Pigs in Court

Not just any court, but the Supreme Court and no, I’m not talking about any of the sitting justices, but the kind critters who make bacon. With several customers employed at DOJ, public service, law schools, and in private practice, I always have the opportunity to ask questions regarding the legal proceedings taking place in the news, but this week it was their turn to ask me if I’d been seen the ruling on the humane treatment of pigs and what I thought about it and how it would affect me as well as my fellow pork producers at the market.

Really? First, if you’re buying your pork at the farmers market chances are your farmers are not raising their livestock in industrial conditions including the use of gestation crates which are at the heart of the issue. A gestation crate is basically a cage barely larger than the sow (mother pig) that prevents her from laying on her piglets which is quite common with new or poor mothers not just in pigs, but all species of livestock. Even humans have been guilty of this accident with their young, too.

Breeding livestock is not for the faint of heart. Get a bunch of livestock producers together and the war stories of a thousand ways to die will eventually break out. Being omnivores, pigs will sometimes eat their own young, especially when they’re stressed and in crowded conditions. Rabbits and poultry are also guilty of newborn cannibalism. Trust me, little is worse than picking up your half-eaten potential income. When farming becomes big business, every loss shaves dollars off the bottom line and producers will go to any length to prevent it, including putting pigs in gestation crates.

Oddly, the government has remained hands off on standards for livestock handling even with the 1966 Animal Welfare Act which excludes farm animals until recently as more consumers became aware of industrial agricultural practices and their impact on our environment and health.

The use of gestation crates became widely used in the 1960’s as a method for increasing production and are now used in 70% of all pork production in the United States. As of 2021, there were approximately six million breeding sows in this country. Pregnant commercial sows are bred twice a year and kept in these crates for 16 weeks at a time, meaning 62% of their lives are spent in a space where they can’t even turn around.

Given that less than 2% of the country's population is actively involved in food production few people will ever get to spend any time around the species they consume as food. That disconnect has led to the rise of industrial agriculture which is designed to pump out lots of food that costs as little as possible with little concern for the overall wellbeing of the animals’ natural behaviors.

Also during the 1960’s there were people who decided that raising food, including livestock, should be done in a way that respected the land, the community, the animals, and the producers. Back then they were called hippies, today it’s called humane and organic and regenerative. Consumers caught on to the overall impact the industrial hog industry had. From polluted communities to child laborers in large scale slaughter and processing facilities, consumers are taking a hard look at how their pork chop was produced.  

To date, ten states have outlawed the use of gestational crates, but the legal win for better pork production practices wasn’t about animal welfare; it was about the regulation of interstate commerce. California passed a law that said all pork sold within the state must meet humane standards including not using gestation crates. This law applies to pigs raised outside of the state as well. Instead of agreeing with the progressive practices of raising pigs, the pork industry asked for the Supreme Court to set aside the California law from applying to them if they were located outside of the California.

I’ve spent enough time around pigs over the years to know they don’t belong stuffed inside overcrowded concrete barns or gestation crates. They’re gregarious and social animals. Despite their reputation as being dirty, they are actually quite clean if given enough room. Dirty pigs are unhappy pigs and unhappy pigs cause trouble. Trust me, you don’t want to get in an argument with a 600-pound sow. You will lose.

Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion stating, “While the Constitution addresses many weighty issues, the type of pork chops California merchants may sell is not on that list.”

But I’ve got more questions about this issue and would relish the opportunity to discuss them. While these laws apply to pork products for food, what about all the medical products derived from pigs such as cortisone, norepinephrine, plasmin, blood fibrin, estrogen, relaxin, insulin, pepsin, and oxytocin? Will the sows that produce pigs used in the medical industry be held to the same standards? Pig heart valves are routinely implanted in humans and I guarantee they’re not the same ones being made into sausages and salami. There are pig pancreases in diabetic humans now. Pig skin is used on burn victims. Pig kidney transplants in humans are in the works and the strangest one yet, attaching human lungs for transplant on to a pig so they can heal before being placed in the human recipient. Are we also going to ask if the pigs used in medical products, procedures and research were born in gestation crates? Inquiring minds want to know.