civileats.com
After a Decade of Promises, Has the Food Industry Made Progress on Gestation Crates?
By Lynne Curry

In early January 2018, Smithfield, the world’s largest pork producer, announced that it had achieved its “animal care” goal to provide group housing for pregnant sows on all of its U.S.-based farms. Over the course of 10 years, and with a $360 million investment, the company claimed to have transitioned its operations away from individual stalls, known as gestation crates.

Since the 1970s, gestation crates have been standard housing in most hog-breeding facilities nationwide. For the nearly four-month duration of her pregnancy, each sow lives, eats, and sleeps in a roughly two-and-half-by-seven-foot stall that does not allow her to walk, turn around, or socialize. After giving birth and living in a slightly larger farrowing crate for a month, she is impregnated again and returned to the stall. The cycle is repeated for…