About those gestation cages….

…here’s a picture of your McDonald’s breakfast Sausage McMuffin I ran across on a political blog today.  The company is asking its producers to stop the practice…sometime in the future.  But their recommendation is to put the sows in the same kind of crowded housing they use for their piglets and continue pumping them full of antibiotics and hormones to keep them growing and breeding….until they drop.  For now, you can see the pigs can’t even turn around.

Thistle Hill pigs are entirely free range, grazing with the cows and rooting for acorns.  You may not have believed me the other day when I said we could tell they were happy.  Check out the smile on the one on the left!  (click to enlarge)

Sometimes they push the envelope.  Yesterday we found them in the pasture across the road.  When we led them back home they actually stopped at the pavement and checked both ways several times before crossing.  (No, they didn’t “wee-wee” all the way home.  More like grunting.)

Wooz wonders whether the shortage of Vitamin D in so many Americans is due to the prevelance of confinement operations.  Almost all pigs and chickens never see the sun their entire lives….not even those advertised as “organic, free range” by the big producers.  In fact, they have only a tiny pen at the end of sheds holding thousands of animals.  Only a few ever manage to squeeze outside but they have “access” as the government requires.

The same is true of most of the organic milk in the supermarkets.

The point is you should not only buy your food locally, but you should visit the farm yourself to be sure humane methods are being used.  You’re always welcome to visit Thistle Hill!