Hundreds of pigs were burned alive when an electrical fire destroyed the barn in which they were crammed at a factory farm in Utah operated by Murphy-Brown, LLC, a subsidiary of notorious pig abuser Smithfield Foods, Inc. Gruesome pictures taken by a news crew on the scene show a mass of charred bodies piled on the floor of the building. 

An emergency response coordinator for the area reported that he thought some of the pigs had survived, but considering the fact that any survivors face a fate that is hardly less ghastly, it is hard to hope for that. As one former Smithfield employee recounted:

Please share this post with your meat-eating friends and tell them that if they are opposed to cruelty to animals, they should put their opposition into action by ordering PETA’s free vegetarian/vegan starter kit today. 

Written by Michelle Sherrow

About 195 live pigs were hurled to the ground—killing or leaving at least 47 so badly injured that even industry workers knew that they had to be killed—after a slaughterhouse-bound transport truck ran off the road, flipped onto its side, and crashed into a pole in Suffolk, Virginia, early this morning. This crash, which happened on a clear day on a relatively straight road, is at least the ninth accident involving pigs who were being transported to a Smithfield Foods slaughterhouse in southeastern Virginia since 2004.

The pork industry's shameful history of hiring reckless drivers has left the mangled remains of countless pigs on Virginia highways and jeopardized the safety of other motorists. The driver cited for reckless driving in this crash, William Orville Barnett, allegedly violated federal transportation safety laws twice last year. Also last year, a driver hauling 80 pigs for Smithfield Foods subsidiary Murphy-Brown, LLC, crashed in Chesterfield County, Virginia, killing more than 45 of the pigs. The driver—who was charged with reckless driving and failure to maintain control—had three months earlier crashed a truck in North Carolina while hauling 46 cows. Virginia court records indicate that the driver had been previously cited for failure to obey a traffic signal and speeding. In spite of all this, Murphy-Brown put him behind the wheel to drive pigs hundreds of miles across the country.

Despite the pork industry's attempts to hide the aftermath of these horrific crashes by putting up tarps and even asking police officers to make PETA investigators in public areas put away their cameras, PETA has captured extensive video footage of workers as they abuse, cruelly kill, and leave injured pigs to suffer after wrecks. Only three years ago—on the very road on which today's crash occurred—workers pulled terrified 270-pound animals by their sensitive ears and slapped and hit them in the face with tools that even the pork industry says should never be used to hit animals. PETA has also documented that workers at crash sites reloaded debilitated and severely injured pigs—including those whose internal organs were protruding from their anuses—for transport and left immobile pigs to suffer and be trampled for hours before repeatedly driving steel bolts into their skulls in botched attempts to kill them.

The pork industry desperately needs to enact and enforce a zero-tolerance safe-driver policy—for everyone's sake—but the best way to protect pigs and other animals from suffering in accidents as well as on factory farms and in slaughterhouses is by leaving them off our plates.

The meat industry thrives on the abuse of animals, so it comes as no surprise that former pig factory-farm workers are alleging that the management of Murphy-Brown—a subsidiary of the world's largest pig producer, Smithfield Foods—turned a blind eye to sexual harassment of female employees.

In a case that went before a federal jury this week, one woman claims that female staff were groped by male coworkers, were spied on in the shower via peepholes, and had their underwear stolen from their lockers. The harassment allegedly went on for years despite complaints to supervisors. It is worth noting that the men accused of the harassment—said to include putting what is suspected to be semen on women's underwear—worked at a breeding farm where sows were artificially inseminated, which is typically done by men armed with bags of boar semen and tubes that they shove into pigs' reproductive tracts.

Unfortunately, PETA investigations show that failure to discipline workers for sexual abuse seems to be standard policy at many factory farms, particularly when the victims are animals.

edf / CC

What do Smithfield Foods and Donald Rumsfeld have to do with the global swine flu scare? Author F. William Engdahl's informative article, which details the links between factory farms, spin doctors, the pork industry, and drug companies, explains all.

Before you race to the doctor for a Tamiflu vaccine, read this piece. You might think twice about helping Mr. Rumsfeld and his buddies at Roche pay for their vacations (surely they don't do Acapulco these days, maybe St. Barts though).

Flying Pigs, Tamiflu and Factory Farms

By F. William Engdahl

If we are to believe what our trusted international media report, the world is on the brink of a global pandemic outbreak of a new deadly strain of flu, H1N1 as it has been labelled, or more popularly, Swine Flu. As the story goes, the outbreak of the deadly flu was first discovered in Mexico. According to press reports, after several days, headlines reported as many as perhaps 150 deaths in Mexico were believed caused by this virulent people-killing pig virus that has spread to humans and now is allegedly being further spread from human to human. Cases were being reported hourly from Canada to Spain and beyond. The only thing wrong with this story is that it is largely based on lies, hype and coverup of possible real causes of Mexican deaths.

April 29, 2009 "Global Research" — One website, revealingly named Swine Flu Vaccine, reports the alarming news, ‘One out of every five residents of Mexico's most populous city wore masks to protect themselves against the virus as Mexico City seems to be the epicenter of the outbreak. As many as 103 deaths have been attributed to the swine flu so far with many more feared to be on the horizon. The health department of Mexico said an additional 1,614 reported cases have been documented.’ We are told that the H1N1 ‘shares genetic material from human, avian and swine influenza viruses.’¹

Airports around the world have installed passenger temperature scans to identify anyone with above normal body temperature as possible suspect for swine flu. Travel to Mexico has collapsed. Sales of flu vaccines, above all Tamiflu from Roche Inc., have exploded in days. People have stopped buying pork fearing certain death. The World Health Organization has declared a ‘a public health emergency of international concern,’ defined by them as ‘an occurrence or imminent threat of illness or health conditions caused by bioterrorism, epidemic or pandemic disease, or highly fatal infectious agents or toxins that pose serious risk to a significant number of people.’²

What are the symptoms of this purported Swine Flu? That’s not at all clear according to virologists and public health experts. They say Swine Flu symptoms are relatively general and nonspecific. ‘So many different things can cause these symptoms. it is a dilemma,’ says one doctor interviewed by CNN. ‘There is not a perfect test right now to let a doctor know that a person has the Swine Flu.’ It has been noted that most individuals with Swine Flu had an early on set of fever. Also it was common to see dizziness, body aches and vomiting in addition to the common sneezing, headache and other cold symptoms. These are symptoms so general as to say nothing.

The US Government’s Center for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta states on its official website, ‘Swine Influenza (swine flu) is a respiratory disease of pigs caused by type A influenza viruses that causes regular outbreaks in pigs. People do not normally get swine flu, but human infections can and do happen. Swine flu viruses have been reported to spread from person-to-person, but in the past, this transmission was limited and not sustained beyond three people.’ Nonetheless they add, ‘CDC has determined that this swine influenza A (H1N1) virus is contagious and is spreading from human to human. However, at this time, it is not known how easily the virus spreads between people.’³

How many media that have grabbed on the headline ‘suspected case of Swine Flu’ in recent days bother to double check with the local health authorities to ask some basic questions? For example, the number of confirmed cases of H1N1 and their location? The number of deaths confirmed to have resulted from H1N1? Dates of both? Number of suspected cases and of suspected deaths related to the Swine Flu disease?

Click here to read the entire article.

aact / CC

Thanks to global pandemonium revolving around swine flu, almost everything has ground to a halt in Mexico; schools in New York, California, and Texas have closed; Europeans are being urged to postpone travel to the U.S. and Mexico, and sore throat sufferers everywhere are dialing their doctors to ask, "Is it really just my allergies … or have I got swine flu?"

You know who's to blame? Yup, filthy factory farms. A headline in Vera Cruz's La Marcha points the finger at gi-normous pig-breeding farms operated by a subsidiary of Smithfield Foods, the world's largest hog producer. Local residents reportedly believe that feces from the pig farms has contaminated the water and the air, spreading the virus to people. Another article in the Huffington Post quotes La Jornada newspaper, which points the finger at a factory farm in La Gloria, saying, "Clouds of flies emanate from the lagoons where Granjas Carroll discharges the fecal waste from its hog barns …." Yup, knew all that.

Because human consumption of meat is the sole reason that these factory farms exist, PETA has fired off a letter to Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard urging him to encourage residents to go vegetarian, noting that such an action could help prevent future outbreaks. We're also shipping emergency Spanish-language copies of our "Vegetarian Starter Kit" in case residents need helpful tips when making the shift.

If you live in the U.S., encourage members of Congress to stop the spread of these diseases by ending factory farming.

Written by Karin Bennett

The following is a guest post from peta2's Shan.

If you don't already track Blink 182's Mark Hoppus' every move through his Twitter page, allow me to fill you in on something awesome that one of our Blink-loving staff members spotted last week:

Ask and ye shall receive, Mark!

Mark made the compassionate choice to use a plastic prop rather than a real octopus for his photo shoot, so peta2 is giving him a Compassionate Citizen Award. He'll also receive a framed certificate and a card signed by peta2 staffers.

Octopuses are intelligent and sensitive animals who have been observed communicating with each other. They're able to grasp objects with their tentacles just like we can with our hands, and some have even been taught to unscrew jar lids in order to retrieve food inside.

Here's to Mark for showing that "all the small things" deserve compassion and respect!

Written by Shan Philips

He's hard on his opponents, but he has a soft touch when it comes to animals. Yep, that's how mixed martial arts champ Tito Ortiz rolls. Recently, the tender-hearted tough guy and father of twins (with none other than PETA princess Jenna Jameson) took time out from clocking clowns in the cage to take on dogfighting. In a hard-hitting new ad for PETA, Tito encourages people to stand up to the cowards who make canines do their fighting for them. Did I mention that we're also giving away autographed gear from Tito's clothing line? And while we're on the subject of kick-ass things, here's another behind-the-scenes PETA Files exclusive interview. 'Cuz, you know, that's how we roll:

Written by Amy Elizabeth