"Today's sows are being bred to produce more babies faster. They're also dying early and unexpectedly in many large-scale farming operations."
"The hog industry is losing sows—pigs that are raised solely for the purpose of breeding other pigs—at an increasing rate. Reports vary, but the number shared last year at an annual gathering of pork producers showed a rise in sow deaths from 5.8 percent to 10.2 percent in just the last three years.
As hog farms have consolidated, and the number of pigs each animal gives birth to has also gone up, sows have born the brunt of the changes. Removing the large, up-to-800-pound animals has also become such a challenge on hog barns that a $7,000 motorized removal machine—called the Hercules Arm—went on the market in 2017, promising to “a unique and revolutionary way to effortlessly remove … heavy dead pigs from stalls.”
These animals have been dying for a range of reasons, ranging from accidents, to disease and heart problems, for years. But the recent rise in numbers may be caused by a troubling rise in prolapse—or the collapse of the animal’s rectums, vaginas, and uteruses. And while the industry is scrambling for data and solutions, some experts wonder whether this is just the latest result of the larger trend toward engineering farm animals for profit—regardless of their suffering and early mortality."
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