Building a meaningful sow welfare policy

We encourage companies to commit to removing both gestation crates and farrowing crates from their supply chain. Legislation in California and Massachusetts has drastically increased volumes of gestation crate-free pork in the United States. At a minimum, companies should have a time bound and public-facing commitment to source only gestation crate-free pork. 

Sow welfare policy commitments: What do they mean?

A meaningful fully crate-free sow welfare commitment should:  

Commit to only sourcing pork from producers that operate without any crates.
- Temporary confinement of sows for management purposes is permitted for up to four hours (ideally < 2 hours for farrowing sows).

A meaningful gestation crate-free sow welfare commitment should:  

Commit to only sourcing pork from producers that operate without gestation crates.
- Temporary confinement of sows is permitted for < 4 hours for management procedures, such as insemination.

Unless otherwise stated, group housing willstill use gestation crates for up to six weeks until sows are confirmed pregnant. Therefore, it is key to explicitly state in the commitment to only source gestation crate-free pork. A truly humane system fully prohibits the use of long-term intensive confinement.

Both fully crate-free and gestation crate-free commitments should: 

Cover a company’s entire pork supply 
- If not, it is imperative to list which products are included to improve transparency. 
Have a clear, meaningful timeline for full implementation.
- CIWF recommends fully transitioning within five years of establishing a commitment. 
Be public-facing with annual progress reporting
- To ensure successful implementation of a company’s animal welfare commitment, CIWF encourages companies to establish annual reporting benchmarks to reach 100% compliance, better known as a roadmap.