2,700 pigs held in very bad conditions, locked up in cramped cages for gestation, barely 50 centimeters wide, barbarously mutilated in their tails and ears, castrated without anesthesia just a few days old. Some have obvious wounds and sores on their bodies and faces, others can no longer even stand up, they stare at the camera with painful and desperate eyes. Around them, little lifeless pigs lie here and there. These are the crude images of the investigation carried out undercover by activists of The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), in an intensive pig farm in Goodwell, Oklahoma, the Seaboard Foods, supplier of the Walmart supermarket chain, the most great of the States.
He is about to end up run over, his mother saves him
2,700 pigs detained in very bad conditions, locked up in cramped cages for gestation, barely wide 50 cm, barbarously mutilated of tails and ears, neutered without anesthesia just a few days old. Some have obvious wounds and sores on the body and on the little faces, others can't even stand up anymore, they stare at the lens with suffering eyes full of despair. Around them, small lifeless pigs lie here and there. These are the crude images of'investigation carried out undercover by activists of The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), in an intensive pig farming a Goodwell, in Oklahoma, la Seaboard Foods, supplier of the supermarket chain Walmart, the largest in the States.
Yet the Seaboard, which produces around 4 million pigs a year, describes itself as a company that cares about the welfare of the animals it raises. In the Sustainability And Stewardship Report of 2008 explains that she is committed "to adequate animal care" and that she has "the moral and ethical obligation to choose a humane treatment for animals". "Our stables - continues the report - are designed to give pigs adequate space to eat, drink, rest, sleep and move without getting hurt". Too bad that the HSUS has documented just the opposite, with images that clearly contradict what was declared.
Precisely for these "misleading declarations" and for the offenses and the lack of any practice attentive to animal welfare, on 31/01 the animal rights association presented a formal complaint (here the pdf) against the Seaboard Corporation to the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Trade Commission. "We have tried to contact the company privately to express our concerns about animals for more than a year - explains the lawyer Peter Brandt to The Huffington Post - but it has always refused to answer".
"We will take the necessary", says the Walmart chain, of which, as explained by Dianna Gee, spokesperson for HSUS, the Seaboard Foods is one of the approx 100 pork suppliers, even if, Gee specifies, "they only provide a small percentage".
But the tragic plight of the pigs immortalized by activists it is not a rare case. Thousands, millions of pigs all over the world suffer it every day, forced to live closed in overcrowded cages, deprived of the minimum freedom of movement, prevented in the practice of emotional and sexual instincts, mutilated, subjected to constant antibiotic and hormonal therapies , to an uninterrupted lighting that prevents them from sleeping, fed with inadequate, chemical and unnatural foods, forced to breathe an air saturated with harmful chemicals and poor in oxygen. Animals exploited in this way manifest serious organic and psychological pathologies, which often make them aggressive. A problem solved not by improving the conditions of detention, but through the mutilation of tails and testicles.
For this reason, the little ones are immediately castrated, not by experts but by simple workers who do not resort to any anesthesia. They will live the rest of their short and painful life in a concrete box with others 10-15 specimens, inside the sheds where the heat often becomes unbearable in the summer as well as the stench of feces, urine and food scraps. When the time comes for the killing, the poor victims will first be stunned and then slaughtered. But no one, in reality, will bother to ascertain whether they are truly unconscious before and after death, not even before bathing the corpse in a tub of boiling water.
It doesn't do better for breeding sows, than they just live 2 years, while in nature it should live about 18 years. After mating, they will be transferred to small iron cages, such as those documented in the video, which will prevent any movement. A few days before farrowing they will transfer them to the farrowing rooms, where, wrapped in a series of tubes that leave only the lower part of the body free, they will spend about 40-50 days, until the cubs are transferred to other pens and the sows will start again. cycle.
This is intensive farming: cruel, highly polluting and useless places. The only way to avoid this is to stop eating animals. Saving these poor animals is entirely up to us.
Roberta Ragni
