Walmart pig protest

Mercy  for sows

Walmart, the juggernaut retailer of all that is imported, ricketty, tasteless, and cheap, also tops the sales of meat. The hidden cost of their discount prices is cruelty and this is the reason why Mercy For Animals (MFA)  targeted Fayetteville, Arkansas, for a protest on 7 June 2014, when 14,000 would attend the grand annual Shareholders Meeting.

Now, Fayetteville is a town of 74,000 people, many of them young and/or educated and MFA is a dynamic humane organization that knows how to spread their message. On this occasion, however, they could have enlisted more protesters in Afghanistgan than in Arkansas. Why?

For all its funkiness and hipness, this football (and college) town is surrounded by animal death camps, euphemistically called “confined animal feeding operations” (CAFOs) and “processing plants.”  A short drive north is Springdale, headquarters of Tyson Foods, the world’s second largest killer of chickens.

East of Fayetteville, in the confines of a national forest and in the watershed of the  scenic Buffalo River no less, C&H Hog Farms operates a 6,500-pig Auschwitz producing tons of shit and blood and guts. Owner Jason Henson dismisses any concerns about water pollution as “ludicrous, just crazy” and merrily carries on killing pigs while environmentalists, kayakers, et al. squeal helplessly like C&H pigs.

As an aside, I find it disturbing that the state in which Razorback fans (virtually everybody) proudly call themselves “hogs,” can treat real hogs so abominably.  

NW Arkansas, home of Walmart, can be pretty callous toward farmed animals. Bentonville – neither charming like Fayetteville nor butt-ugly like Springdale – is where co-founders Sam and Bud Walton opened a general store that grew, or rather metastasized, to 27 countries so far.  Their business model was to create a glut of, and a thirst for, superfluous goods at affordable prices. With China’s eager and calculating cooperation Walmart ruined American retail and manufacturing.

Not content with flooding homes and landfills with unrecyclable garbage, in the 1980s Walmart started selling discount groceries, offering meat at prices the Great Unwashed can afford.  Animal flesh being the most wasteful way to feed a burgeoning humanity, Walmart can undersell the competition only by partnering with unscrupulous suppliers.

Meat “production” makes one shudder at the monstruous side of Man that compells killers, sellers, and buyers.  As for consumers, “If slaughterhouses had glass walls,” said Paul McCartney, “everyone would be vegetarian.” Many exposees videoed by MFA and others are hard to take by the most stoic of viewers.

Our protest, however, focused on just one aspect of Walmart’s “pork,” i.e., that its suppliers still use “gestation crates” whereby an intelligent social animal is condemned to permanent immobility and sensory deprivation –except for pain and fear— as long as she can uninterruptedly produce piglets born to be eaten. Her reproductive system exhausted in two or three years, she is dragged (incapable of sustaining her weight) to the killing floor. The Waltons and their legion of acolytes don’t see anything wrong with this.

Another aside: Walmart also sells donkey meat in China. (Big stink about it being tainted with fox! Tainted food in China? Get outta here!) Does Walmart also sell “fragrant meat?” If there is a demand, you betcha!

Back to the protestors: Some came because of the connection between pigs and Buffalo River pollution. (CAFOs are the primary sources of river contamination in 29 States.) Speaking for abused pigs were two MFA representatives, Mikael Nielsen and Brian Pietrzycki who flew in from Chicago, a couple of vegan crusaders from Springdale (salaam to the great exception!), Professor Christopher Liner (my sainted supportive husband), and I.

The University of Arkansas, hosted the stockholders’ rapture at its “Bud Walton Arena” (in honor of  its top donor) and ensured we didn’t misbehave by keeping us behind bars (like the sows in our posters) along one of the walkways. Three police cars parked at spitting distance and periodic visits from a sheriff’s deputy ensured compliance. Distribution of leaflets was also prohibited.

Mikael and Brian had duly alerted the local media of the upcoming protest. Predictably, big name entertainers ... the youth and charm of the new CEO ... hossanas from visiting delegates ... and assorted pablum trumped detractors like pig advocates, labor unions organizers, and underpaid single-mom employees. But! We got coverage in the nation’s largest newspaper, USA Today, with a combined print and electronic circulation of more than 3 million. Walmart can’t be pleased about that. Our inflatable pig and Walmart entertainer Pharrell Williams got side-by-side photo billing, which is so cool.

Why did only a few Arkansans show up to object to Walmart’s complicity in the gestation crate scandal? Sadly, here and everywhere even self-proclaimed animal “lovers” fail to make the connection between their beloved pet and the wings or baby back ribs they devour.

Man’s “domestication” of fellow travelers may well be the most cataclismic event on the planet – it certainly was to the trillions of farmed and companion animals condemned to slavery, brutality, and ignoble deaths. Like ogers and cyclops, people make merry over the cadavers they carve and chew.  Conveniently, ethics and religion part company on the topic of animals, so anything goes.

One additional mental block: Many Arkansans, regardless of profession or employment, have indirect “ties” to the feudal companies. Either a relative works there, or their school or charity receive support from them, or they own shares ... and so, the abuse of farmed animals is considered a “necessary evil.” It isn’t. It is a crime and self-respecting Arkansans should hold accountable the Waltons, the Tysons, and all those who profit obscenely from animal abuse. Speak up and don’t buy their shit, Arkansas!