{"id":118554,"date":"2018-09-17T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-09-17T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=118554"},"modified":"2018-09-14T15:26:59","modified_gmt":"2018-09-14T14:26:59","slug":"investigation-exposes-animal-abuse-at-us-supplier-to-worlds-largest-meat-company","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2018\/09\/investigation-exposes-animal-abuse-at-us-supplier-to-worlds-largest-meat-company\/","title":{"rendered":"Investigation Exposes Animal Abuse at US Supplier to World’s Largest Meat Company"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Screenshot of a video by a Mercy for Animals (MFA) investigator at Tosh Farms, a JBS pork supplier based in Franklin, Kentucky. Mercy For Animals<\/p><\/div>\n

Warning: This article contains graphic descriptions and images of animal abuse. <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

13 Sep 2018 – <\/em>In September of last year, two executives of JBS, the world\u2019s largest meat producer<\/a>, based in Brazil, were arrested and charged with insider trading<\/a>. In May 2017, the billionaire siblings\u2014Wesley Batista, JBS\u2019s CEO, and his younger brother Joesley, the firm\u2019s former chairman\u2014admitted to bribing more than 1,800 politicians and government officials, including meat inspectors, in an effort to avoid food safety checks.<\/p>\n

Now, new undercover video<\/a> shot by a Mercy for Animals (MFA) investigator at Tosh Farms, a JBS pork supplier based in Franklin, Kentucky, exposes what the animal rights group calls the \u201cmalicious and systemic abuse of mother pigs and piglets.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll never forget the way they looked up at me,\u201d said Tyler, the MFA investigator, about the pigs he documented at Tosh Farms. \u201cThey all shared the same look of helplessness and fear<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOne mother pig stumbled down a corridor with her uterus hanging outside her body. She wouldn\u2019t live much longer,\u201d he said on an MFA website launched specifically to document the JBS investigation, jbstorture.com.<\/p>\n

httpv:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=8_JlvyYgjZI&has_verified=1<\/p>\n

Tyler witnessed workers at Tosh Farms kicking and striking animals in their faces, ripping out the testicles of piglets without any pain relief, and even smashing the heads of piglets against the ground in order to kill them.<\/p>\n

Those piglets who did not immediately die were left to suffer, denied proper veterinary care. \u201cA worker grabbed a piglet, just hours old, by the feet and swung him high and then slammed his head down against the hard concrete,\u201d said Tyler. \u201cAny life left quickly vanished<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom the day pigs are born until the day they are violently killed for JBS pork, their lives are filled with misery and deprivation,\u201d said Matt Rice, president of MFA, in a press statement. \u201cIf JBS executives abused even one dog or cat the way their suppliers abuse millions of pigs, they would be jailed for cruelty to animals. As the largest meat company in the world, JBS has the power and responsibility to end this torture.\u201d<\/p>\n

Clare Ellis, publisher of Stone Pier Press, which recently released \u201cSprig the Rescue Pig<\/a>,\u201d the first of its Farm Animal Rescue Books for children, was appalled: \u201cStories like this are even more heartbreaking and upsetting when you consider how very smart, curious, affectionate and sensitive pigs are.\u201d She added that, \u201cClose to 99 percent of animals raised for food come from factory farms<\/a>, which, in addition to being terribly cruel, do an enormous amount of environmental damage.\u201d<\/p>\n

Following the July 17 release of the video, which was taken between December 2017 and March 2018, JBS said it suspended shipments from that supplier site. \u201cThe images presented in the video fall completely outside the company\u2019s standards<\/a>,\u201d JBS said in a statement, but did not name the supplier involved.<\/p>\n

But for MFA, suspending shipments from that single supplier isn\u2019t nearly enough. \u201cJBS\u2019s decision to suspend Tosh Farms as a supplier is too little, too late,\u201d Kenny Torrella, director of communications with MFA, told Truthout. \u201cIt amounts to nothing more than meaningless PR spin.\u201d<\/p>\n

The group, headquartered in Los Angeles, is now calling on JBS to end factory farm cruelty across its global pork supply chains, including the elimination of painful mutilations. In addition, MFA is calling on JBS to prohibit its suppliers from housing sows in tiny gestation crates for nearly their entire lives. These metal cages, the standard of which measures just 6.6 feet x 2 feet\u2014so small that they can\u2019t even turn around or lie down comfortably\u2014are where pregnant sows live in factory farms around the globe for nearly their entire lives. In the United States as of 2016, there were 5.36 million breeding sows<\/a>, most of them kept in gestation crates.<\/p>\n

Confined to tiny gestation crates, mother pigs are not only denied basic natural behaviors like playing, exploring and engaging with their peers and children, but they also must endure immense and prolonged mental and emotional suffering. \u201cThese curious animals lose their minds from frustration and stress,\u201d writes<\/a> Lucas Alvarenga, vice president of MFA in Brazil. \u201cThey often also suffer painful pressure sores from rubbing against the bars of their crates and crippling joint problems as their muscles waste away from lack of use.\u201d<\/p>\n

While gestation crates are still the norm across the world, things are beginning to change for the better. Canada, the European Union, New Zealand and Australia, as well as 10 US states, have banned cruel gestation crates. Further, more than 60 major food companies\u2014including McDonald\u2019s, Walmart, Burger King and Nestl\u00e9\u2014have said they would ban gestation crates from their suppliers.<\/p>\n

In addition, California voters will have the opportunity in November to ban the sale of pork from pigs confined in gestation crates. If the measure passes, that will impact Tosh Farms and JBS, as the pigs reared at Tosh are then transported to a JBS slaughterhouse in Louisville, Kentucky, which supplies pork products to stores across California.<\/p>\n

The systemic abuse and torture of pigs is an industry-wide problem. Last year, MFA investigators at the Aurora cooperative pig factory farm in the state of Santa Catarina in Brazil, the third-largest meat producer in Brazil and a major pork exporter to the United States, recorded video of pigs and piglets enduring a wide range of cruelty, including, notes Alvarenga<\/a>, \u201cworkers slicing off the tails, cutting holes in the ears and grinding the teeth of piglets without any pain relief.\u201d<\/p>\n

Animal rights advocates are quick to point out that pigs\u2014as well as other animals raised for human consumption\u2014are intelligent, have rich emotional lives and possess unique, individual personalities<\/a>. For some, these are reasons to not eat them. Ellen Page, one of many celebrity vegans who have used their fame to speak out on behalf of animals raised for food<\/a>, said, \u201cThe inhumane factory farming process regards animals and the natural world merely as commodities to be exploited for profit.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe animals who are raised to be food for humans are so much more than just burgers and bacon,\u201d said Marc Bekoff, professor emeritus of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and co-author of The Animals\u2019 Agenda: Freedom, Compassion, and Coexistence in the Human Age<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cPigs, cows, chickens, turkeys and other non-human animals whose flesh is destined to wind up in our mouths were once sentient beings with rich emotional lives,\u201d said Bekoff, who is also the co-founder, with Jane Goodall, of Ethologists for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. \u201cBut because consumers rarely interact with them while they are still alive, they don\u2019t see that these animals feel such a wide range of emotions, ranging from joy to sadness to grief, just like we all do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Non-human animals aren\u2019t the only victims of the factory farm system. Slaughterhouse workers must witness the nightmarish conditions that the animals must endure. Some workers must do the actual killing, day in and day out.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe psychological toll this takes on a person cannot be underestimated,\u201d writes<\/a> Ashitha Nagesh. \u201cSlaughterhouse work has been linked to a variety of disorders<\/a>, including PTSD and the lesser-known PITS (perpetration-induced traumatic stress). It has also been connected to an increase in crime rates, including higher incidents of domestic abuse.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTo help move society to a more ethical food system, we as consumers must think less about \u2018what\u2019 is on our plate and more about \u2018who\u2019 is on our plate,\u201d said Bekoff.<\/p>\n

TAKE ACTION: Sign the petition<\/a> urging JBS to ban gestation crates and painful mutilations.<\/em><\/p>\n

This article was produced by Earth | Food | Life<\/a>, a project of the Independent Media Institute.<\/em><\/p>\n

______________________________________________<\/p>\n

Reynard Loki is a senior writing fellow and the editor and chief correspondent for<\/em> Earth | Food | Life<\/a>, a project of the<\/em> Independent Media Institute. He previously served as the environment, food and animal rights editor at <\/em>AlterNet and as a reporter for <\/em>Justmeans\/3BL Media covering sustainability and corporate social responsibility. He was named one of <\/em>FilterBuy\u2019s “Top 50 Health & Environmental Journalists to Follow in 2016.”<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 go.ind.media<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

13 Sep 2018 – An undercover investigator with Mercy for Animals witnessed extreme animal abuse at Tosh Farms in Kentucky, where workers ripped out the testicles of piglets without providing any pain relief, and smashing their heads against the ground to kill them. Warning: This article contains graphic descriptions and images of animal abuse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":118555,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[170],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-118554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-animal-rights-vegetarianism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118554\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/118555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}