Crates, Misery, Pain, and Slow Death for Pigs on Indiana 'Farm' Teeming With Maggots and Roaches
A new eyewitness video reveals agony and prolonged death for pigs amid filth at East Fork Farms near Brownstown, Indiana.
The farm supplied JBS USA, the nation’s second-largest pig slaughterer, which sells pig flesh branded as Swift Premium and La Herencia and is a subsidiary of Brazil-based JBS S.A., the world’s largest slaughterer of farmed animals. A day after PETA released this video, JBS USA announced that it had “immediately and indefinitely banned East Fork Farms from [its] supply chain” and later informed PETA that the ban was permanent.
The video shows piglets slowly dying in crates, out of reach of their distraught mothers, while the bodies of others rot just a few feet away.
Please, won’t you help these intelligent, sensitive animals?
Years of Misery Confined to Crates
Mother pigs were found crammed inside metal crates barely any larger than their own bodies. Up to 1,200 pigs at this farm spend most of their miserable lives in these crates. The video shows others so crowded in pens that they couldn’t move.
These intelligent animals had no psychological stimulation and no opportunity to take a single step in any direction.
Impregnated repeatedly, when it was time to give birth, they were confined to crates that were even more restrictive. They spent day and night lying immobile on the slatted floor.
Pigs used for breeding cannot walk or even turn around. Their muscles atrophy, and they’re chronically sore and stiff. They never get to engage in any natural behavior. Eventually, after several years of this round-the-clock imprisonment and continuous insemination, pregnancy, and birthing, their bodies wear out.
Newborns Suffering and Slowly Dying out of Reach of Their Distraught Mothers
Pregnant sows were forced to give birth in gestation crates and even more restrictive “farrowing crates,” which prevented them from tending to their babies for the first few weeks of their lives. Without their mothers’ help, some died slowly, enduring intense and unrelieved suffering.
Dead piglets were found decomposing just a few feet away from their mothers and siblings.
One worker cut the tails off the surviving piglets—without any pain relief, as is common in pig factories—then threw the crying youngsters several feet into the air to another worker. Their tails were left strewn on the filthy floor.
All this happened in the presence of their distressed mothers.
Sick, Hurt, Lame, and Languishing in Filth
Young pigs were moved to bleak pens, where up to 4,000 were being fattened on any given day for eventual slaughter (if they survived that long).
Pigs with ailments such as bloody sores, abscesses, and injured legs, shoulders, or hooves were left to suffer and languish on the filthy floors.
A sow who appeared incapable of standing or moving away from her own feces was unable to reach a source of drinking water. When the eyewitness offered her some, she drank frantically for nearly two minutes.
Roaches, Maggots, and Manure Everywhere
These animals—who are actually very clean and, given sufficient space, don’t normally soil the areas where they eat or sleep—were forced to live amid feces and just above the reeking pit that held their manure, which continuously backed up beneath the slatted floor.
Several piglets were seen struggling to stay afloat in the manure pit.
The flooring teemed with maggots, and other surfaces were crawling with countless roaches.
Update: PETA Has Received Additional Footage, Revealing Even More Horrors at East Fork Farms
Following the release of this exposé, PETA received even more whistleblower footage, which revealed severely ill and/or injured piglets left to languish in filthy conditions, dead piglets left to rot throughout the sheds, and a trash can overflowing with piglets’ corpses and teeming with maggots.
In one of the cramped, restrictive farrowing crates, which prevent mother pigs from turning around, one live piglet was tightly pinned against the bars of the crate, maimed and dangling. Dead piglets were left to lie among the living.
The whistleblower also included this letter imploring the state police to help the pigs and describing the suffocating stench and horrifying screams coming from this operation amid the pain, fear, and death.
See the new footage below:
You Can Help Stop This!
Pigs are friendly, inquisitive, smart animals who are at least as sensitive and intelligent as dogs. This video spotlights just one farm, but the cruelty in the pork industry is rampant and routine.
Please spare pigs enormous pain and suffering by choosing to stop eating them.
With so many delicious, healthy options, it’s never been easier to leave animal-derived foods off your plate.
JBS USA permanently banned East Fork Farms from its supply chain after hearing from PETA and compassionate members like you about the deplorable conditions there.
Without fail, when we write to confined animal feeding operations and slaughterhouses to relay whistleblower complaints about conditions such as these, companies respond with the claim that they “take animal welfare seriously.” Please ask others in the pork industry in this region if they consider the conditions depicted in this footage to be “acceptable farm management practices,” or if they will keep pigs from East Fork Farms out of their supply chains.
