SICK SMITHFIELD FOODS FROM WIKIPEDIA
Smithfield Foods, Inc. is the world’s largest pork producer and processor.[1] Its headquarters are in Smithfield, Virginia, with operations in 26 states and 9 countries. The company raises 14 million hogs a year and processes 27 million. The company produced 5.9 billion pounds of pork and 1.4 billion pounds of fresh beef in 2006. Its plant in La Gloria, Mexico is suspected to be the source of the 2009 swine flu outbreak[2]. According to Mexican newspapers, Smithfield's pig farming practices may have helped cause the swine flu outbreak.[3] Photographs of Smithfield's Granjas Carrol plant in Mexico show rotting pig carcasses floating in pig-waste lagoons.[4]
Smithfield started as Smithfield Packing Company, now its largest subsidiary, and grew by acquiring companies such as Farmland Foods, Eckrich, and Premium Standard Farms. Smithfield has many familiar brands including Butterball, John Morrell, Gwaltney, Patrick Cudahy, Krakus, Cook's Ham, and Stefano’s.
In February 2009, the company announced that it planned to close six plants and to reduce the number of its independent operating companies from seven to three.[5]
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[edit] Environmental record
Farming
Smithfield has come under criticism for the millions of gallons of fecal matter that it produces and stores in holding ponds, untreated. In a four year period, in North Carolina alone, 4.7 million gallons of hog fecal matter were released into the state's rivers. Workers and residents near Smithfield plants have reported health problems, and have complained about constant, overpowering stenches of hog feces.[1]
In 1997, Smithfield was fined $12.6 million for violation of the federal Clean Water Act.[6] "The fine was the third-largest civil penalty ever levied under the act by the EPA. It amounted to .035 percent of Smithfield's annual sales."
The hog industry in North Carolina came under scrutiny in 1999 when Hurricane Floyd flooded much of the eastern part of the state, including a number of fecal matter holding ponds (lagoons, in industry parlance). Many of the hog farms that contracted with Smithfield were accused of polluting the state's rivers.[7]
In the wake of Hurricane Floyd, Smithfield entered a settlement in 2000 with North Carolina Attorney General Mike Easley to fund development of environmentally sound waste management technologies for use on North Carolina swine farms. As part of this settlement, Smithfield committed $15 million to fund research at North Carolina State University.[8] In addition, the company agreed to make an annual contribution of $2 million to fund environmental enhancement grants in the state.
The environmental effects of Smithfield's slaughterhouses have come under much less criticism than its industrial farming and the fecal matter that is a byproduct of the high concentration of pigs without adequate sewage treatment facilities. Consequently many of its slaughterhouses have been environmentally certified by the International Organization for Standardization, .[9]
In 2006, Smithfield's hog-production subsidiary Murphy-Brown agreed to adopt new measures to enhance environmental protections at its hog production facilities in North Carolina in a landmark environmental pact with the Waterkeeper Alliance, once one of Smithfield's biggest critics.[10][11]
Disease
It is speculated that a collection of Smithfield's farms in Perote, Veracruz in Mexico may have been the source of the 2009 swine flu outbreak. Residents in the area have complained of the swarms of flies around waste lagoons. Mexican health officials have said that the type of fly is associated with reproducing in pig waste, and that the swine influenza outbreak may have a link to these pig farms. [12]
[edit] Labor issues
Smithfield Packing, Tar Heel, North Carolina
The Smithfield Packing plant in Tar Heel, North Carolina, had been the site of a long dispute between the company and the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW), which had been trying to organize the plant for over a decade. Employees at the plant voted against the union in 1994 and 1997, but the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) later alleged that unfair election conduct had occurred and ordered a new election.
In 2006, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found in favor of the NLRB, and Smithfield agreed to comply with the NLRB's remedies to ensure a fair election.[13] Smithfield and the employees at Tar Heel had repeatedly called on the UFCW to hold a new election and the company had agreed to pay half the cost of an independent observer to ensure a fair election process, but the union had refused the offer, arguing that Smithfield would not allow a fair election and should have recognized card-check organizing.[14] After a year-long series of public demonstrations, several lockouts, a number of protests and a shareholder meeting which was disrupted by shareholders supporting the union, the UFCW called for a boycott of Smithfield products. In October 2007, Smithfield countered by filing a federal RICO Act lawsuit against UFCW.[15] In October 2008, the UFCW and Smithfield reached an agreement, under which the union agreed to suspend its boycott campaign in return for the company dropping its RICO lawsuit and allowing another election. On December 10 and 11, workers at the plant voted 2,041 to 1,879 in favor of joining the UFCW, bringing the 15-year fight to an end.[16]
Farmland Foods Monmouth, Illinois
The UFCW has been trying without success to organize employees of the Monmouth, Illinois subsidiary packing facility for some time. However, an employee points system has refueled the drive to organize. In this system, employees receive points on a rolling 12-month calendar, as follows:
• Late for work, 2 hours or less: 0.5 point
• Late for work, more than 2 hours: 1 point
• Sick, with doctor's excuse: 1 point per day
• Sick, without doctor's excuse: 2 points per day
• Doctor visit: 0.5 point
• Other appointments (banking, dental, school, child care or court related issues): 1 point
Accumulating points can lead to termination. Because employees are forced to work more than 10 hours a day, 6 days a week, they must take points to maintain a household outside of work. As a result, numerous employees "point out" and are terminated by Farmland Foods.
[edit] Sow crates
Smithfield confines pregnant sows to 7 ft (2.1 m) by 2 ft (0.61 m) gestation stalls, where they spend most of their lives. As the sows grow larger, they are unable to turn around, and must choose between standing or sleeping on their chests. Illegal in several U.S. states and Sweden, gestation stalls are to be phased out in the E.U. by 2013. After several supermarket chains and McDonalds expressed concern about the crates, Smithfield announced that in ten years it would no longer use sow crates.[17]
The Humane Society of the United States called the announcement "perhaps the most monumental advance for animal welfare in history of modern American agribusiness."[18]
[edit] Farrowing crates
Journalists Sally Kneidel, PhD, and Sadie Kneidel describe in detail their 2005 tour of a factory farm that produces pork for Smithfield. In their book Veggie Revolution [19] the authors report that each sow is transferred from her gestation crate to a farrowing crate a few days before giving birth. On the farm the Kneidels visited in North Carolina, the two writers were taken to a metal warehouse-type building to see the farrowing sows. Each door opened into a separate room of pigs, approximately 1,400 square feet (130 m2). Each room had a series of 50 or so compartments separated by low metal barriers. In each compartment, around 4 ft (1.2 m) by 6 ft (1.8 m), lay a mother pig with 8 to 13 piglets. Clamped over each reclining sow was a metal grate of parallel bars that kept her from moving sideways or rolling over. The grate of bars over each sow was hinged so that the center bars could be pushed upward by the sow's shoulders, allowing the sow to sit or stand with the bars still resting on her back. No position of the bars allowed her to take a step in any direction, so the farrowing crate is functionally little different from the gestation crate described in the section above. The purpose of the bars, the owner said, is to keep the sow from rolling or stepping on her piglets. The floor of the farrowing compartments was a metal mesh, which the Kneidels were told allows fecal waste to pass through into a collecting area under the floor. The owner said that the accumulation of feces under the floor was hosed out a couple of times a week into an open-air waste lagoon outdoors. From there the liquified manure is sprayed onto crops. The Kneidels stated that each room of farrowing crates had only one small window fan, which was turned off at the time of their visit. Rooms were dimly lit to save energy costs.
[edit] The Nursery, the Finishing Buildings, the Sow Cycles
When the piglets at the Smithfield farm described by the Kneidels are about 3 weeks old, they are weaned and moved without the sow to the nursery, where they are housed in groups of 15 or so, in compartments with wire mesh floors. The piglets are grouped by age and gender. They remain in the nursery for 12 to 16 weeks, then are moved into the finishing buildings where they are fattened to a market weight of 250 to 280 pounds by the age of 25 weeks. When their stay in the finishing buildings is complete, the pigs are moved out one room at a time, along a corridor created by movable plastic walls, onto a truck. The truck delivers them to a slaughterhouse.
After weaning, sows at the hog farm described above are given one week of rest, then the sows are impregnated through artificial insemination and returned to the gestation crates to await the next litter. Although the piglets' life span is only 25 weeks, the breeding sows are kept for 12 years. The sows follow a continuous cycle of insemination, gestation, farrowing, one week rest, insemination, and so on, until litter size begins to decline, at which time the sows are replaced.
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