Lesser Beasts: A Snout-to-Tail History of the Humble Pig

by Mark Essig

  211Since the 1920s scientists had understood: Terry G. Summons, “Animal Feed Additives, 1940–1966,” Agricultural History 42 (1968): 305–306.

  212Pfizer claimed that pigs dosed with Terramycin: J. L. Anderson, Industrializing the Corn Belt (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2009), 93.

  212By the 1960s, livestock consumed: William Boyd, “Making Meat: Science, Technology, and American Poultry Production,” Technology and Culture 42 (2001): 648; also see M. Finlay, “Hogs, Antibiotics and the Industrial Environments of Postwar Agriculture,” in Industrializing Organisms, ed. Philip Scranton and Susan Schrepfer (New York: Routledge, 2004), 239.

  213With farmland so expensive, one farmer asked: Orville Schell, Modern Meat (New York: Random House, 1984), 61.

  213Antibiotics, the drug salesman said, help pigs: Schell, Modern Meat, 13.

  213In 1972 an agricultural magazine predicted: Anderson, Industrializing, 103.

  213Farmhands, though, were scarce in the 1950s: Paul Robbins, “Labor Situations Facing the Producer,” in The Pork Industry, ed. David Topel (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1968), 211.

  214Compared to its ancestor in the 1930s, a broiler chicken: Boyd, “Making Meat,” 638.

  214Thanks to low prices and a healthy image: W. J. Warren, Tied to the Great Packing Machine (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2007), 223.

  214“The use of slotted floors has probably accelerated”: Al Jensen, Management and Housing for Confinement Swine Production (Urbana: University of Illinois, 1972), 7.

  215For each pig weighing 150 to 250 pounds: Wilson G. Pond, “Modern Pork Production,” Scientific American 248 (1983): 102.

  215In such close quarters, pigs kept each other warm: Abigail Woods, “Rethinking the History of Modern Agriculture: British Pig Production, c. 1910–65,” Twentieth Century British History 23 (2011): 173.

  215Crowded together, they shuffled around more: Chris Mayda, “Pig Pens, Hog Houses, and Manure Pits: A Century of Change in Hog Production,” Material Culture 36 (2004): 25.

  215Slatted floors made the farmer’s life easier: Ronald Plain, James R. Foster, and Kenneth A. Foster, Pork Production Systems with Business Analyses (Raleigh: North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service, 1995).

  215The “comfort and convenience” of the farmer: Jensen, Management, 3.

  215In a celebratory cover story in Scientific American: Pond, “Modern Pork Production,” 96.

  216By 2000, three-quarters of sows in the United States: Nigel Key and William D. McBride, The Changing Economics of U.S. Hog Production (Washington, DC: US Department of Agriculture, 2007), 12.

  216Breeding stock tended to be purebreds: Paul Brassley, “Cutting Across Nature? The History of Artificial Insemination in Pigs in the United Kingdom,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 38 (2007): 442–461.

  217“If a sow has a litter of twelve and rolls on three”: Schell, Modern Meat, 63.

  217Today, it takes less than three pounds: John McGlone, “Swine,” in Animal Welfare in Animal Agriculture, ed. Wilson G. Pond, Fuller W. Bazer, and Bernard E. Rollin (Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2012), 150.

  217As one animal scientist explained: McGlone, “Swine,” 150.

  218Scientists from Texas A&M University showed: Anderson, “Lard to Lean,” 43–44.

  218After an initial boost spurred by the campaign: Jane L. Levere, “The Pork Industry’s ‘Other White Meat’ Campaign Is Taken in New Directions,” New York Times, March 4, 2005; Trish Hall, “And This Little Piggy Is Now on the Menu,” New York Times, November 13, 1991.

  218Meanwhile, consumption of chicken: Warren, Tied, 222.

  218At an industry conference in the 1960s: Irvin Omtvedt, “Some Heritability Characteristics,” in Topel, Pork Industry, 128.

  218In 2000, industry experts writing in National Hog Farmer: Tom J. Baas and Rodney Goodwin, “Genetic-Based Niche Marketing Programs,” National Hog Farmer, August 1, 2000.

  219“Their personalities are completely different”: Temple Grandin and Catherine Johnson, Animals in Translation (New York: Scribner, 2005), 101. Also see Pond, “Modern Pork Production,” 100.

  219As a group of veterinarians explained: European Union, The Welfare of Intensively Kept Pigs (Brussels: European Commission, 1997), 4.8.2.

  Chapter 17

  221“If it is not feasible to do this in a confinement operation”: Bernard Rollin, Putting the Horse Before Descartes (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2011), 207.

  222The New York Times printed its first analysis of modern pig farming: William Serrin, “Hog Production Swept by Agricultural Revolution,” New York Times, August 11, 1980.

  222In 1995 the Raleigh News and Observer earned a Pulitzer Prize: Pat Stith, Joby Warrick, and Melanie Sill, “Boss Hog,” Raleigh News and Observer, February 19, 1995.

  222As one industry insider explained, “For modern agriculture”: Peter Cheeke, Contemporary Issues in Animal Agriculture (Danville, IL: Interstate, 1999), 248.

  223By the late 1960s, however, a livestock expert had already noted: Herrell DeGraff, “Introduction,” in The Pork Industry, ed. David Topel (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1968), xii.

  223Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson infamously offered this advice: Wendell Berry, The Way of Ignorance (New York: Counterpoint, 2006), 117.

  223In 1950, the average hog farm had 19 animals: National Animal Health Monitoring System, Swine 2006, Part IV (Fort Collins, CO: US Department of Agriculture, 2008), 5.

  223By 2004, 80 percent of hogs lived: Nigel Key and William D. McBride, The Changing Economics of U.S. Hog Production (Washington, DC: US Department of Agriculture, 2007), 5.

  223In 2010, the top four hog producers had captured two-thirds of the market: Timothy A. Wise and Sarah E. Trist, “Buyer Power in U.S. Hog Markets,” Global Development and Environment Institute Working Papers 10 (2010): 4, 6.

  224The company owns the slaughtering plants: Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production, Putting Meat on the Table (Philadelphia: Pew Charitable Trusts, 2008), 42.

  224“Vertical integration gives you high-quality”: David Barboza, “Goliath of the Hog World,” New York Times, April 7, 2000.

  224The number of hogs raised there doubled: Key and McBride, Changing Economics, 9.

  224Wendell Murphy, founder of a large hog producer: Pat Stith and Joby Warrick, “Murphy’s Law,” Raleigh News and Observer, February 22, 1995; Michael Thompson, “This Little Piggy Went to Market: The Commercialization of Hog Production in Eastern North Carolina from William Shay to Wendell Murphy,” Agricultural History 74 (2000): 569–584.

  224By 2006, 95 percent of hogs in the United States: Wise and Trist, “Buyer Power,” 4, 6.

  2241,300 hogs per hour in some cases: Ted Genoways, The Chain (New York: Harper, 2014), xii.

  225These laborers had little bargaining power: Wise and Trist, “Buyer Power,” 4–8; Lance Compa, Blood, Sweat, and Fear: Workers’ Rights in U.S. Meat and Poultry Plants (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2004).

  225It was no accident that the hog industry: Deborah Fink, Cutting into the Meatpacking Line (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 1–2, 50–69; Brian Page, “Restructuring Pork Production, Remaking Rural Iowa,” in Globalising Food, ed. David Goodman and Michael Watts (London: Routledge, 1997), 133–157.

  225For every dollar spent on pork: Wise and Trist, “Buyer Power,” 19.

  225In constant dollars, the price of pork: John McGlone, “Swine,” in Animal Welfare in Animal Agriculture, ed. Wilson G. Pond, Fuller W. Bazer, and Bernard E. Rollin (Boca Raton: CRC Press, 2012), 149.

  226“It came through the woods”: “Huge Spill of Hog Waste Fuels an Old Debate in North Carolina,” New York Times, June 25, 1995.

  226A 250-pound hog excretes 7.8 pounds o
f feces: Al Jensen, Management and Housing for Confinement Swine Production (Urbana: University of Illinois, 1972), 19; Pew Commission, Putting Meat, 29.

  226Strict rules governed the disposal of human waste: Quarterly Hogs and Pigs (Washington, DC: US Department of Agriculture, September 29, 1995).

  226As one man who lived near a manure lagoon explained: Jeff Tietz, “Boss Hog,” Rolling Stone, December 14, 2006; also see Joby Warrick and Pat Stith, “New Studies Show That Lagoons Are Leaking,” Raleigh News and Observer, February 19, 1995; Key and McBride, Changing Economics, 12; Darrell Smith, “Can Pigs and People Live in Peace?,” Farm Journal 119 (1995): 18.

  226In 2011, at a farm in northern Iowa: Sarah Zhang, “The Curious Case of the Exploding Pig Farms,” Nautilus, December 2, 2013.

  227As a result, the industry shifted to the high plains: Wise and Trist, “Buyer Power,” 7.

  227All told, experts suggested that American taxpayers: Elanor Starmer and Timothy Wise, Living High on the Hog (Medford, MA: Tufts University, 2007); Elanor Starmer and Timothy Wise, “Feeding at the Trough: Industrial Livestock Firms Saved $35 Billion from Low Feed Prices,” GDAE Policy Brief 07–03 (2007).

  227Depending on whose estimate you believe: Robert Goodland and Jeff Anhang, “Livestock and Climate Change,” World Watch 22 (2009): 10; Pierre Gerber, Tackling Climate Change Through Livestock (Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2013), xii.

  227More than three-quarters of the antibiotics: “Record-High Antibiotic Sales for Meat and Poultry Production,” Pew Charitable Trusts, http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/multimedia/data-visualizations/2013/recordhigh-antibiotic-sales-for-meat-and-poultry-production; Maryn McKenna, “Imagining the Post-antibiotics Future,” Medium, November 20, 2013, https://medium.com/@fernnews/imagining-the-post-antibiotics-future-892b57499e77 (accessed June 1, 2014).

  227according to the Food and Drug Administration: US Food and Drug Administration, “Antimicrobials Sold or Distributed for Use in Food-Producing Animals” (Washington, DC, September 2014), 16–17.

  228In response to such dangers: “Pig Out,” Nature 486 (2012): 440.

  228Pork producers in the United States: “Antimicrobials/Antibiotics,” National Pork Producers Council, http://www.nppc.org/issues/animal-health-safety/antimicro bials-antibiotics (accessed October 7, 2014).

  228“Antibiotic use in food animals”: Antibiotic Resistance Threats in the United States (Atlanta: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2013), 11, 14.

  228The FDA in 2013 issued: Sabrina Tavernise, “Antibiotics in Livestock,” New York Times, October 2, 2014.

  228“They love it”: Matthew Scully, Dominion (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2002), 258.

  229Workers who enter the barns: Abigail Woods, “Rethinking the History of Modern Agriculture: British Pig Production, c. 1910–65,” Twentieth Century British History 23 (2011): 177.

  229“Acute and chronic infections of the respiratory tract in pigs”: Mark Ackermann, “Respiratory Tract,” in Biology of the Domestic Pig, ed. Wilson G. Pond and Harry J. Mersmann (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001), 527.

  229But in a confinement facility with metal bars and concrete floors: Ruth Layton, “Animal Needs and Commercial Needs,” in The Future of Animal Farming, ed. Marian Dawkins and Roland Bonney (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2008), 88–92; “Early Weaned Behavior May Last Lifetime,” National Hog Farmer, December 1998.

  229“Without malleable substrates to chew”: Stanley Curtis, Sandra Edwards, and Harold Gonyou, “Ethology and Psychology,” in Pond, Biology of the Domestic Pig, 66–67; Harry Blokhuis et al., Scientific Report on the Risks Associated with Tail Biting in Pigs (Parma, Italy: European Food Safety Authority, 2007).

  229“Once a building is built”: John McGlone, “Alternative Sow Housing Systems” (paper presented at the annual meeting for the Manitoba Pork Producers, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, January 2001), 4.

  230From standing so long on hard floors: Joe Vansickle, “Sow Lameness Underrated,” National Hog Farmer, June 15, 2008.

  230They cannot groom themselves or interact: Joe Vansickle, “Sow Housing Debated,” National Hog Farmer, August 15, 2007; “Crateless Farrowing,” Pig Farming, January 1997.

  230With no outlets for natural instincts: Curtis, Edwards, and Gonyou, “Ethology and Psychology,” 67. Also see Donald Broom and Andrew Fraser, Domestic Animal Behaviour and Welfare (Wallingford, UK: CABI, 2007), 275.

  230But they keep trying: Layton, “Animal Needs,” 90.

  231“Contemporary swine production systems may create frustration”: Curtis, Edwards, and Gonyou, “Ethology and Psychology,” 52.

  Chapter 18

  233Cattle ranchers, he had found, “cared deeply”: Bernard Rollin, Putting the Horse Before Descartes (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2011), 213.

  234In his talk to the farmers: Rollin, Putting the Horse, 213.

  234“I have been feeling lousy”: Rollin, Putting the Horse, 213.

  234On the soundtrack, Willie Nelson sings a Coldplay song: Johnny Kelly, dir., Back to the Start (Chipotle, 2011).

  235China and Brazil accounted for nearly all of that growth: World Agriculture Towards 2015/2030 (Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2002), 58–59.

  235During that same period, meat production in the developing world increased: Henning Steinfeld, Livestock’s Long Shadow (Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2006), 16–17; James Galloway et al., “International Trade in Meat: The Tip of the Pork Chop,” Ambio 36 (2007): 622–629.

  235Thanks to genetically modified seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides: Steinfeld, Livestock’s Long Shadow, 12.

  236It functions much like the federal oil reserve: Mindi Schneider, Feeding China’s Pigs (Minneapolis, MN: Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, 2011), 3.

  236Though China is still largely self-sufficient in pork: David Bracken, “Chinese Company to Acquire Smithfield Foods for $4.7 Billion,” Raleigh News and Observer, May 29, 2013.

  236Those foreign soybeans do not get turned into tofu: Leslie Hook and Emiko Terazono, “China’s Appetite for Food Imports to Fuel Agribusiness,” Financial Times, June 6, 2013.

  236Two decades later, that figure had dropped: Schneider, Feeding China’s Pigs, 3–6.

  239After their pig-park study, Stolba and Wood-Gush concluded: A. Stolba and D. G. M. Wood-Gush, “The Behaviour of Pigs in a Semi-natural Environment,” Animal Production 48 (1989): 423. Also see Alex Stolba and D. G. Wood-Gush, “The Identification of Behavioural Key Features and Their Incorporation into a Housing Design for Pigs,” Annals of Veterinary Research 15 (1983): 297.

  239If breeders selected for maternal abilities as well as rapid weight gain: A. Kittawornrat and J. J. Zimmerman, “Toward a Better Understanding of Pig Behavior and Pig Welfare,” Animal Health Research Reviews 12 (2011): 25–32.

  240In response to Animal Machines, the British government formed the Brambell Commission: H. van de Weerd and V. Sandilands, “Bringing the Issue of Animal Welfare to the Public: A Biography of Ruth Harrison (1920–2000),” Applied Animal Behaviour Science 113 (2008): 404–410.

  240The inquiry uncovered appalling conditions: Ruth Harrison et al., Animal Machines (Boston: CABI, 2013), 11.

  240A group called the Farm Animal Welfare Council later revised the five freedoms: Harrison et al., Animal Machines, 12.

  240These recommendations carried no legal weight: I. Veissier et al., “European Approaches to Ensure Good Animal Welfare,” Applied Animal Behaviour Science 113 (2008): 279–297.

  240In 1997 an EU veterinary committee issued a 190-page report: European Union, The Welfare of Intensively Kept Pigs (Brussels: European Commission, 1997), 8.73.

  240The farthest-reaching provision banned the use of gestation crates: “Animal Welfare on the Farm: Pigs,”
Council Directive 2001/88/EC, October 23, 2001.

  240Canada, too, has since ordered that gestation crates: Code of Practice for the Care and Handling of Pigs (Ottawa, ON: National Farm Animal Care Council, 2014), 10–12.

  241Promoting farm animal welfare has proved more difficult: J. A. Mench, “Farm Animal Welfare in the U.S.A.,” Applied Animal Behaviour Science 113 (2008): 298–312.

  241In 2008 the Pew Charitable Trusts, a prominent nonprofit: Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production, Industrial Food Production in America: Examining the Impact of the Pew Commission’s Priority Recommendations (Philadelphia: Pew Charitable Trusts, 2013), 26.

  241“Gestation crates are a real problem”: Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), Undercover at Smithfield Foods (Washington, DC: HSUS, 2010), 2.

  241A number of US states have banned gestation crates: Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), Welfare Issues with Gestation Crates for Pregnant Sows (Washington, DC: HSUS, 2013), 1–2.

  241Early in 2014, Smithfield promised: Christopher Doering, “Smithfield Urges Farmers to End Use of Gestation Crates,” USA Today, January 7, 2014; Mike Hughlett, “Consumer Pressure Leads Cargill to Give Pigs More Room,” Minneapolis Star Tribune, June 8, 2014.

  242“Their feelings aren’t rational”: Lydia Depillis, “Big Agriculture Wants to Reach Millennials,” Washington Post, May 14, 2014.

  242In the words of one European official: Richard Perren, Taste, Trade and Technology (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006), 203; also see Joe Vansickle, “Pork Board Reacts to Welfare Demands,” National Hog Farmer, February 15, 2002.

  242The EU, for instance, has a stricter standard for “organic” pork: “Organically Grown Agricultural Products and Foodstuffs,” European Commission, October 6, 2008, http://europa.eu/legislation_summaries/other/l21118_en.htm (accessed February 23, 2014).

  242Producers in Denmark have created a special category called the “welfare pig”: “New Welfare Pig for Danish Market,” The Meat Site, October 25, 2013, http://www.themeatsite.com/meatnews/22915/new-welfare-pig-for-danish-market (accessed October 29, 2014).