Mark Bittman has an important blog post today highlighting a new investigation by the Humane Society into abuses of animals at Smithfield Foods, the worlds largest pork producer with annual revenues of about $12 billion.

via Smithfield is Torturing Animals | The Nation.

Of course I’ve heard a lot about Smithfield farms since they were treating workers horribly and the UFCW fought them for a very long time over that. They eventually won that fight.

Now Smithfield is back in the news for torturing animals. While this is expected when you are factory farming animals. It is still deplorable to do this to them.

The recent investigation is the latest examination by the HSUS into the operations of the nation’s top animal agribusinesses and its revelations are shocking, even for seasoned critics of industrial husbandry. The investigator—who spent a month working undercover inside a Smithfield-owned facility in Waverly, Va.— documented numerous abuses:

• Female breeding pigs crammed inside “gestation crates” so small the animals could barely move for virtually their entire lives. The animals consequently engaged in behaviors such as biting the bars of crates so incessantly that blood from their mouths coated the fronts of their crates.
• The investigator never glimpsed a veterinarian on site. A barn manager told the investigator to ignore a pig with a basketball-sized abscess on her neck, and then cut the abscess open with an unsterilized razor.
• Employees jabbed a lame pig’s neck and back with gate rods to force her to move.
• Three times, the investigator informed employees that a pig was thrown into a dumpster alive. The animal had been shot in the forehead with a captive bolt gun and was thrown in the dumpster alive and breathing.
• Employees mishandled piglets and tossed them into carts.
• Piglets prematurely born in gestation crates fell through the slats into the manure pits.

From an email I just got.

Joint statement of Smithfield and UFCW

The parties have reached a settlement of the lawsuit pending in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Richmond Division. The essential elements of the settlement are as follows:

1. Smithfield and the UFCW have agreed on what both parties believe to be a fair election process by which the employees at Smithfield’s Tar Heel plant can choose whether or not to be represented by the UFCW.

2. Smithfield and the UFCW have agreed to establish a Feed the Hungry Program to be jointly funded and administered by the UFCW and Smithfield.

3. The UFCW agrees to end its public campaign against Smithfield.

4. The parties have agreed there shall be no further public statement about this settlement until the election referenced in paragraph one above has been concluded.

Congratulations to the United Food and Commercial Workers union.

In the DC Metro system one sees ads done by many different groups. From defense contractors advertising at the Pentagon Metro station to the American Medical Association (who used to oppose universal healthcare) now calling for universal health coverage of some sort. Sometimes you even see good organizations championing their causes in this case, Smithfield Justice.

Advertising on the DC Metro is a great way to get your message out there to the masses. Which is why it’s not surprising that groups do this. Not too long ago I even remember seeing ads at the Metro Center station paid for by CWA Local 14201 talking about the Washington Post and some of the injustices they perpetrate. This morning however as I was exiting one train and going up the escalators to transfer to the next train; I was pleasantly surprised to see a banner paid for by none other than Smithfield Justice.

Smithfield Justice is a project of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. On the ad, in bright yellow letters, we are informed that managers at a Smithfield plant called African American workers the “N’ word. They also beat people. We are also urged to not buy Smithfield products. In 1997, when workers at the Tar Heel, NC plant tried to unionize they were threatened and intimidated. On the Smithfiled Justice site we also learn that “Smithfield Foods is the largest pork producer and processor in the world, the fourth largest turkey processor and fifth largest beef processor in the U.S.” It is headquartered in the town of Smithfield, Virginia, but its operations stretch across the United States, Mexico, and much of Europe.”

With all the money they are making you would think they would not treat their workers this way, but sadly with many corporations the opposite is often true. It’s good to see Smithfield Justice taking to the Metro and I hope they escalate the campaign in this politically minded city of ours.

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