A new Mercy For Animals undercover investigation, which broke today on FOX National News, reveals
unconscionable cruelty to mother pigs and their young piglets at a
Hatfield Quality Meat supplier – “Country View Family Farms,” in
Fannettsburg, Pennsylvania. The hidden camera video provides consumers
with a jarring glimpse into the nightmarish world of factory pork
production.
MFA’s investigation uncovered:
- Workers grabbing piglets by their fragile ears or legs and throwing
them across the room and slamming them into transport carts. - Workers tattooing sows by repeatedly driving sharp metal spikes into their flesh.
- Sows with untreated rectal prolapses
and deep, infected sores and scrapes from constant rubbing against the
bars of their stalls. - Workers cutting off piglets’ tails
with dull pliers and castrating them by ripping out their testes with
their bare hands – all without anesthesia. - Thousands of pregnant pigs confined
in two-feet wide metal stalls so small that they could only take one
step forward or backward and could not turn around or lie down
comfortably. - Injured, sick and runt piglets being tossed into overcrowded gassing kill carts, slowly suffocating from CO2.
- Workers firing steel rods into sows’ heads, sometimes as many as four separate times, before the sows fell and died.
Numerous veterinarians and animal welfare experts have harshly condemned the conditions documented at this “family farm” – which confines nearly
3,000 breeding sows. Dr. Nedim C. Buyukmihci, Emeritus Professor of
Veterinary Medicine at the University of California, Davis, asserts, “I
can state unequivocally that the pigs in this facility suffered
immensely…These people showed complete disregard for the welfare or
well-being on the pigs.”
The findings of MFA’s newest investigation are consistent with those documented at pig farms across the country in recent years – illustrating that animal neglect and abuse are the pork industry norm, not the exception.
Not only are the abuses documented at this facility standard
within the industry, they are legal in the state of Pennsylvania. Like
most states, Pennsylvania’s anti-cruelty statute exempts farmed animals
from legal protection. Pigs, like all farmed animals, also lack federal
protection during their lives confined on factory farms.
As consumers we can choose compassion over cruelty at every meal. Adopting a compassionate vegan diet is the most powerful action we can take to put an end to needless
animal suffering and the conditions documented during this
investigation.
Click here to learn more about this disturbing investigation.
