Press Release:
Attorney General Asked to Prosecute Rosebud Hog Factory Operators

The Humane Farming Association is formally petitioning South Dakota Attorney General Lawrence Long to investigate and prosecute Sun Prairie and Bell Farms, operators of a massive factory hog farm located on Rosebud Sioux tribal lands in Mellette County, South Dakota. HFA alleges that the companies are flagrantly violating state criminal laws governing the humane treatment of pigs at the factory farm.

The culmination of a year-long investigation by the San Francisco-based non-profit organization, the petition presents evidence collected from more than two dozen employees who provided statements describing the brutality and neglect they observed while working at the facility. In addition, the petition presents evidence of animal Cruelty based on photographs and videotape obtained inside the factory hog farm.

Among the charges documented in the petition are:

• Sick and injured pigs are routinely dragged into narrow alleyways between pens where they are provided no food or water and are left to die of disease, starvation, and/or dehydration.
• Those sick and injured pigs that are “euthanized” are frequently beaten to death with hammers and gate rods.
• Overcrowding, neglect, and stressful living conditions have resulted in rampant cannibalism. Pigs are often eaten alive by pen mates, their only remains being skin and bones.
• Pigs are forced to live in abject filth – often pig waste is not flushed from barns for months at a time.
• Clogged and malfunctioning sewage systems frequently back up, causing pig urine, feces, and water to overflow into pens. Pigs are forced to stand and lie in their own waste.

“Sun Prairie targeted Rosebud because they were apparently looking to exploit an impoverished workforce and they wanted a location where state environmental laws could be circumvented,” said Gail Eisnitz, HFA’s Chief Investigator. “The fact that pigs have been allowed to die of starvation and dehydration, have resorted to cannibalism, and must slosh around in their own wastes is evidence of systematic animal Cruelty at Sun Prairie,” she added.

The petition asks the Attorney General to enforce two provision of South Dakota law:
SDCL 40-1-12. Allowing fatally injured or diseased animal to suffer needlessly prohibited—Violation as misdemeanor.
SDCL 40-1-27. Inhumane treatment as misdemeanor.

See the full petition (Graphic pictorial exposé)
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