Angry bright red welts, criss-crossing a pig’s skin. Dark stretches of bruising as large as three human hands. Deep gashes that could only have been delivered with a blunt object, wielded with force.
These are the upsetting images captured over and over on hanging pig carcasses at an enormous slaughterhouse in Iowa. There are hundreds of such pictures, obtained by the animal welfare organization Animal Partisan under the Freedom of Information Act.
Iowa’s decades-long shift toward industrial agriculture has been unpopular with many community members. It’s also taken a toll on the animals themselves.
However, the details aren’t always visible. Iowa has the dubious distinction of being the U.S. state that has passed the most ag-gag laws, or laws that essentially make it illegal to conduct undercover investigations of agriculture facilities. These laws are unpopular with the public, and courts have been striking them down for suppression of free speech, including in Iowa. However, the state continues churning out new ag-gag laws.
Other laws in Iowa make it difficult to protect livestock from abuse. “Livestock animals have been excluded from the general animal cruelty code and they have their own section of laws riddled with loopholes that exempt any prosecution if done at the behest of a farm or consistent with common agricultural practices,” explains Will Lowrey, general counsel for Animal Partisan.
Allowed and Prohibited Cruelty
The case of a single Iowa slaughterhouse—the Swift Pork plant in Ottumwa—is illustrative. 21,000 hogs a day, on average, are slaughtered at this facility. The speed is astonishing. On average, 1,106 hogs are processed in an hour, and the pork industry has sought to increase line speeds further, despite dangers to both workers and animals under these conditions.
One notable animal-welfare violation at this plant was a 2020 incident where a pig wasn’t properly stunned, as per the law, before being delivered into a tank of scalding water. As the inspector’s report suggests, the pig was on a moving rail, squealing repeatedly and attempting desperately to move. “The pig entered a scalding tank—a tank of extremely hot water used to loosen hair from an animal’s skin—while still conscious, in violation of federal law, causing her to suffer unimaginable pain and terror,” describes Adam Mason, senior manager of farm animal welfare and environmental policy for the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA).
Mason argues, “While the USDA [U.S. Department of Agriculture] claims that conscious scalding is rare, and not tied to line speed, this incident adds to the growing evidence demonstrating that plants already struggle to comply with humane slaughter and handling laws.”
Most kinds of animal cruelty are legally allowed in American agriculture. But this is not. This event led to a suspension, but it was put “in abeyance”—basically, the suspension itself was suspended—the same day. The suspension was reinstated three months later after botched attempts by multiple employees to stun a pig with a bolt gun. Again, the suspension was put in abeyance the very same day.
According to the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), a USDA agency responsible for animal welfare at facilities like the one in Ottumwa, “An establishment must put forward corrective actions that FSIS reviews. If the corrective actions are deemed to be sufficient to bring the establishment back into compliance, the suspension is placed in abeyance.”
Yet overall, action on animal welfare at this mega-facility has been limited. In a 2021 communication to FSIS, a public health veterinarian mentioned “animals with rectal prolapses in holding pens subject to tissue injury due to the nature of their conditions,” yet still signed off on the plant’s handling practices.
On a 2022 visit, a public health veterinarian “observed excessive fecal buildup causing poor footing and excessive slips and falls.” That is, pigs being moved through the facility were slipping on their own overflowing feces. This was marked as a noncompliance record—essentially, a warning. The company has appealed.
A Lack of Enforcement
Lowrey notes that this plant has been cited dozens of times, over the course of years, for violating the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act. Public records show that inspectors have identified thousands of pigs with bruises and other marks of misuse of objects, including bats and electrical prods. As an FSIS employee acknowledged in 2023, “The bruises are indications of pain inflicted upon these animals.” In Lowrey’s years of practicing animal law, “I’ve never seen so many incidents.”
And these are just the cases that inspectors have observed. At places like Swift Pork, slaughterhouse employees are now allowed to sort through animal carcasses before presenting them for inspection.
As Animal Partisan’s complaint to the USDA’s Office of Inspector General states, between April 2 and September 25, 2021, FSIS inspectors wrote 37 reports of inhumane handling at the plant and documented 3,357 pig carcasses with evidence of abuse—an average of 195 pigs per day. But the abundant documentation did not bring about an end to the abuses. (The USDA’s Office of Inspector General did not respond to a request for comments.)
Apart from the perpetuation of cruelty, this is a staggering waste of public resources. An FSIS employee wrote in a 2023 email, “I got a bit numb to the whole ordeal as time went on.”
FSIS states that repeated noncompliance may lead to possible enforcement action. According to a spokesperson, “When a humane handling violation to livestock occurs at an FSIS regulated establishment, FSIS bases its response on a variety of factors, including the severity of the violation and the establishment’s prior compliance history, as well as whether the establishment applies a robust systematic approach to humane handling.”
But according to Pat Basu, the former chief public health veterinarian for FSIS, there is no point at which a certain number of noncompliance records would trigger actual enforcement. “There is no follow-up saying they will hold the plant’s feet to the fire,” Basu says.
In response to the Animal Partisan complaint, FSIS set up a corrective action plan that essentially consisted of further investigation. Yet while FSIS has been monitoring the Swift Pork situation for years and issuing citations, it has not taken any enforcement activity related to the implement abuse that would act as a deterrent.
An FSIS spokesperson stated, “Ensuring that regulated establishments operate in accordance with the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act is a top priority for USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS). FSIS takes all instances of inhumane handling seriously and takes appropriate actions based on its statutory and regulatory authorities.”
However, in (substantially redacted) internal documents made available under the Freedom of Information Act, FSIS personnel referred to the implement misuse problems as “numerous” and “a very high amount.” One staffer described “excessive and horrific inhumane handling practices.” Multiple agency employees expressed the concern that “the establishment does not seem to be taking significant proactive measure to prevent and or correct the over use of implements within their establishment.”
Despite these concerns, FSIS still “has not taken any meaningful action,” Lowrey says. So the company has little incentive for substantive change.
Swift did not respond to a request for comments. JBS, the Brazilian mega-corporation that owns Swift, stated:
“JBS has a strict, zero-tolerance policy for animal welfare issues. This commitment spans our supply chain and includes producer partners, transporters and JBS employees…If any animal welfare concerns are brought to our attention, quick action is taken to both deal with the situation and also prevent it from happening again.
Since 2021, the JBS Ottumwa production facility has had seven separate third-party animal welfare audits conducted, with no issues found. FSIS has also documented multiple times since 2021 that the facility’s humane handling program meets the agency’s expectations for a robust systematic approach to humane handling.”
Transport of pigs for slaughter
Kicking the Problem Elsewhere
Swift Pork has disciplined some staff members, but has also blamed other companies. It appears that the abuses have taken place both before and after animals reach the plant. In one case, an entire crew at Iowa Select Farms, the biggest pork producer in the state, was fired following an investigation into electric prod marks on pig carcasses. And some workers at Swift Pork were trained, suspended, or banned after violations were documented.
Individual workers at an understaffed workplace should not be demonized. The issues are so abundant that they point to a more systematic problem at the plant.
According to an FSIS spokesperson with regard to Swift Pork, “FSIS brought its concerns to the attention of establishment management regarding the humane handling of animals prior to their arrival at the establishment. FSIS also brought its concerns to the attention of the state veterinarian at the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship. The state has jurisdiction over this matter.”
However, this led to no action at the state level. A spokesperson for the Iowa Department of Agriculture & Land Stewardship says that “allegations of animal mistreatment at a farm or by a livestock hauler are handled by local law enforcement.” Yet the spokesperson did not respond to a question about whether the state authorities have actually informed the local authorities of the issues.
In other words, the federal authorities are passing the buck to the state, which is attempting to pass it to the local authorities (but likely without even informing them). Meanwhile, pigs are being beaten up to the last moments of their lives before industrial-scale slaughter.
Mainly what’s happened is that the federal officials have written a lot of emails and letters about the issues. Yet as Basu says, “Writing letters doesn’t save an animal’s life or stop this from happening.”
A hog containment facility in Iowa
Toward Meaningful Change
Pigs falling into their own feces, being repeatedly hit with solid objects, and getting their rectums turned inside out…As just one facility shows, these are the hygiene and welfare conditions under which pigs are being factory-raised and slaughtered in America.
It doesn’t have to be this way. From campaigning against factory farms to reducing meat consumption to demanding better oversight of animal farming, there are ways to resist the enormous power of industrial agriculture. And Iowa—which the ASPCA’s Mason calls “one of the original battle grounds in the fight to build a more humane food system”—may show a way.
“While the industrial model certainly still holds a major grip on the state, more humane alternatives are growing quickly,” Mason says. This extends to the places where animals spend the majority of their lives. “For example, hundreds of farmers in Iowa raise pigs for Niman Ranch, ditching gestation crates and indoor confinement…In addition to providing pigs with far better lives, Niman Ranch farmers are keeping more money in Iowa communities while helping to build much needed community and infrastructure around supporting higher-welfare farming.”
Individual changes can add up if concerned people look at, and beyond, their plates and backyards. “Very few people are willing to make the meaningful change, like change what they’re eating to eliminate the problem at its actual source,” believes Shawn Camp, the cofounder and executive director of the Iowa Farm Sanctuary in Oxford—Iowa’s first and largest sanctuary for farm animals. The 140 animals who now live there include Wilma, an adventurous pig with a distinctive look: big chunks of her ears are missing due to frostbite. Camp wonders of concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), “Why move it down the road just to harm somebody else when what we could be doing is saying, ‘Let’s end CAFOs , not just end CAFOs in my backyard.’”
Joining forces may help. “It takes more work to convince people to care about a pig than to convince them that our waterways are polluted, and we have to do something about it,” Camp says. So people who are concerned about animal welfare may find broader appeal when they work with climate activists on common ground.
Pigs now outnumber people in Iowa by almost 8 to 1. Yet because the pigs are largely confined indoors, many kids who visit the sanctuary are shocked by this.
“The look of bewilderment is always on their faces,” Camp reports. She tells them, “ ‘All those little white buildings with the big fans on the side of the road that you see, that’s where they are.’ You know, they’re perfectly hidden in plain sight.”
As are the pigs’ bruises.
This article is part of a series on opposition to factory farming in Iowa.
I attended an animal law media fellowship at the Vermont Law and Graduate School, which was funded by the ASPCA. Reporting for this story was independent of the fellowship.