Sunday, May 26th

We left our cabin/farmhouse at Whiterock around noon to head to Essex, IA. Essex, IA is the home-place Rob’s grandfather and we searched for the house he grew up in. We didn’t have to look far, Essex is a small town with a population of 800.

We also met with Dennis and Diane Liljedahl who are distant relatives of Rob. The Liljedahl’s farm corn and soybeans but they also raise hogs. Being that the Liljedahl’s run an independent hog operation; I had equated that to mean that they used different practices than a CAFO.

I will preface this by saying that this operation was not the worst I have seen. I watched those videos, promoting vegetarianism, on the inhumane practices of animal production. Although not the worst, it does not change the fact that this hog operation made me uncomfortable, for many reasons. The sows were placed in gestation crates. This is a common practice among hog operations. The crates are narrow and do not allow for the sow to turn around. This practice was justified because it decreases piglet death from suffocation by the sow. Preventing death and preserving yields at what cost? Many of the sows had sores from confinement. They were scared and one looked near death and even was pushing around her dead baby that was half decomposed.

Next we entered the second pig barn. The pigs were again placed in small cages, they will never see the outdoors. Small confinements and no social interaction with other pigs are used because “pigs are mean.” The eyes are the window to the soul. What I saw when I looked into the eyes of those hogs were an animal that was scared and insane from their living conditions. Most of us would be mean/insane too if we were kept in similar conditions.

In my opinion, hog production can and should be changed. It’s just that no one wants to lose out on yield and increase cost of production. However, we would all be better off if practices changed. Crowded and unsanitary conditions lead to the spread of disease which has to be fixed by more antibiotic use.

I feel like the corn is maybe treated better than the pigs; a living animal. Pigs feel pain and they can remember. In order to get humanely raised hogs, a shift in the consumer wants is going to have to occur. America is obsessed with cheap food and large quantities of it. In a consumer driven market, food production is determined by the wants of the consumer. If the consumer wants cheap meat, then the producer will deliver by cutting time off growth and ramping up large scale production. It is time the consumer starts demanding ethically sourced meat.