Veterinary Insight & Ethical Farming with Eliza Maclean

January 28, 2026·21 min·2 clips

Eliza McClain describes how she selects sows for good maternal instinct and uses a gentle slaughter process 40 minutes from her farm.

Host Doug Stephan introduces Eliza Maclean, owner of Cane Creek Farm in Saxapahaw, North Carolina. Maclean traces her path from aspiring veterinarian to vet tech to a transformative six-week senior project living with an Amish family, where she learned horse breaking and observed integrated, self-sufficient farming. She returned to that farm every college break for five years, crediting the experience with forming her farming philosophy. She completed a master's degree in environmental toxicology at Duke University, which deepened her concern about industrial agriculture's environmental impact and led her to start a pasture-based pig operation as a direct expression of her values. She chose pigs because she found them intelligent and dignified — qualities she felt were denied in confinement systems. Maclean runs a farrow-to-finish operation: sows are moved to cozy eight-by-eight farrowing stalls before giving birth, where she monitors for good maternal instinct and protects piglets from crushing. She rotates pigs aggressively across her farm's pasture and grows vegetables behind them, using manure as natural fertilizer. She is honest about the difficulty of sending animals to slaughter, but describes selecting a small facility 40 minutes away operated by a man who has worked there for 45 years and who she describes as an animal lover. She attends the slaughter herself, framing the entire process as responsible stewardship — drawing on Temple Grandin's language that raising animals is a positive act. Maclean describes building her customer base mostly through word of mouth, selling at farmer's markets and to local chefs. She was surprised when the 2008 economic recession dramatically increased demand for her premium product: unemployed or underemployed households had time to explore farmer's markets and prioritize food quality, and university dining halls at UNC, Duke, and Elon became customers. She financed the farm through a 2003 mortgage she barely qualified for, grants available to her as a woman and minority farmer, and a John Deere agricultural line of credit. She sold tomatoes from a Suburban while raising infant twins to get the business going. The farm now employs one full-time farm hand of five years, with seasonal summer help. Maclean notes that nearly all past employees have stayed in agriculture, which she sees as a measure of the farm's influence.

As heard by us

Ethical livestock work only holds when care and market reality stay in balance.

The episode treats ethical farming as a business problem first, which gives it some real footing. It keeps coming back to the practical work of raising pigs well: picking sows for maternal instinct, setting up farrowing space, and making sure the animals can be handled, moved,…

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You want a humane, practical look at keeping a small pig farm viable.

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