Articles in this document:
·
Swift
& Co. Hog Slaughter Operations Resume
·
Swift
shuts down : Truckers and hogs left to wait in heat
·
Swift
Plant Shut Down
·
Hogs,
Truck Drivers Stressed At Swift Plant
Swift & Co. Hog
Slaughter Operations Resume
KELOLAND Television -
07/16/2008
Tuesday night, the USDA suspended hog slaughter operations
at the Swift & Company Plant in
The plant has since re-opened, but while it was shut down,
it caused stress for those hoping to drop hogs off at the company.
The hogs didn't do well in the summer sunshine. Many
truckers spent the day waiting for the plant to open while hosing down their
cargo, hoping to keep the pigs cool.
"Not a lot of air movement coming through trying to
keep them cool as best we can. We've had a pretty good breeze but as it gets
hotter, it's a lot more stressed hogs and it's hard on them," Ivan DeJong said.
The USDA is calling the reason for the temporary shut down a
"humane handling violation". They say the plant took the appropriate
corrective action, but this was not their first such violation.
keloland.com
Swift shuts down : Truckers and hogs left to wait in heat
Justine Wettschreck
July 16, 2008
“I’ve been sitting here since 8:30 this morning,” said Eric
Sorenson of Sleepy Eye. “The person who shut them down is creating more of a
problem than they are trying to solve.”
From what the truckers were told, the U.S. Department of
Agriculture (USDA) shut down Swift’s kill floor late Tuesday night because of
an alleged inhumane kill.
“Supposedly a hog went through the kill line and didn’t
die,” said one trucker, who preferred to remain anonymous. “They shot it three
times, and the USDA inspector said it was inhumane and shut them down. That is
what a Swift employee told me.”
What made the truckers angriest was
the hundreds of hogs suffering inhumanely in the heat Wednesday morning.
“This is more inhumane than whatever happened last night,”
Sorenson stated, as others around him nodded in agreement.
“One hog treated inhumanely and a thousand suffer,” added
Jason, who declined to give his last name.
Several Swift employees drove around with a water tank,
using a hose to spray water on the hogs in an effort to keep them cool, but it
wasn’t much of a match for the 90-degree heat. The slight breeze had died down
around 11 a.m., and some truckers resorted to driving their trucks around the
lot behind Ron’s Repair and the truck stop, just so the hogs would have some
air movement.
“It costs so much per mile,” said Bubba Ridings, who loaded
south of
Many of the truck drivers were frustrated they weren’t told
about the shut down ahead of time.
“This happened last night, but nobody called us to stop the
load,” said Gene, a trucker who picked up his load in New Ulm Wednesday
morning. “This is the fourth time this has happened here since that thing in
Gene, who asked that his last name not be used, said he
arrived at the plant and was given a number, then told to find a place in the
wind to park his truck.
Jason said his producer was on the phone trying to find
somewhere else to bring his load.
“I heard some people are calling the USDA and senators,” he
stated.
The men understand the need for the USDA inspection, but
agree there must be a better way to handle the situation.
“They could run these hogs through, then shut down and fight
out their problems,” explained Bob Anema of
Anema, unlike most of the other
truck drivers, was parked at Swift instead of across the road. He was second in
line and hoping he would still be able to unload. Anema
was unable to gain much information from inside Swift’s office on how long his
wait would be, but he doesn’t blame Swift.
“Their hands are tied,” he claimed. “It is the USDA that
holds the strings.”
While he waited, the barns at Swift were already full,
holding about 7,000 hogs, he believed.
“But they are in a barn with water and air,” he noted.
In the lot across the street, Ridings pointed out his truck
with a double deck trailer. He said the hogs on the top layer were beneath the
roof of the trailer, which heats up in the sun. The heat from the bottom layer
rises, and when the hogs are sprayed down, they experience some relief. But
eventually, the trailer turns into a sauna.
“They climb over each other, trying to get to air, then
compact together and suffocate each other,” Ridings said.
Even if they do get to unload, Gene is worried about how the
hogs will behave. He believes they will be “hot and unruly.”
Normally, Gene said, there are very few dead hogs after a
trip to Swift, but he expected a different outcome this time.
“There are going to be a lot of deads,”
he said.
Swift officials have declined to comment on the situation.
dglobe.com
Swift Plant Shut Down
By Robert Wilson
KSFY - ABC TV -
Jul 16, 2008
Drivers hauling pigs to the Swift & Company plant in
Plant officials won't say why, but the Department of
Agriculture shut the plant down for about 14 hours.
Ivan DeJong was fed up. He was at
the plant at 8 a.m. ready to drop off his load. At 2:30 he was still sitting.
"Terribly frustrated to get held up for a silly
reason," said Ivan.
USDA officials say the plant was shut down for a humane
handling violation about midnight Tuesday night and they were able to resume
operations about 2:30 Wednesday afternoon. Drivers tell KSFY they believe it
was an issue with how one pig was killed.
"Silly reason as shooting down the hog, because one may
have been hurt at the same time they're not even sure what was
the problem. We've got a thousand hogs and we're here with nowhere to
go," said Ivan.
Ivan tells KSFY he thinks he lost about $800 in the time he
had to sit. In order to reopen Wednesday afternoon, Swift & Company had to
submit a plan to fix the violation to USDA. A USDA spokesperson also says
inspectors will be looking very closely at the pigs coming in who were sitting
in the sun all day to make sure they haven't been damaged by the heat. This is
also the second violation this plant has had for humane handling since April.
ksfy.com
Hogs, Truck Drivers
Stressed At Swift Plant
KELOLAND Television -
07/16/2008
The Swift and Company meat packing plant in
The USDA isn't giving specific reasons for the shutdown,
only calling it a Humane Handling Violation. They say the company took the
appropriate corrective actions to reopen by late Wednesday afternoon. But while
the plant was closed, tensions ran high.
It looked like a typical day of business at the Swift and
Company plant in
Those were parked just across the highway. Truckers started arriving early in the morning, only to be turned away.
Ivan De Jong says, “We've been
here since 8 o'clock this morning when I arrived at my dock time. We've been
waiting to unload but the plant has been shut down."
And while that long wait is stressful for truck drivers like
Ivan De Jong, it's not his stress he's worried about.
The bigger concern is for the wellbeing of the cargo.
"The hogs are going to keep shrinking,” explains De Jong. “They're losing weight as they're sitting here,
waiting. The producers are losing a lot of money too. Stressed
hogs, not producing as good of meat as they should."
That's because the hot summer sun can easily heat the
aluminum trailers beyond one-hundred degrees. To help ease that heat, many of
the drivers spent the day hosing down the hogs. And while that's a welcome
relief for the animals, De Jong, a 12-year veteran of
the business, calls the temporary shut-down another hassle in an industry that
been pushed to the edge.
De Jong says, “A lot of them are
frustrated, sick of it. We've been getting a lot of pressure from the USDA as
to how we've been handling the animals a lot. We're told we're doing it wrong
all the time. We try the best we can, it's a hard job
to do. It's not always the most pleasant job."
And for those involved, the day of work... and waiting...
was far from pleasant.
De Jong estimates that the time
waiting outside the plant cost him as much as $800 in lost revenue. He added
that he, and many of the others who were left waiting
outside will likely have to work this Saturday to catch up.
Calls to Swift Personnel have not yet been returned.
keloland.com