Hormel’s meat supplier takes steps to conform to animal welfare standards.
Nonprofit food and animal welfare advocates have taken a new tactic in the fight to expose food corporation’s questionable practices. By posing as potential employees or by other means, they gain access to companies’ operations and use undercover video footage to show the world some of the troubling ways that go into how our food is made.
In the latest case, the Washington-based animal welfare group Compassion over Killing released a video earlier this week showing the interior workings of a pork supplier to major meat companies, including the leading brand Hormel. The video showed workers at a company plant in Austin, Texas taking aggressive measures in forcing animals to move more quickly through the slaughter line, according to ABC News.
The video shows employees of the Minnesota-based company Quality Pork Processors paddling pigs and throwing a blood clot or a blood-stained towel around the slaughter area, among other disturbing activities. The U.S. Department of Agriculture stated that the practices shown on the video were unacceptable and threatened to conduct their own investigation.
Now in response to the video and complaints from Hormel, which makes Spam, Black Label bacon, and other products sold in major grocery stores nationwide, Quality Pork says it is taking “corrective actions” to resolve the problems. The company says it is disciplining the three workers shown on the video, although a company representative declined to describe the disciplinary steps they would take.
But the company will take corrective steps demanded by Hormel in a recent letter, they say. These include retraining employees on the correct way to handle animals humanely, increasing their internal video monitoring and auditing, hiring observers to monitor humane animal welfare standards, and establishing a confidential hotline for employee whistle blowers to report animal abuses or other unsavory practices.
Quality Pork’s president said he was disappointed in the behavior of the employees but stated it was only the actions of a few staff that caused the troubles.
