PETA Calls for Cruelty-to-Animals Charges Against Smithfield Foods

PETA has filed a complaint with W. Parker Councill, commonwealth’s attorney for Isle of Wight County, urging him to file criminal charges against Smithfield Foods for failing to provide emergency veterinary care to severely injured pigs.

PETA filed the complaint after a truck carrying 185 pigs to a Smithfield Foods slaughterhouse overturned on October 18, 2005, resulting in the deaths of 74 animals. The incident marked at least the fifth deadly accident in 19 months involving Smithfield trucks that were hauling pigs in Southeastern Virginia.

Many of the injured animals languished in agony—without veterinary care—for more than four hours while company officials looked on. Critically injured animals were finally shot with a captive-bolt gun and dumped into a Dumpster with a skid loader, but no effort was made to confirm that they were dead, in violation of American Veterinary Medical Association recommendations. Smithfield officials refused PETA’s offer to provide a veterinarian to humanely and quickly euthanize critically injured animals.

PETA’s complaint points out that in September 2004, a Smithfield truck overturned in Suffolk, Virginia, killing at least 67 pigs and leaving dozens more severely injured. The animals suffered in agony for four hours before a veterinarian arrived. In March of the same year, another pig truck overturned in Smithfield, and dozens of pigs suffered for hours without veterinary care. The scene was repeated near Petersburg in April 2005.

PETA has been pushing Smithfield to improve animal welfare for years but to no avail. Although Smithfield claims to have a model animal welfare program, the company refuses to share even a single detail. In addition to frequent truck accidents, Smithfield’s lack of planning for power outages caused more than 200 pigs to die of heat prostration at a Smithfield facility in Sussex in June 2005.

Such accidents are common in the factory-farming industry, where transport is largely unregulated and laws protecting animals on their way to the slaughterhouse are non-existent. According to industry reports, more than 170,000 pigs die in transport each year, and more than 420,000 are crippled by the time they arrive at the slaughterhouse. Another industry report notes that in some transport loads, as many as 10 percent of pigs are “downers,” animals who are so ill or injured that they are unable to stand and walk on their own.

The only real way to ensure that you are not supporting such cruelty is to adopt a vegetarian diet. Request a free vegetarian starter kit filled with recipes and information to help you make the transition to a cruelty-free diet today!