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Willis' farm: Where pigs enjoy being pigs,
not production units. Photo by Diane Halverson. |
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To help end mistreatment of farm animals, the Animal Welfare
Institute is supporting the Niman Ranch Company and its network
of family hog farmers who follow humane husbandry criteria developed
by the Animal Welfare Institute. AWI's criteria require that
all animals be allowed to behave naturally. Unlike the crated
sows on factory farms, the sows in the Niman Ranch program have
freedom of movement, allowing them to fulfill their instinctive
desire to build a nest when they are about to give birth. Unlike
the factory farm pigs housed on concrete slats over manure pits,
Niman Ranch pigs are raised on pasture or in barns with bedding
where they can live in accord with their natures, rooting for
food, playing and socializing. AWI's criteria require that the
participants in the program be independent family farmers, that
is, the farmer must own the animals, depend on the farm for
a livelihood and be involved in the day to day physical labor
of managing the pigs. This requirement helps to ensure that
pigs are raised in modest numbers, making it easier to know
and manage the animals as individuals.
Niman Ranch, which buys the pigs and markets the meat, also
forbids feeding or otherwise administering hormones or antibiotics
and prohibits the feeding of animal by-products. Unlike factory
farmers, humane farmers in the Niman Ranch program do not
rely on antibiotics to mask clinical manifestations of disease
or to promote growth; therefore, they do not contribute to
the devastating problem of antibiotic resistance among humans.
Paul Willis, the farmer who inspired AWI's involvement in
the program, keeps 200 sows and their offspring on pasture
or in barns bedded with straw on his Midwest farm. Niman Ranch
rewards Willis, and farmers like him, by paying them a premium
price. Niman Ranch products are available at 200 fine restaurants
in California, at Trader Joe's stores in the West, at Whole
Foods stores in northern California, and through the Williams-Sonoma
mail order catalogue. Additional markets are being developed
nationwide. In a 1995 Opinion Research Corporation survey,
93% of the adults surveyed believed that animals should be
treated humanely, even when being raised for human consumption,
and three-fourths opposed confining sows in crates, laying
hens in battery cages and veal calves in crates. The Niman
Ranch program gives a growing number of such consumers an
opportunity to reject meat derived from pigs raised in animal
factories and assists in the preservation of humane family
farms, thereby helping to set a humane standard in raising
of animals for food.
Reprinted with permission from the Animal Welfare Institute.
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