Belcross Farms Investigation

This lame pig was dragged, beaten, and tortured to death. Her throat was slit multiple times with a dull blade, and she was pummeled with a wrench. While still conscious and choking on her own blood, the farm workers sawed off her limbs.

PETA conducted an undercover investigation at Belcross Farm, a pig-breeding factory farm in North Carolina, the number two pig-producing state in the U.S. An undercover PETA investigator spent three months working at the farm and took hours of video footage that revealed shocking, systematic cruelty to animals, including daily beatings and bludgeoning of pregnant sows with a wrench, ramming an iron pole a foot deep into mother pigs’ rectums and vaginas, and sawing off the legs of the pigs and skinning them while they were still completely conscious and squealing in agony and terror.

As a result of our investigation, the Camden County Superior Court made history by handing down the first-ever felony indictments for cruelty to animals by farm workers. One of the workers, Raymond Sanchez, was indicted on two felony counts and received a $500 fine plus $960 in court costs, 140 days in jail (with an additional 120 days suspended), and three years’ supervised probation. The nearly five-month sentence for Sanchez is the strongest penalty levied against an individual for cruelty to animals raised for food in U.S. history. Russell Crawford, who was a manager at the farm, received a $300 fine plus court costs, a 45-day suspended sentence, and two years of unsupervised probation. The third worker, Kelly Brown, pleaded guilty, was convicted on one count of cruelty to animals on July 3, 2000, and received a 45-day suspended sentence, 24 months of unsupervised probation, and fines and costs totaling $221. He also received a stipulation stating that he “not work as a farm manager without disclosing the charges, convictions, and judgment of this case. [And] fully disclose to area SPCA supervisor or animal control of his residence, the charges, conviction and judgment in this case.”

When in their natural surroundings, not on factory farms, pigs are social, playful, protective animals who bond with each other, make nests, relax in the sun, and cool off in the mud. Scientists have often found that these friendly animals are as smart as 3-year-old humans!

Even if they’re not so sadistically abused, pigs on modern farms spend their entire lives in cramped, filthy warehouses, under constant stress from the intensive confinement and deprived of everything that is natural and important to them. You can take a stand against cruelty to pigs and all animals on factory farms by adoption a healthy and humane vegetarian diet. Request a free vegetarian starter kit and DVD to get started today.