{"id":241279,"date":"2023-08-14T12:00:27","date_gmt":"2023-08-14T11:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=241279"},"modified":"2023-08-08T06:42:29","modified_gmt":"2023-08-08T05:42:29","slug":"new-investigation-exposes-the-stomach-churning-practice-to-make-your-bacon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2023\/08\/new-investigation-exposes-the-stomach-churning-practice-to-make-your-bacon\/","title":{"rendered":"New Investigation Exposes a Stomach-Churning Practice to Make Your Bacon"},"content":{"rendered":"

The pork industry\u2019s forced cannibalism, explained.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Paige Vickers\/Vox<\/p><\/div>\n

5 Aug 2023 – <\/em>The animal welfare<\/a> activist group Animal Outlook has been investigating the meat industry for over two decades, having documented chickens buried<\/a> and roasted<\/a> alive, thrashing pigs killed at a high-speed slaughterhouse<\/a>, fish bludgeoned to death<\/a>, and cows kicked and beaten<\/a>, among many other cruelties. But at a pig breeding farm in Minnesota, 120 miles southeast of Minneapolis, between late 2019 and early 2020, an undercover investigator with the organization witnessed<\/a> some of the worst cruelty they\u2019d ever seen.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was brutal,\u201d the investigator, who requested anonymity due to the covert nature of undercover investigations, told Vox. \u201cThey\u2019re all really bad,\u201d they said, referring to other investigations they\u2019ve conducted, \u201cbut this one looked like a house of horrors.\u201d<\/p>\n

In one clip, a pregnant pig who got stuck between two pens and died is sawed in half. \u201cAnyone want some ham?\u201d one worker joked. \u201cRipped that bitch wide open,\u201d another said. Animal Outlook\u2019s investigator alleged that employees could\u2019ve easily freed her before she died, but didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

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https:\/\/vimeo.com\/783736558<\/a><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

Male piglets at the farm have their tails cut off and testicles ripped out by hand without anesthesia or pain relief, both standard<\/a> practices<\/a> in the industry. The investigator filmed employees tossing the testicles at each other and at a wall that was covered in them. In another scene, a pregnant pig\u2019s uterus has prolapsed, a painful condition<\/a> that\u2019s more common in older female breeding pigs, known as sows, who typically give birth to larger litters than younger sows. In the video, she\u2019s herded down a hallway to be euthanized \u2014 shot in the head with a captive bolt gun \u2014 with her insides dangling to the ground. The investigator alleged this happened to between one and three pigs every day.<\/p>\n

Sick and injured piglets on the farm are placed into a small black box to be euthanized with carbon dioxide poisoning, but some survive and are seen gasping for air amid a pile of dead piglets. In one instance captured on video, an injured piglet needed to be euthanized, but a supervisor appeared to say it wasn\u2019t worth running a gassing cycle for just one animal, so he left the piglet to suffer overnight until there were more piglets that needed to be euthanized.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat feels good,\u201d one worker says in another clip, after repeatedly striking a pregnant pig with a paddle while trying to move her from one area to another.<\/p>\n

Such cruelty could stress out other pigs who witness it, as research<\/a> suggests pigs feel empathy<\/a> for one another when in distress.<\/p>\n

Animal Outlook\u2019s investigation<\/a> took place at a 3,300-sow breeding facility run by Holden Farms, a pork producer which, as of 2017<\/a>, raised pigs for some of the world\u2019s largest meat companies: Tyson Foods, JBS, and Triumph Foods. It\u2019s an understatement to say the footage conflicts with Holden Farms\u2019 approach to animal welfare stated on its website<\/a>: \u201cDo what\u2019s best for the animal and practice the best animal husbandry skills possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Holden Farms declined an interview request for this story. Tyson Foods, JBS, and Triumph Foods did not respond when asked if they currently supply pigs from Holden Farms.<\/p>\n

(After the investigation concluded in early 2020, Animal Outlook took its findings to local enforcement and requested charges be brought against Holden Farms, Inc., its management, and several of its employees under the state\u2019s animal cruelty laws. The statute of limitations has expired and no cruelty charges have been brought, so Animal Outlook is now releasing its findings to the public.)<\/p>\n

It\u2019s tempting to write off Holden Farms and some of its employees as bad apples, but the practices documented are customary in pork production, and the malicious abuse \u2014 the kicking, punching, and hitting \u2014 is found in investigation<\/a> after investigation<\/a> after investigation<\/a> into the meat industry.<\/p>\n

One of the more stomach-churning clips in Animal Outlook\u2019s footage shows a practice that\u2019s rarely been captured in other pork industry investigations. Employees can be seen removing the intestines of dead, disease-infected piglets and mixing them with piglet feces in a blender \u2014 a mixture to be fed to the adult breeding pigs \u2014 causing one worker to gag.<\/p>\n

The practice, called \u201cfeedback,\u201d is common<\/a> in the pork business<\/a> (or \u201ccontrolled oral exposure\u201d in industry jargon). The slurry of pig poop and parts is often<\/a> fed to new female breeding pigs who\u2019ve yet to give birth to help them adapt to the germs of the farm, and to pregnant pigs to help them pass down immunity from disease to their babies, through their milk.<\/p>\n

Animal Outlook\u2019s investigator said the farm had begun using feedback because some piglets were getting sick with diarrhea, losing weight, and their skin was turning from pink to a grayish hue.<\/p>\n

Why the pork industry feeds feces and raw intestines to pigs<\/h3>\n

To drive down costs, the meat industry relies on practices that can increase the spread of disease, like overcrowding<\/a> and intensive breeding<\/a>, which can trigger the need for gruesome practices like feedback to work around the problems it\u2019s created.<\/p>\n

It might make you lose your appetite, but many in the pork industry say<\/a> feeding pigs what amounts to a smoothie of feces and intestines reduces the spread of disease on farms when there isn\u2019t an effective vaccine available (though some recommend using it in addition<\/a> to vaccines). And disease is a big deal on farms. Around one-third<\/a> of pigs die before they ever reach the slaughterhouse, leading to enormous suffering for animals and significant losses for the producers, as they breed more pigs to make up for the early deaths.<\/p>\n

Cesar Corzo, an associate professor of swine health and productivity at the University of Minnesota, defends the practice, comparing feedback to childhood chickenpox parties<\/a>. Before the chickenpox vaccine came to market in 1995, parents would often bring infected kids together with uninfected kids, on the grounds that they would be better off contracting the disease as children than as adults. (Public health experts now recommend against intentionally infecting kids with disease in lieu of vaccination.) The same rough idea is at play in feedback.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose [piglets], when they come out into the world, if they happen to see some virus or some bacteria, they\u2019re prepared to fight against it,\u201d Corzo said. \u201cWe know that that works really well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Research into pig feedback began<\/a> in the 1950s, and it\u2019s since come into wide use. Some pig researchers<\/a> say that while feedback has clear benefits in fighting, for example, PEDv \u2014 a virus that caused hundreds of millions<\/a> of dollars in economic loss to the pork industry a decade ago \u2014 it can be risky, and there\u2019s no standard protocol. As a result, there\u2019s a lot of variability in its deployment, with inconsistent outcomes.<\/p>\n

Other industry experts say the way feedback is usually practiced is inefficient and unsafe<\/a>. Corzo said there are efforts underway to standardize its use.<\/p>\n

Jim Reynolds, a bovine veterinarian in California who\u2019s also worked with pigs and specializes in epidemiology, said the practice makes sense in theory, but he doesn\u2019t recommend it in part because it risks exposing animals to unintended diseases.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re grinding up dead things and feeding them to the not sick things, that\u2019s a bad idea. That\u2019s bad biosecurity,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s intentionally spreading pathogens\u2026 Hopefully, it\u2019s just the one you want. It might be another one.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reynolds and others<\/a> argue that many of the industry\u2019s health and welfare issues boil down to overcrowding. Farms should \u201cdecrease the stocking densities to reasonable levels\u201d to minimize disease spread, he said.<\/p>\n

From a consumer perspective, the debate over whether or not feedback is worth the risk may be largely irrelevant. That much was evident in the early 2010s fight over so-called pink slime<\/a>, a mix of meat scraps processed with chemicals meant to kill bacteria, that was turned into filler for beef products. It\u2019s safe to eat but repulsed the public, leading fast food chains<\/a> to swear off its use.<\/p>\n

While feedback may be particularly off-putting, it\u2019s a symptom of a larger problem: America\u2019s enduring desire for cheap, plentiful meat, which has given way to thousands of massive factory farms where stressed, genetically identical<\/a> animals with poor immune systems are tightly packed together, providing the perfect conditions<\/a> for disease to spread<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Why you probably don\u2019t know how sausage gets made<\/h3>\n

Americans eat more animals than practically any other country \u2014 around 264 pounds of red and white meat<\/a>, 280 eggs<\/a>, 667 pounds of dairy<\/a>, and around 20.5 pounds of seafood<\/a> per person each year. To meet demand, an estimated 99 percent<\/a> of animals raised and slaughtered for food in the US are kept on factory farms.<\/p>\n

The pork industry has pushed pigs to their biological limits, leading to many bizarre practices beyond feedback, many of which are inhumane. To name one example recently in the news: There are horse farms<\/a> that impregnate horses, extract their blood for a serum, abort their pregnancies, and then sell the serum to pig farms to induce puberty in young female pigs and produce larger litters. Holden Farms, like most pig breeding farms, confine pregnant pigs in gestation crates<\/a>, cages so small they can\u2019t turn around for practically their entire lives.<\/p>\n

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Sows in gestation crates.\u00a0 Jo-Anne McArthur \/ We Animals Media<\/p><\/div>\n

These practices are all legal and widespread because lawmakers have made them so. The federal Animal Welfare Act excludes livestock from protection, while many state animal cruelty laws exempt \u201ccustomary farming practices<\/a>,\u201d allowing the industry to define what\u2019s customary. Big Ag is one of the more powerful lobbies<\/a> in Washington.<\/p>\n

In some states, it\u2019s even illegal to conduct investigations like the one featured in this story. From the early 1990s to the early 2020s, a number of states<\/a> passed \u201cag-gag\u201d laws<\/a>, which generally prohibit people from taking videos or photographs on farms without permission. Fortunately, most have been struck down as unconstitutional.<\/p>\n

Industry has responded to consumer concerns with the practices brought to light in undercover investigations largely with empty gestures, like firing individual employees<\/a> for abuse instead of meaningfully changing conditions for animals. There\u2019s now a proliferation of meat, dairy, and egg labels carrying buzzwords or stamps of approval \u2014 like \u201chumanely raised\u201d or \u201cfarm fresh\u201d \u2014 that receive little scrutiny from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), have no legal definition, and exaggerate the level of animal welfare or environmental sustainability on a farm. It\u2019s known as \u201chumanewashing<\/a>,\u201d and you can look at Holden Farms\u2019 website<\/a> for a prime example, which highlights the company\u2019s extensive commitments to animal welfare, family farming, community, and sustainability.<\/p>\n

Meat industry groups have also fought hard<\/a> against laws that require sows to be raised crate-free.<\/p>\n

In June, the National Pork Board, a quasi-governmental organization administered<\/a> by the USDA, launched<\/a> a five-year effort in collaboration with several large public universities, aiming to \u201cshare research-based information about the pork industry\u201d to strengthen consumers\u2019 confidence in pork and demonstrate the industry\u2019s \u201ccommitment to people, pigs and the planet.\u201d The effort doesn\u2019t appear to include any plans to change practices that consumers find inhumane.<\/p>\n

Producing just about any commodity at scale entails some degree of moral sacrifice. But an industry that relies on a kind of forced cannibalism, among other repellant practices, might have to do a whole lot more than share research to earn consumer trust.<\/p>\n

______________________________________________<\/p>\n

Kenny Torrella<\/a> is a staff writer for <\/em>Vox\u2019s Future Perfect section, with a focus on animal welfare and the future of meat.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original – vox.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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