In a move that was praised by animal welfare advocates across the country, Smithfield Foods announced in January that it is beginning the process of phasing out individual gestation stalls at all of its company-owned sow farms and replacing them with pens – or group housing – over the next 10 years. The company also will work with its contract growers regarding system conversion.

Gestation stalls and group housing are methods used by hog producers to house pregnant sows. The sows are kept in these facilities during their pregnancies, which last about 16 weeks, to closely monitor their progress.

"Working with our customers, who have made their views known on the issue of gestation stalls, we are pleased to be taking this precedent-setting step," said C. Larry Pope. "During our 70 years in business we have always been sensitive to the concerns and needs of our customers, and they have told us they feel group housing is a more animal-friendly form of sow housing."

In a press release, the Humane Society of the United States called the announcement "perhaps the most monumental advance for animal welfare in history of modern American agribusiness."

Smithfield based its decision to adopt the group housing system on initial results of its own three-year study into sow housing. The company has been researching penning systems at some of its hog farms in North Carolina. The second year of the study has been completed, and preliminary results indicate that, with proper management, group housing arrangements are equally as good as gestation stalls in providing proper care for pregnant sows.

"Existing research, along with our own findings, has led us to conclude that switching from gestation stalls to group pens will not have a detrimental effect on our animals or the way we run our business," said Dennis Treacy, vice president of environmental and corporate affairs. "Group housing does present some challenges, and we don't have all the answers at this time, but that's why we have given ourselves 10 years to convert our company-owned farms to group pens. Additional research will provide the information we need."

A number of industry experts have concluded that the most important factor in providing for the welfare of animals are the husbandry and management skills of the people running the operation. Treacy said he is confident that Smithfield employees have the necessary skills to make the conversion, pointing to the extensive Animal Welfare Management System already in place at Murphy-Brown facilities.

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• Smithfield Foods became the first company in its industry to achieve ISO 14001 certification of its Environmental Management System (EMS) for all U.S. hog production facilities and all pork and beef processing facilities, except for recent acquisitions.
• Smithfield's Polish farms' EMS achieved ISO 14001 certification.
• For environmental stewardship performance, Smithfield received Governor's Environmental Excellence Awards from Wisconsin and Virginia.
• Compass Group North America consulted with Smithfield and the U.S.-based nonprofit Environmental Defense to develop a first-of-its-kind purchasing policy related to the use of antibiotics in pork production.
• All farms owned by Murphy-Brown LLC, Smithfield's hog production subsidiary, and Smithfield's Tar Heel, N.C., processing plant received the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) "Process Verified" certification. The USDA's Process Verified Program is modeled on the ISO 9000 quality management and assurance standards.

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