Ten states across America have outlawed them. Dozens of major food companies are mandating their elimination. Consumers want them gone. Scientists and veterinarians decry them as cruel. No matter how you slice it, one thing is clear...
"CRATES MAY NO LONGER HAVE A FUTURE IN PORK."
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Gestation crates are tiny cages used to confine breeding pigs.
Pork industry advisor Dr. Temple Grandin notes, "Confining an animal for most of its life in a box in which it is not able to turn around does not provide a decent life... We've got to treat animals right, and gestation stalls have got to go."
The science is clear: crates are cruel.
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"This little piggie is bred for market. This little piggie can't turn around. That's about to change."
"You'd have to have rocks in your head to build a new barn with gestating sow stalls."
"Gestation stalls done? Seems like it."
"Game over. For any pork producer still on the fence [about gestation
crates], the… move is inevitable."
"One major food corporation after another, from McDonald's to Safeway, has announced plans to stop buying pork from suppliers that confine pregnant sows in gestation stalls."
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Nearly 60 leading companies have condemned gestation crates, mandating better conditions for pigs in their pork supply chains. Click here for a complete list. And here is what just a few of them have to say (hover over each logo to see their statements).
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Mainstream media outlets have echoed the public's demand for change by issuing official editorials against gestation crate confinement.
"[Sows] are highly intelligent animals that are, in essence, tortured during the duration of their breeding lives."
"There is no justification… for the abusive practice of confining animals in spaces barely larger than the volume of their bodies… Industrial confinement is cruel and senseless and will turn out to be, we hope, a relatively short-lived anomaly in modern farming."
"Pigs confined so tightly develop health problems that require antibiotics, raising human health concerns. More than that, the cages are simply cruel."
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"Pigs in tiny crates suffer beyond anything most of us can easily imagine."
"This is torture, and we shouldn't permit it to be inflicted on anyone, especially animals who have done nothing to deserve such callous punishment."
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