AVMA: It’s Time to (Let the) Pig Out!

By James Cromwell

The American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) is gathering in Chicago on November 5 to discuss a topic that is very dear to my heart: the treatment of pigs.

Imagine being shoved inside a small closet with barely enough room to move. Your feet begin to ache from the hard floor so you contort your body just enough to sit down. But after a while, this position offers no more comfort and you struggle to stand up again. The lack of room to walk or even turn around starts to atrophy your muscles, and festering sores on your feet make every movement agony. Now imagine spending six years like this-and you'll begin to understand what life is like for nearly 6 million pregnant or nursing pigs in the United States.

In our everyday lives, it may be hard to relate to the miseries endured by farmed animals, but making the movie Babe opened my eyes to the intelligence and the inquisitive personalities of pigs. These highly social animals possess an amazing capacity for love, joy and sorrow that makes them remarkably similar to our beloved canine and feline friends. In fact, the scientific advisor to the British government says that pigs are smarter than dogs and even do better on intelligence tests than 3-year-old human children.

That's why it's so heartbreaking that pigs used for breeding spend day after day, month after month inside concrete and steel "gestation crates." These crates are so small that even basic movements, such as turning around or lying down comfortably, are impossible. Reduced to mere piglet-producing machines, sows are scuttled from crate to crate in a miserable breeding cycle that lasts as long as six years. Such restrictive confinement leads to both physical and psychological suffering. Would you subject your dog or cat to similar conditions?

The scientific consensus is so complete that gestation crates have been banned in the European Union in favor of group-housing systems that significantly reduce injuries, illness, lameness, aggression, depression and stress. Yet the crating system continues to dominate the U.S. industry, in no small part because of its support from the AVMA.

Although the AVMA's professed mission is to improve animal health, it's the factory farmers who make the decisions about animal welfare on their farms. This was even acknowledged by AVMA President Dr. Bonnie Beaver in her 2004 address to the AVMA House of Delegates in which she announced: "It is important for each of us to recognize that we may at times become too close to the industries we serve, losing our objectivity about what is the best welfare and adopting instead that suggested by the industry."

To its credit, this past July, the AVMA finally ended its support of forced molting-the factory-farming practice of starving hens for up to two weeks to induce an additional egg-laying cycle. But the AVMA continues to drag its feet on other important animal welfare issues, including the issue of gestation crates for mother pigs

Sadly, when the AVMA received a resolution from its nonfactory-farm members to reverse its endorsement of cruel gestation crates just last year, it stalled the process for nearly two years by scheduling what was supposed to be a scientific meeting to make a recommendation on the issue. Now, the AVMA is further obscuring and potentially delaying this process by hosting a "Sow Housing and Welfare" discussion session on November 5, which is open to the public (for a fee). Even if the AVMA's animal welfare committee finally takes the long-awaited first step to change the association's endorsement of gestation crates, its recommendation may not be approved at the next AVMA convention in July 2005.

In the meantime, 6 million pigs in the U.S. remain immobilized in gestation crates despite the existence of viable, humane alternatives that are being successfully implemented elsewhere.

So what is the AVMA waiting for? The organization should be true to its mission statement by condemning the use of cruel and oppressive gestation crates.

Actor James Cromwell won an Academy Award® nomination for his portrayal of Farmer Hoggett in the 1995 film Babe.