Pig farm workers regularly torture animals

The following is an excerpt from a FoxNews story from Dec. 12, 2007. Click here to read the full story.


A local prosecutor in North Carolina is investigating allegations of animal cruelty by a pig farm supplying Smithfield Foods, the nation’s largest pork producer. The investigation comes after an animal rights activist secretly videotaped workers beating and dragging swine, gouging out their eyes and cutting out their testicles.


Attorneys from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals presented their case to the Sampson County District Attorney's Office in North Carolina on Monday and will turn over videotapes and a signed affidavit by PETA's undercover investigator, who says he witnessed daily violent mistreatment of baby and adult pigs at Murphy Family Ventures Garland Sow Farm in Garland, N.C.


In the black-and-white video, a supervisor can be heard bragging to the undercover PETA investigator that he brutally beats the animals.


Click here to see the video. WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT AND EXTREMELY FOUL LANGUAGE.


"I ain't going to lie to you; I've done it," he says. "My temper is about that long. I get f— frustrated and I have knocked the s— out of them. Like that one bit me the other morning, that mother f—.... I cut the s— out of his G—d— nose with a f— gate rod."


In other segments, pigs who have the word "KILL" spray-painted on their backs screech in apparent pain as they're dragged to slaughter with a heavy metal prodder attached to their legs, ears and snouts, and women laugh as they castrate one piglet after another without anesthesia or painkillers.


"One female employee told me that was her stress relief for the week," said the PETA investigator, who spoke to FOXNews.com on condition of anonymity. "That's the type of person doing those jobs. ... The treatment of the baby pigs shook me the most."


He said he also witnessed piglets' tails being sliced off and other atrocities. Castration and tail-chopping are general practice at swine slaughterhouses, according to PETA. ...


Murphy Family Ventures pig-breeding farms and slaughterhouses are under contract with Smithfield Foods as pork suppliers. The PETA employee who videotaped the alleged pig abuse said he was hired as an entry-level "herd technician 1" and worked from Sept. 13 until Nov. 2 of this year.


"[The abuse of pigs] happened every day," said the PETA investigator. "The video is compelling to people, but it pales in comparison to seeing it every day in person. You can't even capture the full horror of what goes on there." ...


The investigator said he quit the $7-an-hour job with a week's notice because he feared his coworkers had begun to suspect him, since he said he was the only one who wasn't physically harming the pigs on the farm.


"I was the only person there not abusing the hogs," he said. "Everybody there — my supervisors, managers — commented to me that you have to hit them to make them move. I do think they suspected me because I never once would do that. That definitely made me stand out. I don't think they look at them like animals. They look at them like a piece of merchandise." ...


Smithfield has come under scrutiny before for human rights violations, hiring of illegal workers and labor union practices.