The Daily Republic - Our View: PETA is right this time
Chris Holbein
Our View: PETA is right this time
The Daily
Republic
Published Friday, September 19, 2008
The video is unpleasant and at times, those of us not accustomed to such things must look away.
Yet the several-minutes-long video of employees abusing hogs at a corporate farm in Iowa is a telltale reminder that animal abuse is a practice that’s alive and well in the world of large-scale, corporate animal operations.
The video was shot by PETA — People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals — and shows farm workers repeatedly hitting hogs with metal rods and discussing the merits of jamming rods into the animals’ hindquarters. They slam piglets to the concrete to kill the weak ones, but instead of killing them, many of the piglets just writhe in a bloody pile.
The tape was obtained through undercover work by PETA, which had two investigators get jobs at the farm and work there for two months to obtain footage.
We don’t agree with PETA very often. The organization is against hunting and fishing, activities that we find entirely acceptable here in South Dakota. We enjoy giving PETA its say every so often, but again, we rarely agree with the organization, which has taken on radical practices to try to gets its point across in America.
The case of the pig farm near Bayard, Iowa, is different. Eight people are shown directly abusing animals. Others discuss at length their abusive practices, and at one point, a worker shouts to an undercover investigator to “Hurt ’em! There’s nobody works for PETA out here.”
The employee continues: “I hate them. These (expletives) deserve to be hurt. Hurt, I say. Hurt! Hurt! Hurt! Hurt! … Take out your frustrations on them.” He then tells the PETA investigator to pretend that one of the pigs has scared off a voluptuous young woman and then beat the pig for it.
The farm is a supplier to Hormel Foods of Austin, Minn. — the famous maker of Spam and other food products. To its credit, a spokesman for Hormel called the recent incidents “completely unacceptable.”
It’s not an isolated incident. Six months ago, an investigation at a cattle facility in California showed that animals were jabbed in their eyes, shocked, kicked and, after their limbs were broken, dragged by forklifts. It prompted a national recall of the beef that originated from that plant.
We don’t really know how all large animal operations work, but after watching the video taken by PETA at the Bayard farm, we must optimistically hope that it’s not like that everywhere.
PETA is seeking prosecution of 18 people at the Iowa facility and we have to say we’re happy to hear that. Apparently, stringent oversight is needed to ensure these practices aren’t happening elsewhere.
Again, we and PETA do not often see eye to eye. Today, we do.