Chaos, suffering and death. This is what PETA's undercover investigator documented at a Midwestern hog farm owned by Seaboard Farms, Inc., North America's third largest pig producer. It is a "state-of-the-art" finishing farm, where piglets are sent to be raised for four months and then shipped to slaughter. But "modern" doesn't mean humane. Our investigator found the following:

· the farm manager beating pigs to death with metal gate rods and hammers and smashing pigs' heads against the floor to kill them

· workers routinely beating, kicking and throwing pigs

· sick and injured pigs left to suffer without a veterinarian's care and hundreds of pigs dying of pneumonia and ulcers

There are 28 huge steel barns, each containing 1,000 pigs crammed together in pens. The terrible stench hits you first. The pigs live 24 hours a day on slatted floors above piles of their own waste. The ammonia rising from this cesspool is so toxic that the pigs' eyes are permanently ringed with black from dried tears. The fumes can be deadly. A staggering number of animals - as many as 30 - died every single day from pneumonia caused by living just inches from the vats of waste and constantly breathing the gases that rise through the floor. Lying down means that the pig's snout is directly on the slats.

Veterinarians were never called into treat the pneumonia. A company veterinarian only paid visits to show new workers how to assess the cause of death. Another common cause of death is ulcers caused by the stress of living in the barns. The pigs' stomachs had large, bloody holes where the pigs had bled to death.

Some pigs suffer leg injuries from constantly standing on the hard concrete floors. The videotaped documentation shows pigs with abscessed joints swollen three times their normal size. Pigs who couldn't walk lie pitifully on the floor, their deformed legs splayed and useless. When they haven't given up entirely, they struggle to reach water and food to stay alive for one more day. One pig hobbled on a skeletal leg from which the flesh and muscle had been eaten by other pigs.

The manager often killed sick pigs by beating them in the head with a metal rod and a hammer. The video shows the pigs crying out as the rod comes down again and again on their heads and backs. After beating one pig to death, the manager laughed and told our investigator that he shouldn't let anyone see him doing that. On another day, the manager took a pig by his hind legs, swung him into the air and slammed his head on the hard floor.

Even transport to and from the farm is nightmarish. In the bitter winter cold, piglets arriving by truck after an eight hour ride are so cold that they have turned blue or even frozen to death. After four months, pigs who were sick, crippled, or too small were sent to slaughterhouses in Mexico. If they were too weak or terrified to climb the truck ramps, they were beaten. When pigs were loaded into trucks bound for American slaughterhouses, handlers often moved them along with electric prods that deliver painful jolts. Pigs who couldn't climb the ramps were trampled to death by the others scrambling to escape the electric shocks.

PETA has presented the evidence to local officials and now we need your help.