051141 PETA Wants Smithfield Charged With Animal Cruelty

Norfolk, VA - Animal-rights activists want a prosecutor to investigate Smithfield Foods and charge the world's largest pork processor with animal cruelty for allegedly not providing emergency veterinary care to pigs severely injured in a truck accident.

Norfolk-based People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals met Thursday with the Isle of Wight County commonwealth's attorney and submitted a written complaint about a crash last month involving a truck carrying hogs to a slaughterhouse in Smithfield.

"Smithfield Foods and its employees have exhibited a pattern of cruelty to animals injured in truck accidents by repeatedly ill-treating, cruelly killing and depriving affected animals of emergency veterinary care in violation of Virginia law," the complaint said. PETA says this was the fifth accident in southeast Virginia in two years.

A company spokesman said that Smithfield Foods had not seen PETA's complaint but that the meatpacker "took the appropriate and necessary emergency responses" to the Oct. 18 accident.

"Animal welfare is a high priority to our company," said Don Butler, spokesman for Murphy-Brown LLC, the Warsaw, N.C.-based livestock production subsidiary of Smithfield Foods. "For anybody to allege otherwise just doesn't make sense."

W. Parker Councill, the Isle of Wight commonwealth's attorney, said Thursday he would give the complaint his prompt attention, as he would with any complaint.

PETA did "a very good job of gathering facts," Councill said. But he said more investigation is needed, such as finding out what any police agencies at the accident scene have to say.

The crash occured when the driver fell asleep at the wheel and the truck went off the road, overturning in a pasture. The driver was charged with reckless driving.

Of the nearly 200 hogs on the truck, 34 either died because of the crash or were so badly injured they had to be euthanized using a captive bolt gun, which shoots a metal projectile into the brain, Butler said.

"It's not a pleasant task but it's one that we believe we do respond to appropriately," said Butler, who heads Murphy-Brown's animal welfare committee.

PETA puts the number of hogs that died as a result of the accident at 74. The group says in the complaint that hogs with broken legs and other severe injuries "were made to suffer for hours when they were deprived of emergency veterinary treatment and later killed in a cruel manner."

PETA said Smithfield Foods refused its offer to pay a veterinarian from a nearby clinic to euthanize the pigs.

"What Smithfield and its employees do to animals deserves the strongest possible condemnation and prosecution," said Bruce Friedrich, a PETA spokesman.

Smithfield Foods did not permit PETA to bring in veterinarians to the Oct. 18 crash site because the company used its own teams trained by veterinarians to respond appropriately to accidents, he said.

PETA's complaint says captive bolt guns may only stun adult animals and that Smithfield Foods employees did not confirm the animals were dead before loading them into a Dumpster.

Smithfield Foods, based in Smithfield in southeastern Virginia, had more than $11 billion in revenues in fiscal 2005. The company sells pork loin, ham, bacon and other items under brand names including Smithfield, John Morrell and Gwaltney.

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