(BROWNSTOWN) – Only a few weeks after a PETA exposé revealed that pigs had bloody open sores and a worker cut off piglets’ tails without any pain relief at East Fork Farms, an anonymous whistleblower has provided additional never-before-seen footage. of horrors at the farm.
The new footage was released after Indiana State Police say a portion of the two-hour video filmed first released by PETA on Oct. 9 was not filmed at East Fork Farms in Brownstown. ISP Sgt. Stephen Wheeles says while the farm was not yet been cleared of any violations, investigators believe parts of the video were filmed somewhere else.
Indiana State Police investigators and a veterinarian went to the farm after the first video was released and PETA called for an investigation.
Sgt. Wheeler says officials did not find the conditions depicted in the first video but says investigators are still investigating the allegations.
The video shows injured pigs abandoned to suffer in filth, dead piglets rotting on the floor, and a trash can teeming with maggots and overflowing with piglets’ bodies.
In a letter that accompanies the new footage the videographer writes:
“I know this because I was there. I witnessed the degraded state of their living conditions and the distress and the fear you hear in their voices. I witnessed there the mothers who must live confined in crates so tight, they cannot turn around so they are forced to watch their piglets die and decompose in front of them.
He continues to state he is a U.S. government official and charges the Indiana State Police to do what’s right by the animals suffering on the farm, reiterating that the footage was all recorded at East Fork Farms.
“East Fork Farms is where all this footage delivered to Colin Henstock with PETA came from. I can confirm every single frame was captured and delivered as a testimony of a single contract producer of “food” which is East Fork Farms.”
The whistleblower describes the facility as a “horrid dungeon” where the barns are full of billions of maggots and cockroaches, emaciated pigs are left without access to food or water, animals were found struggling to stay afloat in the barn’s manure pit, and mother pigs are forced to “watch their piglets die and decompose in front of them.”
“From down the street, you can hear the screams echo in the wind. It is like the worst horror film screams you have ever heard,” the whistleblower writes.
He goes on to state,
“So I personally charge Sgt. Stephen Wheeles to look at the truth instead of trying to defend the lies. All the footage you were given by PETA on this case is definitively captured on East Fork Farms from the end of August through September. The only reason I remain anonymous is because I honor the trust, good order and discipline of being a U.S. government official, just like you. Lest we undermine our representation, we charge our brothers and sisters to perform their duties the public charges us with, to look at the facts and hold those responsible actually accountable for their neglect.”
“This horrific new footage shows one piglet shrieking while pinned against the bars of a crate, others lying twitching and convulsing on the floor, and a trash can overflowing with corpses and maggots,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA urges authorities to heed this whistleblower’s calls to take immediate action against this facility, for these pigs’ sake.”
East Fork Farms previously supplied the Louisville, Kentucky, slaughterhouse of JBS USA, which markets pig flesh branded as Swift Premium Dry Rubbed Pork, All Natural Pork, and Fresh Pork and Swift La Herencia Pork. Following the release of PETA’s exposé, JBS announced that it had “immediately and indefinitely” banned East Fork Farms from its supply chain.
A broadcast-quality version of the new footage is available for download here but viewer discretion is advised. PETA’s original exposé is available here, and photos are available here.
PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat or abuse in any other way” – opposes speciesism, which is a human-supremacist worldview. For more information visit PETA.org.
