08/03/2011

On Monday (7^th March) Smithfield Food Inc. announced the release of several videos which it claims take the mystery out of pork production. The videos come less than three months after the Humane Society of the United States released undercover footage of a Murphy-Brown farm in Waverly, Virginia showing workers prodding sows and tossing baby pigs.

Ostensibly Smithfield’s videos, introduced by Temple Grandin, an animal welfare advocate, serve to combat the lack of public awareness of the goings on inside its farms. Grandin said, “A lot of the public has no idea what goes on inside a hog farm... it shouldn’t be a mystery.”

Don Butler, a spokesperson for Smithfield subsidiary Murphy-Brown LLC, stated that the videos “give viewers a close look inside our hog farms and let people see firsthand how we put our commitment to product quality, food safety and animal care into practice.”

However, commenting on Smithfield’s series of shorts, Humane Society spokesperson Josh Balk said, “Instead of bringing PR specialists in to make a whitewashing video, Smithfield should keep the promise it made in 2007 that by 2017 the company would phase out the inhumane confinement of its gestation pigs in crates so small they can’t even turn around.” The Humane Society footage, released in December 2010, reignited criticism of Smithfield’s use of 2-by-7-foot “gestation crates” for pregnant sows.  

While Smithfield has pledged to phase out gestation crates, the company dropped the 2017 deadline in 2009 while suffering multimillion-dollar earnings losses. Officials have since said they are committed to eliminating gestation crates but a target date has yet to be set.

The videos, which are available from Smithfield’s youtube channel here as well as from their facebook page and Smithfield subsidiary Murphy-Brown’s website, do demonstrate that the company recognise the value of social networking in garnering public support and improving its brand image.