Smithfield continues pig gestation crate phase-out

The Smithfield, Va.-based company, which has been criticized for continuing to breed sows in gestation crates that severely restrict the animals' movement, said it had successfully moved 38 percent of its pregnant sows from the crates to group housing at the end of 2012, up from 30 percent a year ago.

The company previously had been in the process of converting a number of its sow farms from individual gestation stalls to group housing for pregnant sows by 2017, but took a break from that conversion in order to deal with the economic downturn the last few years.

Smithfield's North Carolina-based livestock subsidiary Murphy-Brown operates about 460 hog farms in the U.S. with approximately 851,000 sows producing about 15.8 million market hogs annually. It also partners with about 2,100 independent farmers and contract breeders in the U.S. to raise hogs.

In the practice that Smithfield is phasing out, female pigs are kept in gestation crates where they stay during their four-month pregnancies. Afterward, they are moved for about three weeks to a crate large enough to nurse their piglets before being artificially inseminated and placed back into the crates.

The treatment of livestock destined for the dinner table is "becoming very important to our customers and is an important factor in the recent growth in our food service business," CEO Larry Pope said in a conference call with investors regarding its second-quarter financial results last month.