Statements From Sun Prairie Workers

“They would grab the back of the legs of the little pig who’s fallen behind or is sick or something, and instead of treating it and trying to make it better, they would grab the back legs and swing it over their shoulders with both hands and try to hit it right in the head to make it die. A lot of these times I would see the pig not die on the first hit, also not die on the second hit. You hear the squealing, you see the blood fly, you see the eyes bulge out. … You go around with two or three guys and you load all the dead pigs up. A lot of times in these piles of dead pigs—little weaner pigs, anywhere from 5 to 25 pounds—they would still be alive in these piles.”

“I’ve seen people just take a straight hammer and just start wailing on them. I’ve seen pigs with their whole head crushed in get thrown into the dead box and three days later they will still be breathing.”

“Barn 24 was a cesspool when I got it. I mean, it was really bad. You could see the maggots swimming in the pee, because they were trying to get down deeper. I mean, it was that bad. … The pigs were all in water and everything.”

“Especially the little baby pigs, the little ones. When they start they’re only maybe 4 inches off the ground. And that manure and urine comes about 4 or 5 inches off the ground. So you’ll lose a few pigs and they’ll be … like swimming around with their heads sticking up.”

“I saw the barns backed up so far … the pigs were up to their shoulders in shit water with their heads just above water.”

“In the wintertime, we use the brooder for heat. And when that little pig gets its foot stuck in there and he can’t move, the next time you come, that pig’s cooked.”

“You’d see the dead, you know—baking under near the brooders and you’d have to go pull it. ... There was a lot of times you’d walk in there and they’d be laying there half alive, half dead … part of their body would be burning. They’d be too sick to even move.”

“I’ve seen it to 106°F in the barns. All the pigs are just “layed out.” They tend to die off a lot quicker in temperatures like that. Sometimes they just smother.”

“They get heart attacks when we run them up the chutes or run them up the alleys. They get overheated. … They’ll keel over right there from a heart attack. They’ll have a nosebleed and die. I see them get their feet caught in these gates and get broken arms, broken legs.”

“And this one guy—he run and jumped on that pig there and give him the headlock, he’ll fall down, and he’ll hold that pig in a headlock. And that pig was kicking and kicking. And after it stopped kicking, he’ll let it go. … You’d give him five or 10 minutes and he’d snap out of it. He’d get up and he’d be flopping all over the place. He can’t hold his balance. And they thought it was funnier than heck.”

“Oh, putting a cigarette out on a pig’s back or on the face. Rub a cigarette on the face. That was a common thing with cigarettes.”

“There were a lot of belly ruptures out there where a lot of people really didn’t even care what they would do with them. I would see a couple of guys would take the gate poles and try poking them, popping them—trying to do that. You don’t do that, you know? … The pig was dead the next morning.”

“A worker sliced the pig’s head off while it was still alive. The pig was screaming. He detached the head from its entire body.”

“There are a lot of sick pigs, some of them die. There’s like 15 pigs that die within a day or whatever. The next following day, you will find pigs in the pens and you have to pull them out and—I don’t know. It’s like an everyday thing that pigs are dying. If people were doing their jobs and taking care of the pigs properly, these pigs wouldn’t be dying like this.”