Big Pork Producers Just Can’t Quit Gestation Crates

Professor John McGlone of Texas Tech University trekked to Manitoba, Canada, in the dead of winter to warn hundreds of local pork farmers that the way they did business was about to change. McGlone knew McDonald’s Corp., the world’s largest restaurant chain, planned to say it would only buy pork from producers who didn’t keep pregnant sows in gestation crates — 2-foot-by-7-foot stalls that don’t let the animals turn around and force them to excrete where they stand. Crates were standard for the industry that puts bacon and pork chops on plates around the world, but seen as cruel and unnecessary by a growing mass of critics and consumers. “The writing is on the wall,” McGlone said he told the audience that night. That was 22 years ago. Gestation crates are still widely used by farmers, and McDonald’s still buys meat from them.