Illinois Farm Families Blog

 Indeed, over the next several days, "mad cow disease" dominated the airwaves. Cattle markets closed limit down every day – meaning, they dropped as far as they could until an artificial floor stopped them. This is very bad if you are a cattle producer, about to sell your crop. But miracle of all miracles, by the time our calves sold some three weeks later, the markets recovered. We sold calves at pre-scare price levels. Whew.

 This is, of course, the scenario that came to mind yesterday as news of the most recent BSE outbreak spread. It feels different this time, though. We seem a little more educated, a little more reasonable.

 I have noticed in the past 24-48 hours, the news cycle has been remarkably even and unbiased. News reports have stuck to the facts, quoting USDA officials, epidemiologists and food safety experts. As a journalist, little makes me more frustrated with my reporting brethren than a sensationalized news report (pink slime, anyone?!). And as a farmer, little makes me more disappointed in our society and their reaction to the food supply than a sensationalized news report.

 But I digress.

 I think there is much we can keep in mind here, including some really heartening facts:

 1.  A single dairy cow in California was discovered by a renderer to have an "atypical" presentation of BSE on Tuesday, April 24.

2.  This atypical presentation does not occur in animals that have been fed bone meal from infected animals. The practice of feeding bone meal was banned in 1997 with the full support of cattle producers, and in 2011 there were only 20 worldwide cases of BSE – a 99% reduction since the peak in 1992 of 37,311 cases. Essentially, the government and the industry took steps to control the disease before it became a real problem in the United States. This is good news. 

3.  The carcass never entered the food chain. It didn't even come close. The carcass was routinely tested at a renderer and discovered to be positive for BSE. Officials were immediately notified, and the carcass will be further tested and then destroyed.

4.  BSE is not transmitted through milk, says USDA Chief Veterinarian John Clifford.

5.  The system worked! If there's one thing we can take away from this entire situation, it's that the testing systems we have in place to protect our food supply worked. Amen and hallelujah.

So what does it all mean on our farm tonight? We will continue on with our normal veterinary care, and – I'm not gonna lie - we will rejoice that we don't have calves to sell in three weeks. Livestock marketing experts predict that markets will recover, but we can still be grateful to not have that kind of stress. We've got enough to worry about right now, what with planting a corn crop and all.

 But most importantly, we'll have steak tonight. And we'll drink a glass of milk. And we'll give thanks that we are part of the safest and most abundant food supply chain in the world.

 You should, too.

Holly Spangler
Marietta, Illinois

 A full tank of gas. It’s not even on the emergency supply list of the often publicized “Ready.gov” web site, which rather touts lots of water, a three-day supply of food and items for shelter. Yet, panicked Americans lined up to buy gasoline on 9/11 -- with enough urgency to sometimes cut in line to get it.

Illinois farmer Terry Davis was driving to a meeting on 9/11 when his wife called and shared her upsetting story from the local gas station. He was aware of this gasoline craze, having observed the lengthy lines at several stations during his travel. But more shocking to him were the barren grocery store parking lots.

“It occurred to me at that moment that we were much more concerned about the next tank of gasoline to go in our car than whether or not we’re going to have food to eat tomorrow. We take it for granted that there’s always going to be something at the grocery store.”

Americans, in general, lack respect and appreciation for food production, and this fourth generation corn and soybean farmer desires to educate those who take it for granted. “If I had the choice between buying a loaf of bread or buying a pair of Nikes, I know which line I would get in,” he says. The Davis family made sure to buy bread and milk that day. They knew a fuel shortage would mean no deliveries to the grocery store.

Terry felt compelled to share his 9/11 story to the nation in late March. He was one of 10 farmers selected to give testimony on farm policy at one of four nationwide Farm Bill Hearings of the House Committee on Agriculture. The hearing held in Galesburg, Ill., carried an exhilarating bi-partisan mood and respect between some of the nation’s top policy-making congressmen and everyday farmers from five Midwestern states who collectively grow corn, soybeans, pumpkins, rice, fruits and vegetables and raise pigs and cattle.

The event accommodated five minutes of open microphone time from each farmer panelist. And while each farmer, including Terry, had a written testimony previewed by Washington, he chose to adlib a little to share his 9/11 story. It occurred to him after more than half the farmer testimonies focused on farm bill details that the congressmen, the 300-member audience, the attending media and anyone listening to live radio or webcasts of the event needed to be reminded of the farm bill’s purpose. The farm bill, formally known as the Food, Conservation and Energy Act, is what tries to guarantee a sustainable food supply.
“We’re so worried about the how that we forget to ask why,” he told me later.

It likely would take a food shortage before Americans, as a whole, respect our food system and its current availability and affordability. As it is, our country spends less on food than the rest of the world.

Terry shares this analogy: Car companies that make too many cars can shut down the production line for a day or two to bring production back in line with what can sell. But America cannot recover from a short “day” of food production, which rather is a full growing season.

Congressman Leonard Boswell of Iowa clearly indicated the growing demand for food at the hearing: “We’re not making more land. We’re making a lot more people.”

And those people may want to drive, but they need to eat.

Joanie Stiers
Williamsfield, IL

When it comes to all things porcine, my knowledge is pretty limited to Miss Piggy, the conniving mustachioed pigs from Angry Birds, Olivia, Charlotte’s Web, that George Clooney kept a pot-bellied one, and the popular tag line, "the other white meat."

And yes, going to college in South Bend, Indiana taught me that a sow’s uterus takes up an entire lab table (we had to dissect both that and piglets), and that driving downwind of a pig farm for a good 20 miles on the way to New Buffalo is probably a good reason to put the top back on the jeep. Beyond that, I had no idea that raising, maintaining and harvesting pork is such a complex (!) process.

I recently joined my fellow Field Moms for a nose around the multigenerational Gould Pig Farm in Maple Park and not only came away with a potential calling as a pig midwife – newborn piglets are very hard to resist - but with some serious knowledge about the current events impacting pork production on a global level.

If you follow foodie news, McDonald’s recently announced its decision to require its pork producers to stop using gestation stalls - pens used for breeding sows that are about the same length and width as their bodies.

Way to be pressured by the European Union there, big wigs.

The EU operates under completely different guidelines than the United States, and once a non-scientific group decided pigs must be able to exercise and investigate their environment, things got kind of hairy for the way farmers run their farms now.

Here’s the thing. Human perception and the way animals are being housed are not mutually exclusive. Just as it’s human nature to think, "Gee, I wouldn’t want to be in a pen where I can’t turn around or hang out with my friends," anthropomorphizing pigs draws a very crooked line in the sand.

Activist groups are very quick to point the finger at what’s wrong in the farming community, and yes, there are always a few bad seeds in the bushel, but animal welfare and animal rights are not mutually interchangeable. And, while transparency is key in how farmers run their operations, activist groups are putting pressure on retailers in saying that consumers want to see an end to gestation stalls.

Gone are the days of open pastures, people. Pigs are not herd animals, and introducing group housing is not a simple process. When left to socialize in groups, pigs develop a hierarchy, meaning that the "mean girls" of the group quickly monopolize food and water sources and become aggressive toward other sows. Pigs do bite and can cause some nasty chewing injuries. Seriously, would you want a 700-pound bully chomping on your vulva or biting off your tail? Yikes! But that’s what pigs do when left to establish their own pecking order.

Stressed pigs also means tough meat, inconsistent individual weights – farmers want to see relatively uniform pigs, not obese or overly thin sows - difficulty in controlling diseases, and more importantly, unhappy pigs.

Think about it. It’s in the farmer’s favor to treat their pigs well. Pig farming is a business, and though there may be a favorite boar or sow here and there, they are not pets. Eventually, we’re going to eat them.

The Gould’s stressed that they treat their sows as individuals, and give them as much TLC necessary to make them feel pampered and happy, which for pigs, translates to biohazard security, quality (not quantity) of space, and five basic freedoms: food, water, protection, and freedom from fear and distress.

In fact, the Gould’s have implemented advanced methods of Pork Quality Assurance (PQA) and Transport Quality Assurance (TQA), which means that voluntary animal welfare audits are the norm at their farm, conducted by third parties who have no connection to them or their clients.

And yes, we did have a chance to zip up some Hazmat suits and actually tour the pig housing. I’ve always been the first to speak up against circuses and puppy mills, and in support of more stringent regulations at those farms that have popped up in the news as being bonafied cruel to their animals, but that was most certainly not the case here.

Though startled when we first trudged in with our plastic shoe covers, and cameras and lighting, the pigs were very inquisitive and relatively clean. I didn’t see any injuries or signs of fights among the pigs, and they spent plenty of time communicating with one another via grunt and oink.

Sure, there was some stinkyness – they are farm animals after all – but remember, they don’t sweat, so that infamous smelly rap mainly comes from poop, which has a lot of ammonia in it. Last I checked, no poop smells that grand, so no big. Better yet, the Gould’s use all of that waste to fertilize their fields, making it an excellent example of reduce, reuse, recycle.

The highlight was witnessing a birth in the farrowing – nursery area - of the barn. The Gould’s work with nature, not against it, and since we had just experienced the insemination of a sow – optimal semen shown to produce lean meat and strong pigs is used, and the process involves charting each sow’s cycle and using a "tease" boar to naturally bring on excitement - it was a pretty nifty progression to see.

Piglets smell wonderful, and are surprisingly fuzzy and loud. Those newborns who have trouble finding their mother’s teats – like any littermates, there are bigger and smaller piglets, and plenty of squabbles over the teats closest to the sow’s head as they have more milk - are assisted by the Gould’s, since the sow’s colostrum and milk naturally boosts her offspring’s immunity and promotes healthy development.

Obviously, the learnathon was vast, but the opportunity to form individual opinions based on the Gould’s experience and Janeen Salak-Johnson’s expertise – the latter is a professor as the University of Illinois – was much greater.

And for all those who know me entirely too well, no, I didn’t bring a piglet home with me. The newborn piglets didn’t fit into my camera bag.

Pilar Clark

Field Mom

Prior to our visit to the Gould’s farm, I hadn’t really thought much about pork production. Where I live our food comes in packages and our farm stories come from children’s books. For the most part the only thing I know about pork is how to cook it. My family eats more pork products than any other type of meat—so it was fun (the piglets are SO cute) and interesting for me to get a behind-the-scenes glimpse at how the meat that makes it to my table gets it start in life.

The Gould’s farm houses 700 sows in a “sow center” and they focus exclusively on breeding, gestation and farrowing. Our tour started in their family office where they explained the process of insemination and gestation, farrowing and eventually starting all over again.  The field mom’s on this tour were in for quite a shock as we discussed all, ahem, aspects of impregnating the sows! We even had the experience of witnessing the process, something I had never, ever considered while at home cooking for my family. On this farm they purchase semen to be used with their sows and it is selected for multiple reasons including characteristics that affect size and meat quality. Some of the specific attributes are indicated by the producer as consumer preferences, such as leaner meat. It was great to see science being used in parallel with Mother Nature. The Gould’s chart each sow’s cycle and check her status by using a “tease” boar (male)—they are not rushing or forcing the process. It was interesting to learn that the gestation period is 3 months, 3 weeks and 3 days. Just prior to her due date, a sow is moved to the farrowing crates where she will deliver and stay with her piglets for the following few weeks. The deliveries are not scheduled or induced due to a business plan. It was amazing to walk into the farrowing room on our tour just as a sow was delivering her 7th piglet of the morning, somewhat of a surprise to Chris Gould as she had not even started two hours prior to our visit.

While I was pretty sure that I was not going to encounter a pig named Wilbur and his friend the spider in an idyllic country setting, I was a little overwhelmed by the view of the sows inside the sow center. The sows are kept in metal crates which protect them from each other and enables the farmers to give individual attention to each sow.  These crates are lined up within the barn from end to end with narrow walkways for farmers and boars to access all of the sows. It seemed so incredibly huge and barren and the sows are all kept facing one direction. While they can lay down, they cannot turn around. Taking this all in for the first time was hard, mainly because I, as a person, would not like to be confined this way. Despite this initial feeling I kept an open mind to what I was seeing and to the individual pigs.  They were all clean and well cared for. They seemed happy enough as much as a random visitor can judge an animal’s happiness. As we walked through you could hear them snuffling and their ears would perk up as they gave us a cursory glance.  Once it was determined we did not have food there was not much interest on their part. It was a very low stress atmosphere and actually quite peaceful.

It wasn’t a surprise to learn that the crating of the sows is a huge industry topic right now. It was great to see for myself and to hear the opinions of an expert (Janeen Salak-Johnson from U of I) along with us for the tour so that we could understand the contrast between reality on the Gould Farm and what we see and hear in the media. We learned that the debate includes animal behavior and their natural instincts to determine social order through violence (as is true with many animals, including the cattle we viewed on the last farm tour). Furthermore, it is important to determine the actual needs of the animals, including whether more space is needed for turning around or other behaviors.

The tour to the Gould farm enlightened me to this serious political and ethical debate that is raging about sows being crated.  I cannot avoid further mention of the controversy as the discussion on crates took up such a huge part of our tour. As I mentioned at the farm, I feel many urban consumers are so far removed from our food and where it comes from that it is easy to latch on to negative stories in the media as truth. Some of the uproar certainly is a defense mechanism to feeling manipulated by those that sell us our food. I do want to eat pork (or beef or chicken), but I don’t want animals being treated poorly. There are many parts of this issue and I feel I need to start by deciding what I want to eat, how much I am willing to pay for it and what issues I have with specific practices and why. Housing animals indoors and in the case of sow crates, individually, has a lot of benefits including safety from the elements and each other, ease of checking them for disease or injury and the ability to adjust food for each individual animal.  As outsiders looking in we need to be practical about what we see. These are animals that are intended for people to eat—not house pets. The producers of the animals we eat are business people running a business. What is good for the animals is good for the farmer, but more space also has a real cost. I saw animals that were very well treated by caring farmers.  I would like to see the future include a little more quality space for animals, but with the understanding that the sweet farm where Wilbur and his friends live, in reality, would not feed the world or even the city of Chicago.

Amy Hansmann

Field Mom

From the time I could walk, I’ve worked with hogs. As I grew up at my father’s side, I learned the joys and frustrations of pork production and the subtle nuances of caring for what can sometimes be a cantankerous animal.

Dad is gone now, but his farm continues on -- though a lot has changed.
Open lots and pastures have been replaced by environmentally controlled, protective housing. Gone are the days of tossing feed to pens of animals hoping that the strong ones didn’t eat too much and the weak ones could somehow survive.

Gone are the days of rummaging through piles of straw each morning to find the little pigs that had been crushed by their mothers.

I no longer need to shovel a path through the snow to reach feeders and hope the temperature gets warm enough for the animals to come out and eat.

I’m part of an industry that has spent literally billions of dollars over recent decades improving the tools we use to produce pork. These changes were made with one goal in mind: providing better care for our animals.

Perhaps that’s why I’m so frustrated by McDonald’s recent announcement that it would require its pork suppliers to outline their plans to phase out the widely accepted sow housing practice of gestation stalls.

I used to keep my sows in pens like those McDonald’s and other folks wish us to use. I couldn’t control individual diets like I do now.

I had to cull sows after two or three litters because they were too fat, too thin, or injured by other sows. I used to struggle to give individual veterinary care to animals even to the point of risking personal injury to administer treatments or vaccinations.

Perhaps I could understand McDonald’s actions if it had science, research, or experience to back its stance. However, there is no evidence that there is any better way to care for a sow than what is currently being used in most modern production systems.

Unfortunately, the decision seems to be driven by emotion and perception regarding what makes for a “happy” pig while ignoring what research and experience tell us is truly in the animal’s best interest.

Perhaps what saddens me the most is I know the end result of an effective ban on gestation stalls is more animal suffering and more risk to producers’ health and safety.

For more than 40 years I’ve done everything within my control to give my animals the best care possible. I give thanks to our Creator each day I’m able to participate in this wonderful calling of livestock production.

To now be told to do something that I know brings harm to the animals under my care is indeed a tough pill to swallow.

Ultimately, my hope is that the voices of the people with experience and expertise are heard and prevail on this issue so my dad’s grandchildren will be able to care for their animals using what they know are the best tools available.

BRIAN DUNCAN
Farmer
Polo, IL