By Mark Essig
source: The New York Times/Aitor Garmendia
In a little discussed pending Supreme Court case, National Pork Producers Council v. Ross, the conditions of pork production are being debated. The case is ostensibly about the limits that one state — California — can impose on food production in other states, but it is also about the grim realities of pig farming, which have largely been hidden from a pork-eating public.
Pigs and people once lived on intimate terms. Whereas cattle and sheep lived on pasture outside town, many people kept pigs in backyard sties and came to admire pigs’ intelligence and curiosity. The pig dined on leftovers of family meals, functioning as a sort of edible pet — first coddled, then killed. When her beloved pig was slaughtered, the English author Flora Thompson crawled into bed and cried, but the next day she ate pork gravy. She was just a girl, she wrote, “learning to live in this world of compromises.”
It was a complex relationship, but an honest one. Today, we see pigs mostly on the plate. The life of many pigs, never rosy, has become miserable: They are hidden away in sheds with no dirt to root in, no straw for bedding, and no access to the outdoors. Breeding sows spend much of their lives in tiny pens called gestation crates. At 2 by 7 feet, the crates are barely bigger than the sows, leaving the animals unable to even turn around. The conditions are such that industry groups have promoted laws that prohibit whistle-blower recordings of how farm animals live.
In 2018, 63 percent of California voters approved Proposition 12, which effectively bans the sale of pork from farms that use gestation crates. The pork industry filed suit to invalidate the law. (Prop. 12 sets standards for the confinement of laying hens and veal calves as well, but those restrictions have proved less controversial.)
Because California imports nearly all of its pork, the law would force farmers in other states to change their practices if they wish to sell there. The court, which will hear arguments in the case this week, must decide whether Prop. 12 violates what is known as the dormant commerce clause, which holds state laws unconstitutional if they place an excessive burden on interstate commerce. But the case also forces us to ask ourselves whether farmers are placing excessive burdens on pigs. The ethics of modern hog farming are on trial.
