Source: Anna Flavia Rochas, MEATINGPLACE, 11/16/15


Brazil's JBS S.A. is working for its global swine supply chain to abandon gestation stalls and use only group housing for breeding sows by 2025, a company spokesperson confirmed to Meatingplace.   

The company said in the animal welfare section of the Brazilian website that it will invest in “refurbishing all of its own farms by 2016, in addition to supporting integrated suppliers, so that the entire supply chain conforms to the collective management system by 2025.”

A JBS spokesperson in Brazil told Meatingplace that the goal applies to JBS' global operations.

Brazil's second-largest pork producer, JBS has already announced in its Sustainability Report released in June it was going to abandon gestation crates in its own facilities by 2016. But the timeframe for its suppliers to stop using gestation crates wasn't announced then. 

Cargill, whose swine operations in the United States were assumed by JBS group this month, had been adopting group sow housing system prior to the purchase.

JBS also said on its website that tooth clipping is no longer employed on farms producing piglets in the company's operations in Brazil. In addition, the company said it is no longer using surgical castration, having replaced that with an immunological procedure instead.

BRF, Brazil’s largest pork processor, had announced in November 2014 that it would phase out the use of gestation stalls within 12 years. The gestation stall system, however, is still prevalent in Brazil.

Examples of companies that have already adopted group sow housing include Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest swine producer, as well as Hormel and Maple Leaf Foods.

The European Union, Canada and nine U.S. states have banned the use of gestation stalls, which will also be phased out in New Zealand by 2015, and in Australia by 2017.

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