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Article: Group housing called 'simple': the general manager of a company that has a group, or pen, sow housing system explains how it works and what it achieves.(Feedstuffs FoodLink: CONNECTING FARM TO FORK)
- Article from:
- Feedstuffs
- Article date:
- January 28, 2008
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2008 Miller Publishing Company, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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MAXWELL Foods Inc., a division of the Goldsboro Milling Co. in Goldsboro, N.C., is one of the 10 largest pork producers in the U.S., housing 90,000 sows and marketing nearly 2 million finished hogs per year.
Founded in 1989, Maxwell has used group, or pen, housing for its sows from the beginning. General manager and veterinarian Bob Ivey said he anticipated that the animal welfare trends in Europe would develop in the U.S., "and we built our system that way," i.e., group housing that was being established Europe.
Explaining the Maxwell system to a session of the Minnesota Pork Congress earlier this month, Ivey emphasized ...