Damage control

[Gość: Robert Kennedy]

Smithfield uses its wealth to buy politicians, paralyze regulatory agencies
and break health and environmental laws with impunity. In North Carolina,
Smithfield made business partnerships with a powerful state senator Wendell
Murphy and a powerful United States Senator Launch Faircloth who protected
the company’s interests in local and federal legislatures. Using adept
campaign contributions and such cunning alliances, the hog industry has been
able to corrupt and control the North Carolina state senate. The state’s
largest newspaper, Raleigh News and Observer, won the Pulitzer Prize for its
five-part investigative report disclosing how the factory hog industry had
captured and corrupted the state senate.



Politicians who oppose the hog barons are punished. When North
Carolina’s Duplin County State Assemblywoman Cynthia Watson began speaking
out against Smithfield’s impact on her farm community, the hog industry
launched a savage multimillion dollar attack, spending as much as $10,000 a
week for two years to destroy her reputation. As a result, she lost her
election and the hog barons sent a message to all the senators in North
Carolina that if you speak out against this industry or this company, we will
punish you!

Citizens who protest get the same treatment. Typically, the industry
launches its occupation by removing the democratic rights of local
communities who refuse to site these facilities in their communities. In
Iowa, North Carolina, Michigan and many other states and Canadian provinces,
public officials have stripped local governments of their decision making
powers over these facilities. Similarly, we have seen that in Poland, local
officials who opposed Smithfield’s facilities have been overruled by national
authorities. The industry routinely uses bullying lawyers and illegal
intimidation, threats, harassment, and violence to terrorize and silence its
critics including its own workers. A group of Nebraska citizens who made
comments during a public hearing on a hog factory permit were sued by
Nebraska’s largest livestock producer. Neighboring farmers are routinely
sued for participating in public hearings or speaking out against the hog
industry. Contempt for our laws and bullying are part of industry culture.

Criminal Behavior

Smithfield’s own records show that it has committed tens of
thousands of violations of state and federal environmental laws. Indeed,
recent court decisions indicate that hundreds of Smithfield’s facilities
around the country are in almost daily violation of federal environmental
laws. In 1997, a federal judge ordered Smithfield to pay $12 million
dollars, one of the largest Clean Water Act penalties in history. The court
determined that a single Smithfield plant had violated the Clean Water Act
over 6,000 times and that company officials had intentionally lied to federal
regulators to cover up its violations. In 2000, a National Labor Relations
Judge found Smithfield guilty of serious labor law violations. The judge
found that that Smithfield managers conspired with local police to physically
intimidate and assault union supporters. He also found that Smithfield
attorneys suborned perjury and that company witnesses lied under oath. Again
in 2002, Smithfield was found guilty of significant labor law violations,
this time by a federal court, which ordered the company to pay $755,000 in
damages to workers who the company had wrongfully imprisoned.

Smithfield Invades Poland

In 1999, Smithfield announced its plans to move into Poland and began
purchasing slaughterhouses that year. Animal Welfare Institute (AWI), one of
our allies in the battle against Smithfield, brought a delegation of Poles
over to tour the farm landscapes of America to see what they were in for.
AWI took the Poles to Missouri where you can drive 50 kilometers without
leaving company land and then to Duplin County North Carolina where they were
enveloped in an unbearable stench. During this trip, one lady in North
Carolina , Mrs. Carr, pleaded with the visiting Poles, “I’ve never been to
Poland but for God’s sake don’t let them do to you what they’ve done to us.”
The Polish delegation promised that this would never happen in Poland.
Unfortunately it is happening now. Just as Smithfield used North Carolina to
launch its takeover of American pork production in 1980, Poland is
Smithfield’s platform for launching its bid for monopoly control of pork
production in Europe.

In 1999, Smithfield purchased Animex, the state owned conglomerate of giant
communist era farms and nine slaughterhouses that export Polish sausage and
ham to the United States. The deal was a bargain, Luter paid only $55
million just after Animex, at state expense, made extensive renovations. For
example, the government’s Constar plant brought ultra modern equipment from
the U.S. just before the Smithfield takeover. Estimated value of the company
following these improvements was $500 million. Luter boasted that he
paid, “only 10 cents on the dollar.”

Gaining monopoly control of the country’s slaughterhouse capacity is more
difficult in Poland because there are over 4,000 slaughterhouses in this
country. Smithfield’s strategy was to get the government to do its dirty
work by closing down the competition.

At Smithfield’s request, the Polish government began closing
hundreds of small slaughterhouses after Joe Luter had a three-hour meeting
with President Buzek. Buzek's Minister of Agriculture promulgated
regulations that would put up to 50% of Poland’s slaughterhouses out of
business. The government justified these new rules under the fraudulent
pretense that small slaughterhouses must be shut down to comply with the EU
regulations. However, EU regulations clearly state that small slaughterhouses
may be kept open to serve regional markets. In fact, Germany, France and
Sweden fought to keep their small slaughterhouse and milk plants open and
even subsidize them knowing that those are the core of local markets and food
distribution. Once the small slaughterhouses disappear, local markets
quickly follow.

Furthermore, large high tech slaughterhouses do no make a safer food
supply. In the U.S. and in England, the closure of small slaughterhouses
actually coincided with an increase of meat borne disease by 300% and 500%
respectively. This is because large centralized slaughterhouses force pork
production onto factory farms where disease is rampant and because of long
transport distances stress the animals and spread disease. Furthermore,
technologies that increase line speed inside the slaughterhouse multiply
worker errors and make proper inspections impossible. (Now the big
slaughterhouses are insisting on the controversial technology of irradiation
in order to solve their problems of diseases vectors.)

The Polish government took a number of other steps to facilitate
Smithfield’s takeover of Polish agriculture. For example, the government
legalized liquid manure and tried to dismantle the Animal Welfare Act. The
government allowed Smithfield to buy and lease farms in Poland despite
official policies forbidding foreigners to purchase agricultural land. In
addition, the government gave large pork export subsides to Smithfield
amounting to 55 cents per kilo. These subsidies are intended to benefit
Polish farmers but since Smithfield imports both its pigs and the feed, there
is not much benefit to Poland.