Costco Pork Tied to New PETA Exposé

Maggots, Filth, and Crowding Were Found at Pig Supplier

For Immediate Release:
October 9, 2019

Contact:
Moira Colley 202-483-7382

Today, PETA released never-before-seen whistleblower footage taken inside a supplier to JBS USA, the nation’s second-largest pig slaughterer, whose Swift brands are sold at Costco. Pigs with bloody open sores, mother pigs so injured that they could barely move, dying piglets, and dead ones left to rot alongside their surviving siblings were all captured on camera at East Fork Farms in Indiana.

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 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 Costco to reconsider its sale of pork products from JBS Swift and encourages consumers to help combat this cruelty by going vegan.”

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

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.