Burger King has announced it will stop buying pork from suppliers who confine pigs in gestation crates. Burger King said sows should be allowed to move around and not cruelly confined in these crates.

This past January, Smithfield Foods, the nation’s largest pork producer, announced plans to phase out use of gestation crates for pigs. 

On these sow farms pigs are confined in 2 foot wide x 7 foot long gestation crates for nearly all of their 4 month pregnancy. Pigs can weigh 600 pounds or more at the height of their pregnancy. These cages are so small they can barely move at all. Certainly the pigs cannot even stretch their limbs or turn around let alone walk. Just before the pigs give birth, they are moved to farrowing crates which are small metal stalls. Once the pigs give birth and the young are separated from them, they are impregnated and returned to the gestation crates. This is how they live.

Pigs are very intelligent beings. They suffer intense boredom, frustration, anger and even neuroses from such cruel confinement. Their muscles become weak and atrophied. They suffer joint disorders and lameness. The pigs are in constant pain from pushing against the metal enclosure and lying on metal all the time.

Last year Arizonans passed overwhelmingly a proposition to ban gestation crates effective 2012. Florida banned gestation crates for pigs in 2002. The European Union has banned use of gestation crates beginning in 2013.

Burger King has said within the next few months, it expects 10% of its pork to come from pigs not confined in gestation crates. The company expects that number to be 20% by the end of this year. Burger King said that percentage will increase as more farmers stop using these crates for pigs. The new policies will apply to Burger King suppliers in America and Canada.