Aramark takes stand against 'cruelest practice in pork industry'

The largest corporate food-service provider in the country, Philly-based Aramark will no longer buy pork from farms using restrictive gestation crates.

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Aramark takes stand against 'cruelest practice in pork industry'

POSTED: Tuesday, August 21, 2012, 4:26 PM
An undercover investigation conducted by The HSUS at Seaboard Foods and Prestage Farms in Goodwell, Oklahoma, in late 2011 show the pigs suffering inside cramped gestation crates and at the hands of abusive employees. These images were taken at Prestage Farms.

Next time you order a pulled-pork sandwich in your suite at Citizens Bank Park, you can feel a little better about it. No, they still haven't figured out a way to make it a low-fat food. But at least the pigs (from which, we're told, pork does tend to be made) will have been produced in a more humane fashion.

Philadelphia-based Aramark, the largest corporate food-services provider in the country, has agreed to stop selling pork produced by way of gestation crates, the factory-farming set-ups that keep pregnant pigs in a cage so small they can't turn around. "They're virtual iron maidens," says Josh Balk, director of corporate policy for the Humane Society of the United States, which helped convince Aramark to adopt the reform. He says breeding pigs are kept in the crates pretty much for life, except for a few weeks off every four months to give birth and wean their young.

"Nine states have already banned gestation crates, and others have bills pending that would do the same. Now we're seeing large food companies take a stand," Balk says. However, he estimates that 83 percent of mother pigs in the pork industry are still confined to crates. Eliminating the crates, he admits, "doesn't ensure pig utopia by any means, but it does allow the pigs to at least be able to move around. When we eliminate gestation crates, we're ending the cruelest practice within the pork industry."

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