Effort to improve farm-animal treatment expands globally

(The Christian Science Monitor) To envision where the farm-animal welfare movement might go next in the United States, experts look to Europe. 

Many reforms hitting the U.S. today were rolled out there roughly 10 years ago. Wire battery cages for chickens, for example, disappeared from the European Union in 2012, after a 13-year phaseout. 

“In Europe today, farrowing crates are the discussion,” said Thomas Parsons, a University of Pennsylvania animal science expert, referring to crates that immobilize sows as they are nursing newborn piglets. Just before giving birth, sows are moved from gestation crates into farrowing crates to protect piglets from getting pinned or crushed when their hulking mothers flop down to nurse.