New Jersey activists target controversial pig-raising method

Harry Stotsenburg, a fourth-generation pork farmer, keeps about 500 pigs on his farm in Deptford. The industry has evolved significantly since his family began raising pigs.

"They don't want you to use shocks. They don't want you to use whips. It's one thing after another," said Stotsenburg, 43. "It's hogs. It doesn't mean nothing to me. And that's how we're feeding people."

Because he buys pigs and raises them to be sold, Stotsenburg does not use gestation crates — narrow cages for pregnant sows that animal-rights groups denounce as inhumane.

And he said he was unsure any farmers he knew did, though the Humane Society of the United States is lobbying New Jersey lawmakers to ban the crates in the state.

"They're probably making a law because it doesn't even pertain to most people in this state," he said.

The Humane Society and other groups have launched a campaign to override Gov. Christie's veto of a bill passed earlier this year to ban the use of gestation crates, setting penalties of up to a $1,000 fine and six months in prison for farm owners who break the law.

Matthew Dominguez, a spokesman for the Humane Society of the United States, said the group did not know how many New Jersey farmers used gestation crates. "The pork industry is less than transparent," he said.

Still, Dominguez said, "one pig put into one of these cruel crates is one too many."

In a letter dated Sept. 23 and publicized by the Humane Society, celebrity decorator and chef Martha Stewart urged state lawmakers "as a native New Jerseyan" to override Christie's veto, saying, "These animals have committed no crime, yet they're treated worse than even the most violent criminals would be treated."

A television ad that was made by the Humane Society and that has been airing in New Jersey depicts a hallway crammed with crates and pigs biting the bars.

"Suffering. Abuse. Confining pigs in cages so small they can't even turn around," a narrator says, adding that 91 percent of New Jerseyans want the practice banned, according to a Mason-Dixon poll conducted in 2012.

The Humane Society says similar bills have passed in nine states, while McDonald's and other food companies have announced plans to eliminate the crates from their supply chains.

The bill passed by the Legislature had support from Democrats and Republicans, as the ad notes.

Christie vetoed the measure, saying that the state Department of Agriculture and state Board of Agriculture already had developed humane standards for livestock — and that neither the American Veterinary Medical Association nor the American Association of Swine Veterinarians is calling for banning gestation crates.

Asked about his veto at a recent Statehouse news conference, Christie reiterated his position, saying the bill "didn't make any sense."

"If I think that government's expanding into an area where we already are … then I'm going to veto it," he said. "And I would trust that the Legislature will sustain that veto."

Sen. Ray Lesniak (D., Union), who sponsored the bill, said lawmakers would attempt to override Christie's veto.

"Our farm council says, 'We don't use gestation crates.' If that's the case, why didn't Gov. Christie sign it?" Lesniak said. He accused Christie, a likely presidential candidate, of "bowing to the pork industry, which is so huge in Iowa." The state holds the first presidential caucuses.

Dave Warner, a spokesman for the National Pork Producers Council, said gestation crates let farmers better care for sows.

The crates protect the animals from one another, Warner said. "Pregnant sows can be very nasty," he said.

There are also sanitation concerns, Warner said. "If she can turn around, she will go to the bathroom where her food is," he said. "Pigs will eat anything."

Warner said gestation crates are used by "the majority of hog farmers in this country," but very few, if any, in New Jersey.

"This is about the Humane Society getting notches in its belt," passing legislation in states without many pig farmers to bolster a nationwide campaign, Warner said.

Though not many farmers may have been affected by the measure, the Pork Producers Council opposed it. "We don't want them to build that momentum, even though there are no farmers in the state," he said.

Of the 250 pig farmers in New Jersey — many of whom also raise other livestock — most do not use gestation crates, said Ed Wengryn, research associate for the New Jersey Farm Bureau.

Like Stotsenburg — who buys pigs from Pennsylvania and North Carolina — the farmers are "finishers" and are not involved in breeding, Wengryn said.

Among the pig breeders who use the crates, "nobody crates full time," Wengryn said. Most sows are housed in groups, he said, but crates are used temporarily if one is bullying another, which can cause a sow to abort.

"In New Jersey, at least, this is a solution addressing a problem we don't have," Wengryn said.