By LINDA McGURK
Indiana Correspondent

LEBANON, Ind. — Raising animals for a living can be an unpredictable business, but there’s one thing American livestock producers can count on: Animal rights organizations are gaining ground and people’s perception of animals is changing.

That means consumers are paying more attention to the way meat is produced, and producers can expect more state and federal regulations governing their industry, according to Ed Pajor, associate professor of animal sciences and director of the Center for Food Animal Welfare at Purdue University.

“(Animal welfare) used to be seen as a minor issue – that’s changing. It’s becoming mainstream,” Pajor said during a Sept. 5 presentation at the Farm World Expo in Lebanon. “We live in a different kind of world now, where people have a different relationship with animals. Some of them have no understanding of animal agriculture, but they’re the ones who are buying the products.”

It’s a world where Americans shell out billions of dollars on food, care and accessories for their pets, even setting up trusts to make sure they’ll be taken care of after their master’s death. Pet insurance is widely available and some people don’t think twice about spending thousands of dollars on cancer treatment for a rabbit.

“Pets have become part of the family,” Pajor said, and added that people’s concern for their pets’ well-being now extends to farm animals. “They take their dogs to the vet to get them spayed and neutered, but it’s all done under general anesthesia. People are really surprised when they realize piglets are castrated without pain relief and hear there’s no pain management plan in place on the farm.”

The use of sow gestation crates has moved to the forefront of the animal welfare debate, with animal welfare organizations working to put the issue on the ballot in several states. Arizona voted to ban gestation stalls and veal crates in 2006 and California will vote on a proposed ban in November.

Pajor said producers can expect more ballot initiatives along those lines, and eventually the United States will likely follow Europe’s lead with stricter regulations for animal agriculture. The European Union has already started to phase out gestation stalls and a complete ban will take effect Jan. 1, 2013.

Swine behavior and swine housing options are some of Pajor’s main research areas, and one of the studies aims to determine how important more space is to the sow by testing how hard she will work to gain access to a larger area.

“Some of the critics (of animal agriculture) take humans’ feelings and apply them directly to the animals, but what matters to us may not matter to the sow,” said Pajor, an adviser on McDonald’s Animal Welfare Panel. “We’re trying to get the animals’ perspective on this.”

While Europe has chosen to manage animal agriculture through federal regulation, changing consumer preferences is having similar repercussions for the livestock industry in the U.S. As people are becoming more concerned about issues such as the environment and the well-being of farm animals, retailers are increasingly interested in branding themselves as green and animal-friendly.

“I think the implications to animal agriculture are huge. These are the people who buy your product, and they will put more and more pressure (on producers),” Pajor said. And when big-box stores like Wal-Mart decide they want farm products that have been raised a certain way, it has tremendous impact on the market. “Burger King has announced they want to buy (pork products) from farmers who don’t use gestation crates. It’s just part of business. It’s part of people’s expectations,” Pajor said.

So should livestock producers fight or give in to the changing attitudes of animal welfare? Pajor suggests a compromise.
“Farmers need to educate people about why things are done the way they are. But we also need to take a hard look at the way things are done and ask ourselves if all practices are acceptable and done to our very best efforts,” he stated.

“We know that animals can be stressed and experience fear and pain,” Pajor said, adding that a lot of consumers “feel it’s fine to raise animals for food but they want us to do it as humanely as possible.”