In 2007, Oregon passed the Prohibition Against Restrictive Confinement to promote higher animal welfare standards for pregnant pigs. But that bill contained an exception allowing pigs to be confined during the farrowing period, which includes labor and birth.
The Pregnant Pigs Act will get rid of that exception and free Oregon’s sows from restrictive crates, which is what Oregon citizens want, and what Oregon's Congress originally intended.
Currently, pigs can be crated for 7 days before labor. Pig behaviors are the only advanced sign of a pig entering the farrowing period. The first sign is nest building, but sows in factories can’t build nests because they live on hard, barren floors.
The other sign is restlessness. The average factory farm has at least 2,500 pigs at any given time, which means that pigs can outnumber workers by 30-to-1. Employees working in these conditions can hardly be expected to notice the restlessness of each sow, nor could inspectors judge whether a factory is in compliance with state law.
If factories are using estimates of a pig’s due date, which can be highly inaccurate, sows may be stuck in crates for much longer than 7 days before giving birth.
A mother will then spend an additional 21 days during the suckling period confined on her side, without the opportunity to move at all.
On average, a sow on a factory farm has two litters per year. This means she will spend roughly ⅙ of her life in a crate so small she can’t even turn around.
The stated purpose of using crates is to decrease piglet mortality rate, but several studies have shown that the crates do not achieve this goal, which makes the pain and suffering they cause completely unjustified.
But we can change this. By voting to pass the Pregnant Pigs Act, we can free Oregon's pigs from these crates. Mothers will finally be able to get a good look at their neighbors.
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