Farming in the News

Here are but a few instances of animal cruelty reported in the farming industry. It should be noted that some of these stories are reported before the individuals involved have undergone legal proceedings. In essence, they are innocent until proven guilty.

I have taken care to include whole quotes as I find them. Accordingly, if you pay attention you may find a sentence that if removed would have made the statement far more demeaning to certain people and to the activity of farming in general. Because I believe in keeping things in relative context though, I have avoided this entirely. Therefore, these statements are as issued.
(9 Quotations)

• Department of Justice - "Inskeep managed the Inwood Dairy and its 1,250 dairy cows and operated a waste management system consisting of a lagoon designed at full capacity to hold approximately 40 million gallons of waste generated by the animals. The system used water to flush cattle manure and waste water from the barns to a central collection point; waste was then pumped to the lagoon for storage until it could be lawfully removed.
  “Mr. Inskeep had many opportunities to lawfully dispose of the waste, but chose instead to disregard them and violate the Clean Water Act by discharging millions of gallons of waste generated by the dairy operation into nearby tributaries,” said Sue Ellen Wooldridge, Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division. “The defendant’s actions introduced pollutants into the environment and he now faces the consequences of his actions.”
  According to the plea agreement, on February 14, 2001, an Illinois Environmental Protection Agency (IEPA) official observed that the waste level in the Inwood Dairy lagoon was three inches from the top of the berm wall and advised Inskeep to stop pumping waste in to the lagoon. The following day, another IEPA official allegedly found the lagoon was completely full with the pump still operating. Despite the official’s request to turn off the pump to prevent an overflow and discharge into a local tributary—and subsequent flow to the West Fork of Kickapoo Creek—Inskeep refused to turn off the pump. Inskeep failed to hire waste haulers to remove the waste, and he ultimately decided to pump more than a million gallons of animal waste from the lagoon to a tributary located on his property—despite the fact that he was told by state regulators that such action was illegal." [66]

• Jeffrey D. Armstrong - (Purdue University) "the welfare of the hen is compromised when feed withdrawal or restriction is used to induce a molt. . . . I have a lot of colleagues mad at me because they don't think there's anything wrong with removing food for 14 days. [24]"

• CNN - "An animal rights group released a videotape Tuesday showing slaughterhouse workers with a KFC Corp. supplier jumping on live chickens and slamming them into walls, apparently for fun. . . . Pilgrim's Pride, the second-largest poultry producer behind Tyson Foods, won KFC's 'Supplier of the Year' award in 1997, the New York Times reported. [27]"

• Daily Utah Chronicle - "Circle Four is the 15th largest hog producer in the country and at any one time it houses around 500,000 pigs. The footage from their visits shows overcrowded pens where dead, bloated pigs lie in their own waste while thousands of others fight for space. 'The stench was unbearable,' Oleson said. 'It made you feel sick.' The coalition launched their undercover investigation after the farm attracted attention from a series of events including a fire that killed 10,000 pigs and an air quality problem that sent several employees to the hospital with respiratory problems. [29]"

• Port Clinton News Herald - "A pair of brothers who run a decrepit, feces-choked hog farm are facing 12 counts of animal cruelty . . . humane society officials say. . . .During an inspection last month, 13 rotting pig carcasses were discovered there, intermingled with about 200 hogs in unsanitary conditions. . .'The pigs are living in a light brown slush comprised of rainwater, urine, feces and the residue from dead pigs.'. . . the steer's pen was lined in feces at least 2 feet deep . . . Decaying pig corpses inside a roofless, ramshackle barn; clouds of black flies; and grotesque pools of septic sludge marred the property, reports show. . . . 'This isn't just a one-time thing where we kind of let things go," said Sharon Anderson . . ., secretary of the Humane Society of Ottawa County board of directors. "This has been going on (at the farm) since 1995, when it was noticed and reported -- but it wasn't prosecuted [1]"

• SundayMirror - "Some birds are so lame and deformed they can only drag themselves to the food and water troughs by their wings. Others stand motionless, too dazed or dying to move. There are more than 36,000 chickens here in huge windowless sheds. The conditions they have to endure during their short, brutal lives are so horrific it defies belief. Today the Sunday Mirror reveals the sickening reality of one factory farm which lies hidden beneath the cheerful image of the KFC fast-food chain, with its slogans 'Finger Lickin' Good' and 'Nobody Does Chicken Like KFC'. . . . KFC were so impressed by 2 Sisters' service that they made them their Supplier Of The Year in 2001. And 2 Sisters, who have an annual turnover of £50million, even boast of receiving RSPCA awards for their "outstanding contribution to animal welfare'. . . .In one shed where chickens had been taken away for slaughter there were dozens of carcasses littering the floor. In another - where scores of birds had died - their remains were being picked over by other chickens. . . . 'When I went into the sheds I could hardly believe how crammed-in the birds were. It was difficult to move among them and the heat was unbearable. There were lots of dead and dying birds and many were terribly deformed. [23]"

• SundayMirror - "THE LIFE OF A CHICKEN - Broiler chickens are hatched in giant incubators at hatcheries across Britain. At a day old the chicks are stuffed into crates and taken to windowless rearing sheds. Each chicken may have little more space than the size of an A4 sheet of paper. For the first two weeks the chicks are kept warm using industrial heat lamps. At three weeks they are half the size of an adult bird - growth that should take twice as long. At 42 days old the birds are taken to a slaughterhouse. They are hung upside down, then stunned with an electric shock and their throats cut. Some are then put in boiling water to help remove feathers - and then the carcass is sent to restaurants. [23]"

• WKYT - "Authorities in Barren County are investigating a case of animal cruelty involving dozens of cows. Officials say a call from neighbors led to the discovery of 42 dead cows at two farms. Trailers were brought in to take the surviving cattle off the properties. One man described the cows as looking like two-by-fours, they were so thin. The Barren County sheriff says Tom Holmes Sr. will face second degree animal cruelty charges and that he's facing those same charges from a case back in June. [28]"

• 60 Minutes (Morley Safer; Pork Power, 9/19/97) - "This [video footage from the movie Babe] is the way Americans want to think of pigs. Real-life "Babes" see no sun in their limited lives, with no hay to lie on, no mud to roll in. The sows live in tiny cages, so narrow they can’t even turn around. They live over metal grates, and their waste is pushed through slats beneath them and flushed into huge pits."