Bringing Home the Bacon: How Pork is Produced

Everything's better with bacon on it. People put it in green beans, wrap it around steak, fry it for breakfast, use it to flavor pinto beans, and Naeglin's Bakery in New Braunfels, Texas even crumbles it up and puts it on top of doughnuts (Texas peeps, if you're ever in New Braunfels for vacation, you're wrong if you don't stop at Naeglin's for a doughnut or kolache or a loaf of their pumpernickel bread). However, there's more to the hog than bacon. People make pulled pork from roasts and picnic shoulders. My family enjoys ham at Christmas time. And don't even get me started on grilled pork chops. I like mine thick and juicy.

Now that I've made you hungry with all this talk of pork chops and doughnuts, perhaps you'd like to know how your pork is produced. It's quite simple, really. In fact, pork production is quite straightforward because hog farming, like chicken farming, is vertically integrated, meaning the animal goes from a newborn youngster to a ready-for-slaughter adult on the same farm, as opposed to beef production, which happens in stages. You can check out my post on beef production for more info on that. In pigs, however, vertical integration is advantageous for several reasons. First, pigs are incredibly vulnerable to moving stress. The more they are moved around, the more stressed they become. This makes them vulnerable to phenomena called PSE (which stands for pale, soft, and exudative meat), and DFD (which stands for dark, firm, and dry meat). Both conditions affect carcass quality negatively and, while completely safe to eat, are condemned and are not allowed to be sold in grocery stores. PSE meat is very soft and squishy, and water collects on top of it as it leaches out of the meat, and DFD is firm and hard, and is very tough. Obviously, these conditions cause the pig farmer to lose money so it makes sense that farmers would try to avoid it by treating the animals well and keeping stress levels as low as possible by not moving them around too much. The other reason pigs are raised on the same farm their whole lives is biosecurity. Pigs are also extremely vulnerable to disease. If you'll think back to 2013, you might recall that the price of pork products skyrocketed. There's a reason for that. A disease called PED (standing for porcine epidemic diarrhea) wiped out approximately 10% of America's. pigs. It's a virus that primarily affects piglets, although it may also cause vomiting and diarrhea in sows. The virus affects the pig's villi. Villi are small, finger-like projections in the small intestine that are made up of food-absorbing cells called enterocytes. When infected with PED, the virus essentially destroys the villi of piglets. Without their villi, the piglets can't absorb food. Undigested milk ferments and is excreted in the form of foul-smelling diarrhea or by vomiting. The piglets essentially starve to death, even though they may have plenty to eat. It's a horrible way to die, and there's no cure. It's also incredibly potent. Experts say one tablespoon of infected manure would be enough to wipe out the entire U.S. pig population. Since there's no cure, the best way to prevent the disease is to enforce extremely high biosecurity standards. Trucks carrying pigs from other farms usually never enter the farm because pigs transfer trucks at the gates. Farmers sterilize their boots, change their clothes often, and may even wear hazmat-type suits in the farrowing barn. The best solution, however, is to not bring in pigs from other farms. Hence vertical integration. But what exactly does this vertical integration process consist of?

Birth to Weaning

Piglets are born after approximately 16 weeks of gestation. At birth, baby pigs are processed by farmers to prevent disease and keep them healthy. Piglet processing includes castration of males, clipping needle teeth, tail docking, dipping the umbilical cord in iodine, and an iron booster shot. The clipping of needle teeth and tail docking are done because pigs are curious animals, and will tend to chew on one another's tails if this is not done. These two procedures help prevent infection and injury, therefore limiting the use of antibiotics and increasing animal welfare standards. Umbilical cords are dipped in iodine to prevent infection in the weak immune systems of newborn piglets, as the navel can become infected if not properly sterilized. The iron shot is administered because baby pigs have a tendency to become anemic, due to low iron content of the mother sow's colostrum and milk. 

For 2-3 weeks, the sow continues to nurse the baby pigs, which feed off her milk and continue to grow. This occurs in a farrowing barn, pictured below.

Farrowing barns are kept highly sterile to prevent PED, and are climate controlled so that the pigs are comfortable, no matter what the weather. This allows for year-round production, according to the USDA. When the piglets reach an average of 10-20 pounds, they are weaned and moved to the next phase of production.

Weaning to Feeder

This stage of production focuses on getting the young pigs accustomed to a diet of solid food. Up until this point, they may have been creep fed, but the majority of their diet consisted of milk from the sow. Now, however, they must consume high-protein, high-energy foods such as corn and soybeans in order to gain weight efficiently. It helps acclimate them to the conditions they will experience as feeder-finisher pigs because they will no longer have the choice to drink milk. As a result of this lack of milk, their digestive enzymes must acclimate to the new diet. To do this, their diet and feed consumption levels must be monitored very, very closely. If their diet isn't exactly right, or if they eat too much or too little, they can have an allergic reaction to the solid food and die. In addition, the nutrient content of their diet is carefully formulated to avoid unneeded stress. This means the amount of protein, fats, carbohydrates, vitamins, and minerals in it may very according to what the pig needs. Young pigs are often grouped together with other pigs who have similar nutrient requirements. It is also worth mentioning that growing pigs are moved to group housing with other litters when they are weaned from the sow. The pens they come to live in are very spacious, with slatted floors for manure to fall through, so that it doesn't pose a health hazard for the pigs by staying in the pen. Here's an example of what housing for newly weaned pigs might look like. Again, note how clean everything is.

This particular setup allows piglets free choice water to keep them hydrated, and also includes heat lamps to help them regulate body temperature. From an animal welfare standpoint, this is a pretty good setup. However, the pigs won't stay small forever. They will eventually become acclimated to solid food, and at that point the finishing stage begins (1).

Feeder to Finish

As the feeder stage begins, the pigs will be moved to even larger housing. Like weaning pens, feeder pens have slatted floors. There are several different pen sizes, ranging from small paddocks with only a few pigs per pen, to pens the size of an entire barn. Regardless, pigs have plenty of space to roam about, access to fresh water, a climate-controlled environment (usually) and a specially-formulated diet. Here is a great example of a pig barn. Once more, note how sanitary the barn is, and how much space the pigs have to move around.

The pigs will stay in this barn and continue to grow and eat their specially formulated diet, which includes varying degrees of protein, fats, and energy, depending on what works best for that farmer. When pigs reach market weight (about 240-270 pounds), they are loaded onto trucks and taken to the plant to be harvested. 

The entire process is quite simple, really. Pigs gain weight quickly because they are more feed efficient than cattle. There's nothing scary or cruel about the way hogs are currently raised. As you can see by the pictures above, pig farms are quite clean because they have to be, and they are definitely not the crowded hellholes PETA makes them out to be. In fact, pig farms offer a very high degree of animal welfare not only because it helps keep the farm in business, but also because it's the right thing to do.

I'm a full-time college student at Texas A&M University, where I'm in the process of getting my Animal Science degree, with eventual aspirations to go to law school and work as a consulting lawyer for agriculture corporations. I grew up around animals, and currently manage an operation that breeds show-quality boer goats for 4H and FFA exhibitors. My family also raises commercial cattle in south Texas.