Cheryl Naumann, president and CEO of the Arizona Humane Society

The ballot measure passed but the arguments continue. Was Prop. 204, also known as the Humane Treatment for Farm Animals Act, prompted by human kindness or one group’s desire to push its political agenda?
There’s a language problem as well. Prop. 204 addresses gestation crates only. But many small farmers, as well as 4-H participants, use slightly larger farrowing crates.
So what’s the difference?
“The difference is huge,” said Cheryl Naumann, president and CEO of the Arizona Humane Society.
At the center of the Prop. 204 issue is a 2-by-7-foot stall called a gestation crate, a small box that houses one sow. The hog can step forward and back, lie down, stand up, but cannot turn around. The crates are used across the country by large hog producers to confine a sow for four-month breeding cycles. The language of the bill also extends to calves being used to produce veal.
There are two types of enclosures for breeding hogs: gestation crates and farrowing crates — two different types of enclosures with different purposes.
There has been much confusion and controversy — even among those in the industry — about the type of enclosures allowed under Prop. 204, which passed by large margin in November — 926,913 to 569,190 votes.
The act prohibits confinement of pregnant sows and calves raised for veal in a manner that prevents the animal from lying down, extending its limbs or turning around.
Many small farmers in Arizona use farrowing crates. This type of contraption is used when the hog is about to give birth and for a short period of time after giving birth — seven to eight days. The difference between the two is that gestation crates are used by large producers for the entire four-month pregnancy period.
Farrowing crates are still acceptable under Prop. 204, says Naumann of the Humane Society.
“Farrowing crates are a commonly used animal husbandry practice designed to prevent the piglets from being rolled over on,” Naumann said. “So that’s still perfectly acceptable and farms all across the state can use farrowing crates. Gestation crates — there’s only one real reason for confining a sow in a space that’s only two feet wide for a four-month period and that’s the economics of packing more into a building. So there’s no animal husbandry practice related to that.”
Law takes effect in 2013
The law doesn’t go into effect until 2013, but the provisions of the law and the changes it will bring are on the minds of producers.
Pigs for Farmer John is the largest hog producer in Arizona. It is the only hog producer in the state affected by the measure because it is the only one that uses gestation stalls.
“The impact of the law on hog producers will be considerable,” said Steve Duchesne, spokesman for Pigs for Farmer John in Snowflake. “It will force fundamental change in the way farmers house their sows.”
He estimated the cost of complying at $1.5 million, which includes infrastructure changes involving concrete and steel.
Duchesne said it puts farmers in Arizona at a competitive disadvantage against farmers outside the state. That method of using gestation crates is common across the industry and has been for decades.
“These crates were developed, I believe, back in the ’60s to promote the welfare of the sows.” He said they have been scientifically proven to be humane, effective in raising sows and as a result have become common among pork producers across the county.
“At the end of the day,” Duchesne said, “I don’t believe these activists want these animals housed in crates. I’d argue they don’t want farmers in Arizona raising pigs.” He said he believes the proposition was about much more than a stall.
“The animal rights activists are pushing a political agenda — one that’s based on veganism,” Duchesne said. “I don’t think they want farmers in Arizona raising livestock that’s raised for the production of food. They simply don’t want people to eat meat. They choose not to eat meat or dairy products for themselves and that’s fine, they’re free to make that choice.”
But Naumann said there is no foundation to that claim. “Obviously they made whatever claims that thought they had to make to try and get attention during the campaign. So many of our supporters eat pork on a regular basis. There’s clearly not another agenda and the law doesn’t say you can’t eat pork or consume pork. It just says the animal has to be raised in a manner that’s humane.”
She said the opposition wanted to make allegations of extremism to frighten the average voter. Voters, she said, didn’t fall for it.
Duchesne said: “In Arizona, and I’d argue, elsewhere in the country, they want to impose their wishes on others.”
Part of their strategy, he said, is to attack livestock producers. “I would argue so long as you have that sow in a stall, they won’t happy. They simply won’t be happy until there’s no livestock or farming in Arizona.”
Naumann disagrees. She said nearly 200 hog producers are shown in the USDA census of Arizona and only one of them was affected by this law.
“So if there was some diabolical scheme to eliminate pork production in the state it would seem logical that it would have been crafted much more broadly to eliminate pork producers. In effect, it’s only targeting the one facility that uses cruel and inhumane practices,” she said.
4-H community
Duchesne said he’s also concerned about what type of impact the law will have on those in the 4-H community. He said some are worried about its impact on student farmers because of their use of stalls around the time that a sow would give birth.
Naumann said 4-H’ers need not worry about violating the law since they use farrowing crates and not gestation crates. “They only think of the farrowing crate as the place where the hog gives birth.” She said the average farmer they doesn’t even know the term “gestation crate” because it is only a method of production used in large hog farms. So when they hear gestation crate they just think it’s the same as farrowing crates.
Naumann said she has spoken with several Arizona farmers to clear up the misconception regarding the crates.
When asked if the Pigs for Farmer John would move elsewhere as a result of this proposition, Duchesne said it’s too early to predict.
“That farm has been in Snowflake now for about 15 years,” he said. “It has been operated responsibly and has been an asset to the local community and the people who work there. There are 140 employees, which means roughly 140 families that are dependent upon that farm.”
Duchesne said Pigs for Farmer John is an Arizona farm operated by Arizonans who are committed to the business. “They have to be able to do business,” said Duchesne. “By passage of 204, the activists have placed them [Pigs for Farmer John] at a competitive disadvantage. All I can say is the current system would obviously need some changing. They’ll deal with it, but more importantly they’ve got about six years to do that.”
Naumann contends that most of the opposition’s arguments are about economics. “You know you can cram a whole lot more hogs in when you only give them a two-foot wide space. It becomes a production line. They can just dump the feed down a trough in front of the hogs. Everything is so automated that really it doesn’t even offer meaningful large-scale employment. The hog farm in Snowflake has between 250,000 and 500,000 hogs and they only employ about 110 people.”
“So it’s about the animal being used as a production unit and putting the profits in their pockets. They don’t care that an animal is suffering in the process. Your average farmer allows these animals to roam around and have a life. Ultimately they still may be slaughtered but they have a quality of life while they’re alive so they’re not suffering and that’s the big difference,” said Naumann.
The only purpose of the proposition, she said, was to give the sows more room in the gestation crates. “All the producers have to do to come into compliance by 2013 is make sure the sow can fully turn around in the crate, stretch out her limbs and lay down,” Naumann said.
“As long as the sow can do those three things the operator can choose the method of housing that’s best for them. Whether that be communal pens, free range hogs or larger individual pens. So they have many options. It’s flexible and it leaves it up to the producer to decide how to comply — they have to be able to turn around, which is the only thing they can’t do right now,” she said.
Duchhesne said: “The law is going to be the law. People are going to have to abide by it, otherwise there will be criminal penalties.”
Violation of the law is a class 1 misdemeanor, punishable by a $2,500 fine and six months in jail.
On the national level, Smithfield Foods, Inc., based in Virginia, announced Jan. 25 that it will phase out “gestation crates” at all of it’s company-owned sow farms over the next decade, citing complaints from it’s customers, including McDonald’s and Wal-Mart, about the inhumane way the sows are being raised. The crates at Smithfield’s farms will be phased out by 2017.