It looks like the tables have been turned on animal liberation group Humane Society of the United States. A former undercover investigator for the extremist group is featured in a just released video by HumaneWatch.org discussing gestation stalls or also called individual maternity pens (IMPs) which are used to house pregnant pigs. You can watch the video below.
IMPs provide for individual care and feeding while preventing the fighting that occurs when pregnant sows are housed in groups. Mainstream veterinary groups support maternity pens as a humane housing option. However, HSUS has been lobbying legislators to ban these gestation pens and are pressuring food companies to only source pork from farms that use group housing of sows.
According to the HSUS investigator, who worked on pork farms:
- “When they’re not in crates, they [sows] fight each other. With gestation crates, they can’t bite each other…They’re in a safe spot.”
- “I have to believe they [HSUS] know the pigs would prefer to be in gestation crates…but choose instead to push the anti-gestation crate legislation because of what it would do to the pig farming industry.”
- “Objectively, HSUS should be for gestation crates if they’re honestly, truly for animal welfare.”
- “Farmers, veterinarians, and animal scientists stand opposed to HSUS’s campaign against individual maternity pens—and now one of its own investigators does, too,”
Will Coggin, director of research for HumaneWatch.org. “HSUS counts on manipulating an unknowing public with its propaganda, but the power of truth is demonstrated by one of HSUS’s own.”
About 200 large-animal veterinarians have signed an open letter in support of individual maternity pens. Recent HSUS attempts to ban these pens in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, Vermont, New York, and New Hampshire have all failed after legislators learned the full story.