AR-News: (US) NY Times on atrocities at Rosebud Reservation hog farm

[Atrak at aol.com]

The New York Times

November 15, 2003
Indians Now Disdain a Farm Once Hailed for Giving Tribe Jobs
By MELODY PETERSEN
 
ROSEBUD INDIAN RESERVATION, S. D., Nov. 8 — Seven miles west of the tiny town 
of White River, on a snow-covered rise surrounded by bluffs and valleys, 24 
metal-roofed barns create an isolated barracks for tens of thousands of 
fattening hogs.

When a pig production company called Sun Prairie built the barns on these 
tribal trust lands four years ago, the Lakota Sioux who live here on the nearby 
reservation said they believed the barns would bring good-paying jobs to a 
reservation where 7 of 10 people are unemployed.

The jobs did come. But now some tribal members who have worked at the farm 
say they wonder at what cost. They describe a company that discriminates against 
Indians, paying them less than white workers and at times demanding they work 
extra hours for no pay. They say dust and ammonia emitted from fetid pools of 
manure that sometimes accumulate inside the barns made them cough until their 
ribs hurt and made breathing a struggle, even months after leaving their jobs.

Workers have also made videotapes of the conditions inside the barns showing 
animals so tightly packed in their pens that strong hogs begin to cannibalize 
the weak, eating off tails and ears. Other pigs are shown with 
soccer-ball-sized abscesses hanging from their bellies. During some weeks, hundreds of pigs 
die, some employees say, from mistreatment and disease.

"They are abusing the land, abusing the Indian people and paying them nothing 
for their work," said Alvin Covey, a tribal member who worked at the farm for 
six months this year until July. "All they really care about is getting their 
money."

Mr. Covey is one of dozens of current or former workers at the farm who have 
been interviewed in the last year by the Humane Farming Association, a 
nonprofit group based in San Francisco that has been fighting to stop the hog farm 
since 1998.

[On Friday, the group filed a petition with the state's attorney general 
describing how it says the company is abusing the hogs in defiance of state animal 
cruelty laws. The petition also says that the group plans to file a separate 
complaint contending that the company has mistreated employees and forced them 
to work in dangerous conditions.]

Greg Fontaine, chief executive of Bell Farms, a private company that manages 
the Sun Prairie farm, said the accusations are not true. Sun Prairie and Bell 
Farms are private partnerships partly owned by Rich Bell, whose business is 
based is Wahpeton, N.D.

The companies have never discriminated against its Indian workers, Mr. 
Fontaine said, nor forced them to work without pay. Mr. Fontaine said he was not 
aware of any systemic health problems among the farm's workers.

And the farm, he said, has never treated the hogs inappropriately. While many 
may have died on occasion, he said, similar death rates routinely happen "at 
any hog company" if disease breaks out.

Mr. Fontaine said the association had simply accumulated stories "to paint 
the picture they want to paint." The association had previously made accusations 
about environmental problems at the farm, he said, which have not been 
substantiated.

Mr. Fontaine also questioned whether the videotapes were actually taken 
inside the company's barns. "I can't respond to what I haven't seen," he said. "We 
believe we run our farms there with sound husbandry practices. There is no 
mistreatment of animals."

But Gail A. Eisnitz, chief investigator at the association, said workers who 
shot the videos signed affidavits confirming they were inside the Rosebud 
barns. The videos show dead hogs piled in front of a small metal structure that 
workers call "the dead box," which is visible from the highway running by the 
farm. 

Because of the prospect of new jobs, when the company built the first 24 
barns in 1998, many tribal members welcomed the farm. The Sioux Rosebud 
reservation — 1,442 square miles of rolling hills and pasturelands, dotted with small 
towns near Badlands National Park — has the country's fifth-highest child 
poverty rate, according to census data.

Even the tribe's casino has done little to lift its members from poverty. Few 
gamblers are willing to travel to a place so remote.

Mr. Fontaine said Sun Prairie decided to build the hog farm on tribal lands 
because of the availability of workers and water, which the tribe had agreed to 
supply. The farm is actually two sites, Grassy Knoll and Cottonwood, a couple 
of miles from each other, each with 24 barns, with a combined capacity of 
96,000 hogs.

Still, in 1998, the company would have found it hard to build elsewhere in 
South Dakota because of a state constitutional amendment then in place banning 
corporate farms. Most state laws do not apply to Indian land.

To win tribal support, the company promised the tribe 25 percent of the 
farm's profits. But while the company has sold hogs for slaughter worth millions of 
dollars, it has sent the tribe a check for a mere $11,000, said Michael 
Boltz, who recently retired from the tribal council. Disgusted with the sum, Mr. 
Boltz said, tribal officials tore up the check.

Mr. Fontaine said legal fees had consumed the farm's profits.

The tribal council voted in March to evict the farm, Mr. Boltz said, but 
continuing litigation between the tribe and the company has stopped any action.

Mr. Boltz said he believed that the conditions for the pigs and workers fell 
somewhere between the dueling descriptions offered by the association and the 
company. He said he had not learned of significant complaints from workers 
about health or safety, but had heard accusations about poor conditions for the 
hogs.

Ms. Eisnitz said the association recently had the air inside the barns tested 
for ammonia. At their peak, she said, the levels were more than double the 
federal government's average limit for workers during an eight-hour shift.

Many workers complained about breathing problems. Anthony Barrera said he was 
so short of breath after quitting as a maintenance worker at the farm last 
year that for months he could not finish a sentence. A doctor, he said, 
prescribed a medicine inhaler usually used by asthmatics and told him that breathing 
the barn air could cause lung problems like those suffered by coal miners. When 
employees gather in the farm's break room, he said, there is a continuous 
chorus of deep coughs.

Mr. Fontaine said the company periodically tested the barn air for ammonia 
and had not found an unsafe level.

One worker, Arthur Black Bear, said in a taped interview that was part of the 
association's investigation that his bosses ordered him back to work after he 
was jolted by electricity while using faulty equipment. He can no longer 
work, he said, because the shock left him with chest pain and muscle spasms. He 
also has difficulty concentrating, he said.

Mr. Fontaine questioned Mr. Black Bear's account, saying that records show he 
had suffered "a routine work injury." No manager, he said, had ordered Mr. 
Black Bear to work after he was hurt.

Mr. Barrera and some current workers said they had firsthand knowledge of the 
mistreatment and mishandling of the animals.

The employees say more than 50 piglets froze to death one night last winter 
after they were left on a truck overnight. Mr. Barrera said the barns do not 
have enough heat lamps to keep the babies warm, so they jump on top of each 
other in a pile under each light. Sometimes, he said, those on the bottom smother, 
while those on the top burn to death. 

Mr. Fontaine disagreed that such deaths were a problem. "We want as many 
animals to survive that can," he said.

But Marlene Covey, who worked several weeks at the farm this year caring for 
piglets, said employees were told to kill pigs they believed were too sick to 
live. "They picked them up by the hind legs and smacked their head on the 
floor," Mrs. Covey said.



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