a shift to non-cage production were to be imposed nationwide - a

shift the animal-welfare lobby is pursuing - retail costs would rise by at

least 25%, the report’s authors expect, as domestic production would fall,

unless it is possible to expand low-cost egg production in Canada or Mexico for

shipments to U.S. markets.

As for welfare, experts on the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal

Production recommended that "animals should be comfortable especially in their

lying areas, should not suffer thermal extremes, and should have enough space

to move around freely." But not all animal scientists believe that improved

animal welfare is best achieved by moving to more open systems.

The U.C. Davis authors didn’t analyze detailed welfare issues, but noted that

production costs rise in cageless systems due to higher hen mortality and other

health problems arising in a less-controlled system.

Don Bell, a poultry specialist emeritus at the University of California,

Riverside, insists poultry were removed from their natural environment to

improve their welfare and have since been protected from environmental

challenges such as soil-borne disease.

"We can manage our flocks so much better in cages; we can feed them better

than humans," he said. "It’s not in the best interest [of the birds] to go back

into the muck and disease conditions we experienced 50 or more years ago prior

to the almost universal adoption of the cage system in the U.S. and around the

world."

Still, according to bioethicist Bernie Rollin, a distinguished professor of

philosophy, animal sciences and biomedical sciences at Colorado State

University, the consequences of improved welfare aren’t all negative for

industry economics.

Rollin and Tim Blackwell, Ontario’s chief swine veterinarian, estimated that,

when hog operators upgrade facilities "every dozen years or so," redoing the

system into open pens without stalls could reduce installation costs by 50%.

Some of the savings must be directed to hiring more skilled labor capable of

handling more pig interaction and management variables, they said.

Smithfield Foods Inc. (SFD), the nation’s largest hog producer, "did not

whine about the costs" when Rollin helped convince the company to give up sow

crates, he said. If anything, the company was concerned about its ability to

find laborers skilled in the animal-husbandry practices an open-pen system

would require, Rollin said.

Despite the recession, California’s law still passed by a two-to-one margin

which, Rollin said, "tells me that people have a gut-level intrinsic sense of

fairness of how we care animals. People will press this even if it ends up

costing them more money."

Earlier in the decade, voters enacted similar laws in Florida, Arizona and

Oregon - not large hog-producing states, but populous states that may signal a

growing public sentiment against industrial-style livestock production and meat

processing. Also in 2008, Colorado’s state legislature became the first

legislative body to ban sow-gestation crates and veal crates used to isolate,

protect and feed calves until slaughter. Rollin noted the bill was jointly

supported by the Humane Society of the United States and the Colorado Livestock

Association.

Industry Standards

The industry’s current production standards reflect the highest standards of

animal care, said Jennifer Greiner, a veterinarian and director of science and

technology at the National Pork Producers Council.

"I have seen gestation stalls work and gestation stalls fail; I’ve seen

gestation pens work and pens fail - it goes back to ability to take care of

animals," Greiner said. She noted that the pork industry directs about $12

million in producer funds to study animal welfare as it relates to housing,

care, transport, animal behavior and euthanasia.

The pork producers funded a study in 2007 estimating that the cost of

converting gestation stalls to open pens would run $2.7 billion to $3.07

billion. The costs facing individual operators would prompt some to exit the

business, driving up pork costs by an estimated $5 billion as a result of the

anticipated supply reduction, the study said.

Speaking as the daughter of farmers with a 1,200-sow pork and grain

operation, Greiner said she has heard farmers comparing their current economic

situation to that of a decade ago, when 35,800 hog farmers exited the business

from 1997-2000 under devastating economic pressure.

In 1998, hog prices fell to the lowest levels since the Great Depression and

briefly traded at single-digit levels (dollars per hundredweight) in December.

The market was overwhelmed by large supplies and a lack of processing capacity

after a large plant in Detroit closed earlier that year. Agricultural

economists estimated losses among the nation’s swine producers over the period

from late 1998 through 1999 totaled around $4 billion, or approximately half of

their equity.

"The reforms we’re calling for are so modest that it’s hard to see any

slowdown in their implementation," said Paul Shapiro, senior director of the

Humane Society of the United States’ Factory Farming Campaign. "We’re calling

for three categories of farm animals be allowed to turn around and extend their

limbs. It’s most illustrative of how extreme these practices have become that

agribusiness would spend $9 million to prevent animals from turning around.."

Fresh off its ballot-initiative victory in California, the animal-welfare

lobby is anxious to pass similar laws in other states and gain animal-welfare

protections for livestock under federal law.

Amo