Investigation Sought After Pig Shot in Head Four Times at Slaughterhouse

PETA Cites Federal Report Showing That Foster’s Meats Workers Shot, Stabbed, and Electroshocked Screaming Animal

For Immediate Release:
June 26, 2017

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

Armed with damning U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) records, PETA sent a letter this morning calling on the Seventh Circuit Solicitor’s Office to investigate Foster’s Meats and, as appropriate, file criminal charges against the slaughterhouse worker or workers who failed to stun a pig on the first attempt—subjecting the screaming animal to a stab wound in the neck and four gunshot blasts to the head.

According to the USDA documents, operations at Foster’s Meats were suspended on May 22 for a violation of slaughter regulations after a worker used a .22-caliber rifle to shoot a pig in the head, causing the animal to scream and struggle. The worker then electroshocked the pig before hoisting the conscious animal, delivering a gunshot to the head, and stabbing the animal in the neck. The pig was then lowered back to the floor before a worker fired two more gunshots. The fourth blast finally rendered the pig unconscious. PETA notes that this incident appears to violate South Carolina’s cruelty-to-animals statute, which prohibits a person from cruelly killing or inflicting unnecessary or excessive suffering upon an animal.

“PETA is calling for a criminal investigation into this facility, which allowed a fully conscious pig to endure the agony of four bullets to the head and a knife wound to the neck while dangling by a leg,” says PETA Senior Vice President of Cruelty Investigations Daphna Nachminovitch. “There’s no difference between the terror and pain that this pig felt and how dogs or cats would feel if they were left to suffer from gunshot or stab wounds.”

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—notes that animals have the same central nervous system and sense of self-preservation as humans and that the only way to spare cows, pigs, and other gentle creatures from suffering in this and other slaughterhouses is to go vegan.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.