by Ted Genoways
Afterward, Rettig was fuming. He didn’t care if he saw someone gut a pig right in front of him, he said. “I’d rather suck an elephant’s dick than rat on anyone for anything.” Greg Hackler, another worker in the breed barn, chimed in: “Gotta do what you gotta do to push those fucking pigs.” Rettig said the new owners should make the pigs sign a pledge not to kick him in the shin, slam him into a gate, stomp on his feet, or try to break his arm. As the other workers seemed to ponder the implications of this change, Rettig was having none of it. “Motherfucker hurts me,” he said, “that fucker gets a caning.”
Two days later, Robert Ruderman decided to put this new policy to the test. With his recorder rolling, he went to Randy Vaughan, the new farm manager hired by Suidae and MowMar to take over from Jordan Anderson. In his log notes, Ruderman wrote, “I reported to Randy the following abuses that I had witnessed on the farm: the hitting of sows, seeing cuts on sows after being loaded into the farrowing barn, the improper thumping of piglets (piglets who are not dying immediately or even shortly after being thumped), and the spraying of spray paint into the faces of those sows who have attacked/killed their own babies.”
Vaughan seemed unsurprised and unconcerned. “I’m not gonna get too shook up about it,” he said, “unless somebody’s really abusing ’em, is all—somebody’s beating the piss out of ’em, and not feeding ’em, no water, that kind of stuff.” Ruderman countered that the cuts and welts on the backs of the sows was evidence that they were being beaten. “Don’t get too excited about it,” Vaughan instructed. Some of those injuries might have come from the sows scraping up against the metal gates. As for the injuries squarely on their backs and hindquarters? “Ya know, I mean, you got to do something if they won’t move. You got to move ’em.” Ruderman left that Friday evening angered that Vaughan had dismissed his reports of animal abuse, but he hadn’t expected any consequences for making the complaints. So he was shocked the following Monday when he was called into Vaughan’s office and told that the farm was cutting back. Vaughan told Ruderman that he was being let go.
Things were turning chaotic for Michael Steinberg in the breed barn as well. Al Rettig was rumored to have been injured over the weekend—crushed against a gate by a sow—and was out for days. Greg Hackler was nowhere to be seen, and Richard Ralston, without explanation, was no longer in charge of the breeding facility. With the hierarchy unraveling and the prospect of a mass turnover that might scatter the workers, PETA decided to conclude the operation and go public. They summoned Ruderman and Steinberg back to the east coast and prepared to make the phone call to Lynn Becker.
Chapter 9
AG GAG
By the time Lynn Becker actually received the voice message, Daphna Nachminovitch, vice president of cruelty investigation at PETA, was already on a plane bound for Des Moines. She met with deputies from Sheriff Tom Heater’s office, turning over CDs of video footage and a black binder of paperwork labeled “Abuse and Neglect of Livestock at Sow Farm.” Heater assigned Deputy Sheriff Russell Hoffman to investigate and met briefly with Jeff Kayser from Suidae Health. By then, the edited five-minute video was everywhere on the Internet, and Kayser requested that Hoffman accompany him to MowMar, where he planned to terminate Alan Rettig and Richard Ralston immediately.
That afternoon, directly after the meeting, Kayser went to MowMar and fired Ralston, who then agreed to answer some of Hoffman’s questions outside in the deputy’s official pickup. Shown the video, Ralston dropped his head in shame. He told the deputy that he felt “like shit,” seeing himself beat the sows. “But in the environment,” he said, “you don’t realize that it’s right or wrong. You’re here to get as much done as you can. You’re the only one that knows what’s going on. People just stand around and watch.” Deputy Hoffman asked Ralston to write out a statement there in the cab of his truck. When Ralston protested that he wasn’t a good writer, Hoffman agreed to have him go through everything again while he wrote it down for him.
In the coming weeks, Hoffman began tracking down the other workers to question them about abuses itemized in the PETA list. Shawn Lyons tipped off the sheriff that Al Rettig was packing up and planning to skip town before he could be charged. Hoffman went to Rettig’s home in Scranton and asked him to come out to his pickup parked in the alley. Rettig, predictably, was unapologetic. He told Hoffman that he had only been at this facility since March 2007, but he had worked as the manager of two breed barns previous to this one—a total of eighteen years handling sows—and he was willing to do “whatever it takes to keep hogs moving and not get hurt and not get the hogs hurt.” Everything he did, he said, was to protect himself, and all that stuff about seventeen-year-old girls and showing them your dick was just “bullshitting.” He told Hoffman that “people don’t have a clue as to what really goes on in there and what you have to do to survive—to keep your body, to keep your health, and to keep your job.”
From there, everything began falling into place. Hoffman got Shelly Mauch to admit to huffing angry sows with marking dye to calm them, but she said she had been instructed in this technique by farm manager Jordan Anderson. Greg Hackler admitted to kicking sows, to jabbing them hard enough with clothespins to make them bleed, and to hitting sows multiple times with the captive-bolt gun—one sow six times. Jordan Anderson admitted to instructing workers on huffing sows and the use of clothespins.
Finally, almost as an afterthought, Hoffman interviewed Shawn Lyons. Lyons acknowledged to the sheriff’s deputy then—as he did to me later—that he had prodded sows with clothespins, hit them with wooden herding boards, and pulled them by their ears, but only in an effort, he told me, to get pregnant sows that had spent the last 114 days immobilized in gestation crates up and moving to the farrowing crates.
As Lyons remembered his conversation with Hoffman, he rocked nervously in his recliner chair in the living room of the tiny, tumbledown house he shares with his wife and two kids, the same house he grew up in, just two blocks off of Main Street in Bayard. His watery blue eyes seemed on the verge of tears as he tried to explain himself, and he spoke in a skittish mutter that would sometimes disappear all the way into silence as he rubbed his thin beard. Lyons said he never intended to hurt the hogs, that he was just “scared to death” of the angry sows “who had spent their lives in a little pen”—and this was how he had been trained to deal with them. “You do feel sorry for them, because they don’t have much room to move around,” he said, but if they get spooked coming out of their crates, “you’re in for a fight.”
On October 22, Deputy Sheriff Hoffman preferred charges of livestock abuse against six workers at the sow barns: five counts each against Alan Rettig and Richard Ralston, two counts against Greg Hackler, and one count each against Shelly Mauch, Shawn Lyons, and Jordan Anderson (who was also charged with two counts of aiding and abetting livestock abuse).
Hoffman then began calling them, one by one, with instructions to come in and surrender at the Greene County Courthouse.
While the Greene County Sheriff’s Office was still conducting its investigation, Lynn Becker, as the public face of MowMar, led an effort at damage control, with assistance from Julie Henderson Craven, the spokesperson for Hormel; Cindy Cunningham, the assistant vice president for communications at the National Pork Board; and John Himle, founding partner at Himle Horner, the PR firm in the Twin Cities hired by Becker at the recommendation of Hormel. Authored by Himle and released through Cunningham’s office, a statement issued on September 17 read: “Representatives of PETA and MowMar’s farm managers had a frank and open discussion in a meeting this morning about what PETA discovered and the actions being taken to correct this unfortunate situation.” Among the actions Becker pledged to undertake: firing all employees found to have abused animals, instituting a zero-tolerance policy against abuse, and investigating the possibility of installing a video monitoring system. “I’ve known the hog producers who own that company for years,” Cunningham said in an interview at the time, “and t
hey will do everything possible to run that facility the right way. I know they are in there today, cleaning it up, and they will turn it into one of the best-run facilities anywhere.”
Craven, for her part, reiterated that MowMar “shares our commitment to animal welfare and humane handling” but also told the Associated Press that, as she understood it, “the abuses took place before the change in ownership.” PETA vice president Daphna Nachminovitch disputed this claim and pointed out that the new farm manager, Randy Vaughan, who had been hired by MowMar, was guilty of abuses as well. To back up the claim, PETA released a second video, showing Vaughan using a “hot shot” electric prod on an injured sow. Michael Steinberg, who recorded the video, described it that day in his notes: “She tried to stand up as he walked over, but both of her back legs were in very bad condition. In my opinion, she had a possible broken pelvis, hip, or legs, although nobody suggested this to me. Both of her legs were underneath the left side of her body. Randy continuously stomped on and kicked her bad legs and shocked her the whole time he was doing this.” The second video brought renewed attention—focused this time more squarely on Hormel. “One month later, the pigs at this farm are still at the mercy of the same manager,” Nachminovitch wrote in a public statement issued on October 21. “We have yet to see any action from Hormel that would spare these mother pigs and their babies one iota of suffering.”
Craven went on the offensive. “We are appalled that PETA representatives not only witnessed incidents of improper animal handling without reporting the abuse, and after several months, have not released all of the video footage,” she said in a statement of her own. “If they are truly concerned about animal welfare, they should release information when they obtain it.” But Craven’s statement ignored the fact that PETA had turned all video over to the Greene County sheriff for investigation only after Robert Ruderman was fired by Randy Vaughan in apparent retaliation for bringing these abuses to his attention. After the story broke publicly, PETA had offered five times to deliver those same materials to Hormel’s offices but never received a reply.
Craven also repeated her belief that most of the abuses occurred before MowMar’s ownership and added that the farm had only become a Hormel supplier after that change. Hormel’s own corporate literature, however, issued just months before the whole scandal erupted, identified the previous management company, AMVC, as one of “our partners.” The report said that the company’s CEO, Daryl Olsen, met representatives from Hormel “during an industry meeting almost nine years ago [in 1998]. Soon after, AMVC began its business agreement with Hormel Foods and began supplying Hormel Foods with hogs.” The report goes on to quote Olsen as saying, “We meet regularly to discuss ways we can help [Hormel] produce a better product and work together to meet that goal.” Even more strikingly, the only other “partner” highlighted in the report was Gary Thome—Lynn Becker’s co-owner of MowMar, who had first met Becker through Olsen.
In the midst of the second uproar—and perhaps in an effort to quell it—Sheriff Heater announced the indictments against the six former and current employees. He had pressed charges against nearly all of the offenders identified by PETA, with the exception of Randy Vaughan, who, based on the sheriff department’s interviews of suspects, seems to have avoided prosecution simply by steadfastly denying all charges. So it was a special irony that on October 22, when Deputy Sheriff Hoffman was unable to reach Shawn Lyons and Shelly Mauch, he wound up calling MowMar—and reaching Vaughan. Hoffman asked Vaughan to inform Lyons and Mauch that they had twenty-four hours to turn themselves in at the courthouse. Vaughan agreed to relay the message, but he seems first to have called Hormel for guidance. At the end of the day, as workers sat around the break room, talking, Vaughan came in and told Mauch and Lyons that they had been formally charged—and that they were being let go. According to Lyons, Vaughan told him, “We don’t want to do it, but we got to—because Hormel will quit taking the pigs.”
Lyons called his wife, Sherri, and told her to get ready to go out. He had been fired and charged with a felony; he would explain everything as they drove to the county seat in Jefferson, Iowa. Once there, Sherri was shown to Holding Room 3 while Shawn filled out paperwork and had his mug shot taken. While she waited, Sherri’s cell phone buzzed again and again; Shawn’s name was already on the evening news. Hoffman released him with instructions to go find a lawyer. He might be able to beat the charge, considering that Lyons’s supervisor had emphasized what a good worker he was.
“Well, they fired me,” Lyons replied.
“You got fired?” Hoffman asked. “I didn’t want that to happen to you.”
“I was pretty pissed,” Lyons told me later, with a rueful chuckle. “What’d you think was going to happen?”
In early September 2008, the Minnesota Agri-Growth Council played host to AgNite—one of the largest private parties during that year’s Republican National Convention, held in St. Paul. The official mission of the Minnesota Agri-Growth Council is “to represent the most vital interests of Minnesota’s diverse food and agricultural community,” but in reality its executive committee and board of directors are composed almost entirely of higher-ups from the state’s largest agribusinesses—such as Hormel, Cargill, General Mills, Land O’Lakes, the Schwan Food Company, and Syngenta seeds—as well as the heads of individual agricultural lobbying groups, including the Minnesota Corn Growers Association and the Minnesota Milk Producers Association. Hormel’s vice president for legislative affairs, Joe C. Swedberg, in his capacity as the newly elected chair of the Minnesota Agri-Growth Council, organized the event, and it exceeded all expectations.
A crowd of more than five thousand attendees, including delegates and elected officials from the Republican convention, gathered in the Depot in Minneapolis for drinks and ag showcases and live musical performances, including a late-night set by aging rockers Styx. Among the attendees, John Rusling Block, the secretary of agriculture under Ronald Reagan and cochair of presidential candidate John McCain’s farm and ranch committee, called the night a celebration of technological progress in agriculture—from pesticides to genetic engineering. “We raise a good, clean crop,” he said, “and we do it so efficiently.”
To promote the event, Swedberg had hired John Himle’s PR firm. Himle had been the executive director of the Minnesota Agri-Growth Council when he was first elected as an Independent-Republican to the Minnesota House of Representatives in 1981; he had founded Himle Horner soon after and always kept the council as one of his steady clients. AgNite was still in the postconvention PR phases when Himle Horner began advising Lynn Becker. Indeed, in an interview Himle gave with the Agri-Growth Council’s newsletter, he listed among his greatest “success stories”: “this year providing media and strategic counsel for the successful AgNite event” and assisting several clients with “crisis issues,” including “PETA/livestock issues.”
Two weeks after AgNite and less than twenty-four hours after the PETA video went online, Joe Swedberg traveled back to St. Paul for a meeting of a legislative working group on immigration reform at the State Office Building. At that meeting, the committee, chaired by Minnesota House minority whip Rod Hamilton (on Swedberg’s nomination), committed to addressing immigration issues in the state by developing “economic arguments supportive of rational immigration” and to informing their strategies by coordinating with similar working groups from Illinois and Iowa. The effort, in short, was to come up with policies that would shift public opinion on the immigration debate by bringing together members of the Latino advocacy community with business interests like Hormel, represented by Swedberg and Hamilton himself, who had preceded Lynn Becker as president of the Minnesota Pork Board and was then the communications director for Christensen Family Farms, the third-largest pork producer in the United States. Discussions around that meeting may also have been the seeds of the legislative effort against undercover investigations into animal operations in Minnesota and Iowa.
Two years later, Ha
milton and Doug Magnus, recently appointed chairs of the agricultural committees in the Minnesota House and Senate respectively, were invited by Swedberg to deliver the policy lecture at the Minnesota Agri-Growth Council monthly luncheon together. The talk, according to the council’s newsletter, drew one of the largest and most varied arrays of attendees in the group’s history. Ten weeks later, during the 2011 legislative session, Hamilton and Magnus introduced identical bills that would make it a crime to “produce a record which reproduces an image or sound” inside an animal facility—or even “possess or distribute” such a recording.
“It’s absurd,” said Amanda Hitt at the Government Accountability Project. She told me that activist videos were akin to airplane black-box recorders—evidence for investigators to deconstruct and find wrongdoing. Ag gag laws, as they’re known, don’t just interfere with workers blowing the whistle on animal abuse. “You are also stopping environmental whistle-blowing; you are also stopping workers’ rights whistle-blowing.” In short, “you have given power to the industry to completely self-regulate.” That should “scare the pants off” of consumers concerned about where their food comes from. “It’s the consumer’s right to know, but also the employee’s right to tell. You gotta have both.” She said she couldn’t believe that an industry that had been so regularly recorded breaking the law “would then have the audacity to come to any state legislative body and say, ‘Hey, we’re sick of getting caught doing crimes. Could you do us a favor and criminalize catching us?’”
But Daryn McBeth, then the president of the Agri-Growth Council, told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune that the law would be “an important deterrent tool in our toolbox” against videos shot by “fraudulently hired employees.” He pointed to a case that rocked Minnesota a few months earlier, when workers at the Willmar Poultry Company—the country’s largest turkey hatchery, producing 45 million birds a year—were filmed by Humane Society undercover activists throwing sick, injured, or surplus birds into grinding machines while still alive.