California passed a law that went into effect in July of last year mandating that it would not import pork from companies that kept pigs in confinement of less than 24 square feet, roughly five feet by five feet. The Supreme Court upheld that law over complaints of Iowa industrial farms.
Let me tell you how some industrial pig farms slaughter their hogs in Iowa. They have used a practice called “ventilation shutdown,” or VSD. The air supply is cut off and steam is pumped into the room. The pigs are killed by basically “cooking them to death.” An animal rights group set up a recording device in one of the facilities. The process is extremely painful, and the pigs scream. And scream. Not squeal, scream. Two and a half hours later workers walk though the pigs and shoot the few that are still alive.
If you eat pork, know your supplier. Know how the pigs are raised and how they are butchered. You have no idea how the pigs sold by Jimmy Dean or Swift or Hillshire Farms are treated, but it probably won’t be humanely.
Information for this post was from a report on the California law and from Elizabeth Barber, “Standing Trial” (Letter from Iowa), Harpers, (Oct. 2022), p. 37-44.
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