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Why Choose Sausage, Pork, Ham Substitutes?

With corporate hog factories replacing traditional hog farms, pigs raised for food are being treated more as inanimate tools of production than as living, feeling animals.

Approximately 100 million pigs are raised and slaughtered in the U.S. every year. As babies, they are subjected to painful mutilations without anesthesia or pain relievers. Their tails are cut off to minimize tail biting, an aberrant behavior that occurs when these highly-intelligent animals are kept in deprived factory farm environments. In addition, notches are taken out of the piglets' ears for identification.

By two to three weeks of age, 15% of the piglets will have died. Those who survive are taken away from their mothers and crowded into pens with metal bars and concrete floors. A headline from National Hog Farmer magazine advises, "Crowding Pigs Pays...", and this is exemplified by the intense overcrowding in every stage of hog confinement systems. Pigs will live this way, packed into giant, warehouse-like sheds, until they reach a slaughter weight of 250 pounds at 6 months old.

The air in hog factories is laden with dust, dander, and noxious gases, which are produced as the animals' urine and feces builds up inside the sheds. Studies of workers in swine confinement buildings have found sixty percent to have breathing problems, despite their spending only a few hours a day inside confinement buildings. For pigs, who spend their entire lives in factory farm confinement, respiratory disease is rampant.

Modern hog factories are fertile breeding grounds for a wide variety of diseases. A pork industry report explains:

Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome, or PRRS, was first reported in U.S. herds in 1987. It is now estimated to be in as many as 60 percent of U.S. herds...Swine arthritis has increased in economic importance with confinement rearing, partly because of damage related to flooring conditions and partly because of faster growth rates and lack of exercise...The incidence of salmonellosis has continued to increase. It is estimated that one-third to half of farms have some level of salmonellosis...Epidemic transmissible gastroenteritis, or TGE, is a dreaded disease because it's hard to keep out of herds, there's no effective treatment and it carries a devastating mortality rate in baby pigs. Nearly all pigs less than 10 days old die if infected...Forty to 70 percent of U.S. pigs show evidence of infection with bratislava (a type of Leptospirosis)...Tests indicate 80 percent to 85 percent of sows in major swine producing areas have been exposed to parvovirus.

Sausage, Pork, Ham Substitutes

Note: Every product listed here is not always available at your local grocery store. Publix tends to have a lot more than others, but you can usually find at least one of these brands at other grocery stores as well.

• Gardenburger Meatless Riblets
• Publix Brand Breakfast Sausage links and patties
• Grain Meat Sausages from Field Roast
• Gourmet Sausages and Beerbrats by Tofurky
• Amy's Breakfast Patties
• Breakfast Links from SoyBoy
• Gardenburger Meatless Breakfast Sausage
• Fakin' Bacon Tempeh Strips by Lite Life
• Lite Life - Smart Bacon
• Lite Life - Gimme Lean Sausage Style
• Yves Veggie Cuisine Veggie Breakfast Links
• Yves Veggie Canadian Veggie Bacon
• Lightlife Smart Deli Country Ham Style
• Yves Veggie Cuisine Hot 'n' Spicy Veggie Chili Dogs