Video: Filth, Crowding, and Dying Piglets Found at Local East Fork Farms

PETA Asks State Authorities to Investigate Maggot-Ridden Facility, Which Supplies JBS Swift

For Immediate Release:
October 9, 2019

Contact:
Moira Colley 202-483-7382

Pigs with bloody open sores, mother pigs so injured that they could barely move, and dead piglets left to rot alongside their surviving siblings—all of this was captured on camera in a new PETA exposé of East Fork Farms, which supplies the Louisville, Kentucky, slaughterhouse of JBS USA, the nation’s second-largest pig slaughterer and maker of Swift brands pork.

Among other issues, the video shows that piglets—whose mothers couldn’t reach them because they were trapped in gestation and farrowing crates—died, and one deformed baby was left to die slowly next to his surviving siblings. A worker cut off piglets’ tails without any pain relief and then threw the animals several feet through the air. In addition, the waste system was brimming with feces and urine. Rats, roaches, maggots, and other insects had free run of the dilapidated sheds, which were littered with the decomposing bodies, tails, and heads of dead piglets.

“Mother pigs are practically immobilized in crates barely bigger than their bodies, piglets’ tails are crudely chopped off, and trampled piglets are left to twitch on the floor,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA urges authorities to investigate and take immediate action as warranted—and encourages consumers to help combat this cruelty by going vegan.”

PETA has asked the Indiana State Police to investigate the farm and has alerted the Indiana Occupational Safety and Health Administration to worker safety concerns there.

JBS’ Louisville slaughterhouse markets pig flesh branded as Swift Premium Dry Rubbed Pork, All Natural Pork, and Fresh Pork and Swift La Herencia Pork. These brands are sold at Kroger, Costco, and other stores.

Broadcast-quality video footage is available here, and photos are available here. PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat or abuse in any other way”—opposes speciesism, which is a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.