Meat Wagon: A roundup of outrages from the meat industry

Cruelty to hogs, and wretched meatpacking conditions

Posted by Tom Philpott at 10:37 AM on 13 Dec 2007

Read more about: food | agriculture | industrial ag | animal welfare

As the Senate debates the farm bill, which contains an entire title that would limit the power of the industrial-meat giants, you might think the industry would be on its best behavior, trying to act mellow while its lobbyists sort things out on the Hill.

And yet the industry is currently churning out outrages as if they were sausage: hence "Meat wagon," a new regular feature.

Here we go:

• The animal-rights group PETA has gotten hold of a video showing systematic cruelty to hogs in a CAFO owned by Smithfield Foods, the world's biggest hog producer and processor. Here's a sample of what PETA found:

Workers dragged injured pigs out of the facility by their snouts, ears, and legs, before killing them with a captive-bolt gun.

Charming. Caught on tape, sheepish Smithfield is launching an investigation.

• The lot of workers in Smithfield's slaughterhouses is surely better than that of hogs in its confinement pens -- but it ain't rosy.

In 2005, Human Rights Watch -- which usually finds its services most useful in dictatorships and war-torn regions -- saw fit to issue a blistering report on the wretched working conditions in the meatpacking industry.

Things have changed little since 2005 -- but the efforts to unionize the industry have ramped up. Smithfield has bitterly resisted efforts to organize its shop floor, and is now striking back with ham-fisted tactics.

Smithfield has sued the United Food and Commercial Workers under RICO, a federal statute designed to fight organized crime. The legal strategy will likely fail -- Smithfield will have to prove that the union has some how extorted money from the industrial-meat giant.

But it will be effective at enmeshing the union in a pricy legal battle -- and delay the day when Smithfield will have to deal with an organized workforce.

• At a hog slaughterhouse in Austin, Minn., operated by a company called Quality Pork Processors, workers are coming down with a rare and weird nerve disorder.

All of them work at the plant's "head table," AP reports, where pig brains are forced out of skulls with compressed air.

Here is AP:

Over eight months from last December through July, 11 workers at the plant -- all of them employed at the head table -- developed numbness, tingling, or other neurological symptoms, and some scientists suspect inhaled airborne brain matter may have somehow triggered the illnesses.

For story: Meat Wagon: A roundup of outrages from the meat industry
11 Comments | Post a Comment

Ouch

and is now striking back with ham-fisted tactics.

You have been cited by the Pun Police.

by GreenEngineer at 11:44 AM on 13 Dec 2007

Smithfield is a Grinch

Smithfield has been nominated as the Jobs with Justice "Grinch of the Year". You can see the other candidates & cast your vote at: http://www.jwj.org/grinch.html.

by jobswithjustice at 1:58 PM on 13 Dec 2007

Pun Police? Here?

This is a no-enforcement web site! You can't get in the door without a pun!

Tom, this is a great feature. I like having stories to mail to people, and recent ones have been really effective. (The strawberry soil-fumigants piece guarantees I will never again break down and buy commercial berries. It may be straw that sends me back to Virginia to farm.

by Martha Hagood at 3:05 PM on 13 Dec 2007

Hi...

I'm wiscidea. And I'm a meataholic.

How can people inflict such torture on animals? Are they naturally capable of such jobs or do they undergo training to destroy their sense of compassion? Do they separate their moral standards at work from their moral standards at home? Or do they go home an kick the dog without realizing how evil they are? How can there be enough workers willing to do such jobs? How long do they last? Do they cry when they get home and have to drag themselves to work the next day because they are desparate for a job? Are they kind to their children? How do they retain any sense of being human? Are they more inclined to call for the death penalty? Do they tend to support water-boarding? Are they Republicans? How can anyone look into an animal's eyes and kill it?

Damn depressing.

Happy holidays!

Enjoy your dead Christmas pigs -- as intelligent and trainable as dogs -- and dead Christmas turkeys! I'll be doing all I can to resist... please consider joining me.

by wiscidea at 3:43 PM on 13 Dec 2007

also, the ironic pun, a bit off:

"sheepish," instead of "piggish."

This is an excellent direction for your reporting, Tom. Thanks very much. As you might imagine, I strongly encourage your investigations.

Regarding PETA's report on Smithfield and the pig-mother-and-child abuse, please put that into the context of CAFOization, and the power of the few big companies over the small farmers who actually raise the animals, and hand them over for slaughter and processing. PETA in various places, including the site that you link to, refers to various painful afflictions visited on pigs, especially young pigs, by human handlers, such as extraction of teeth and cutting off the tail. In the light of what you and Elanor Starmer have written here in Gristmill, I wonder, how much of that abuse is definitely explicitly required by the big companies who call the shots, such as that the small farmer/pig handler is not "free" to refrain from inflicting it.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

by caniscandida at 4:00 AM on 14 Dec 2007

How do you look the other way?

I really don't understand how anyone can continue to look the other way when the damning information continues to pile up every day. This information is everywhere, totally accessible to everyone in the environmental community. I work in a "conservation" field and yet, when I sit down at lunch with my bowls of squash soup, vegan chili beans, or curry, all of my co-workers look curiously to see what the "freaky vegan" is eating for lunch today...and then they all bite into their big thick ham sandwiches. And being in Vermont, they all absolutely worship dairy, even though most of the little yogurt cups they consume come from half a dozen states away. And this idealized "dairy" that we see in the photos of Vermont is not at all reflective of where the majority of milk products come from.

Will people ever change?

Il faut cultiver notre jardin.

by John former Marine at 7:13 AM on 14 Dec 2007

Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act (California)

I don't think workers go find jobs at slaughterhouses and factory farms because they enjoy inflicting pain on animals, they do it because they're unskilled and there's not a lot of other choices. They become frustrated with their lot and take that frustration out on the animals. And the upper management at these facilities just don't care. So one of the best way we can help these workers, the animals themselves and the surrounding environment and communities is to boycott meat and switch to plant-based foods that are grown in an environmentally sound way. Preferably local and if from abroad, fair-trade. We need to reduce the market demand for the products of Smithfield and other factory farming companies like Tyson, Cargill, Purdue and others.

And we need to support campaigns that stop the worst of factory farming practices, like the Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act ballot question in California. www.humanecalifornia.org

The proposal is endorsed by Bill McKibben, Dr. Jane Goodall, and a number of other prominent environmental and animal protection advocates in addition to many California veterinarians.

by amc89 at 10:31 AM on 14 Dec 2007

It's not just cruelty to animals

Meat-eating is also cruel to humans.
From the people that work in the packing plants, with the horrible conditions, health issues, and injuries, to those that eat animal flesh, it is cruel.
Take a serious, objective look at the myriad of diseases that are killing so many people. If you do a little bit of research, you will find that the vast majority of them are traced back, definitively, to eating animal products.
High cholesterol, cancer, heart disease, gout... every medical journal has listings that include "reduce meat and dairy consumption" as treatments.
The best thing we can do for the health of animals, humans, and the planet, is to stop eating animals and their products.

by raevynn at 3:46 PM on 14 Dec 2007

the true meaning of "inhumane"

Yes, Raevynn, you make an excellent observation. We do damage to our humanity, whenever we act as though cruelty is acceptable, no matter what form it takes.

AMC,
what you say about the attitudes of workers in slaughterhouses and factory farms makes sense. Thanks for the information about the ballot question in California.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

by caniscandida at 11:13 AM on 15 Dec 2007

factory farming

yes, it seems that everyone suffers - the animals, the workers, the consumers (and those of us vegan/vegetarians) who have to watch the whole (excuse my language) bloody thing.... Not sustainable - not acceptable...

by bea elliott at 4:56 PM on 10 Jan 2008
[ Parent ]

looking the other way.....

Guilty - I swear by all that is sacred to me that until recently I never heard of "factory farming". Naive - yes.... I'm 50+ a vegetarian for 3 years, seems like even "old McDonald's" was unpleasant to me - just seemed wrong even with "humane" treatment - Factory Farms? a living hell. No meat, no milk - no problem....

by bea elliott at 5:02 PM on 10 Jan 2008
[ Parent ]

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