Smithfield controls at least 16 giant factory farms in Poland and four enormous slaughterhouses and processing plants through subsidiaries including Animex, Agri Plus and Prima. In other words, through your taxes, you are subsidising its industrial farming practices.
Smithfield's Polish farms and factories rear and slaughter over a million animals a year, with many destined for export to countries such as Britain. Smithfield controls the Morliny and Pek brands - and also, intriguingly, produces sliced meat under the WeightWatchers label. So I set off to visit the factory that made my can of Pek Chopped Pork, to find out how it was produced and how the animals fared before slaughter. The processing factory dominates the ugly little town of Elk and can slaughter up to 6, pigs per shift.
On the day I arrived, trucks crammed with pigs for slaughter lined up alongside a huge sign listing the recent EU subsidies. Suffering: contrary to popular perception, pigs are actually intelligent creatures. I wonder how many jobs in British farming had been lost as a result, and at what cost to animal welfare. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, the company refused to allow me into the factory on 'health and safety' grounds.
Perhaps this was because of a scandal in that engulfed another Smithfield-owned plant in Poland. At the Constar plant, workers were secretly filmed by a Polish TV station allegedly 'refreshing' mouldy sausages and debating whether they should be sent to retailers. After a little coaxing, one of the supervisors at the Elk plant was more helpful and gave me a list of farms which supplied the slaughterhouse, one of which will have produced the pig that ended up in my can of pork.
The first farm on the list lay near the town of Goldap near the Russian border. It's an enormous complex of sprawling buildings used for fattening pigs. Only the unbelievable stench gave it away as a pig farm rather than yet another drab industrial estate.
Here, the animals are reared in disturbing conditions. Thousands of animals were housed in small filthy pens with slatted concrete floors. Some were obviously lame, others appeared deeply distressed by their cramped and bleak environment. I then visited several other farms ultimately owned by Smithfield and saw similar conditions, including at the Ketrzyn unit I described earlier, where many of the pigs had docked tails.
Perhaps most horrifyingly of all, I also visited an enormous farm whose president and 60 per cent owner, Jan Jeglinsky, sits on the governing board of Smithfield subsidiary Agri Plus, which is used to control many Smithfield farms. At this particular establishment, near the village of Czernin, I saw a huge industrial bin piled high with the rotting bodies of dozens of piglets.
Other decomposing piglets lay scattered around the bin. Some had been feasted upon by wildlife. It specialised in so-called ' fattening pigs', raising piglets that would eventually be sent to other farms to be fattened up for slaughter. It is impossible to say whether pigs raised at the Czernin unit would one day end up in British produce, but the piles of rotting bodies do give an indication of the standards of animal welfare on some Polish farms.
There is no suggestion that any of the farms I visited were behaving illegally under Polish or European law. They were, however, producing pig meat under conditions that would be questionable in the UK.
In a documentary to be aired on February 3 on More4, former employees on Smithfield's farms tell the presenter Tracy Worcester that they routinely used powerful antibiotics to keep the pigs healthy in the company's factory-style farms. Villagers around Smithfield's farms complain of terrible air and water pollution.
This may not be unusual. But when I confronted the company with my findings, it refused to discuss my observations directly and instead issued a legal notice. The letter said that the mortality rate on the farms I visited near Goldap was less than 1 per cent. At its farm near Ketrzyn the mortality rate was This higher mortality rate, claimed the solicitors, was due to 'genetic differences in the breeds'.
Furthermore, they added: 'All Smithfield farms have a secured disposal container for dead pigs and the dead are placed in them daily. The disposal and collection process avoids carcasses lying on the ground for more than a day. The farms and the records are the subject of review by both local and regional official state registered veterinary inspectors on a regular basis.
Not all processed meat products are of equal risk to consumers so how do you know what to eat? The World Health Organisation has warned that processed meat products are now in the same category as asbestos, alcohol, arsenic and tobacco after the UN health body classified them as group 1 carcinogens.
So what are the processes behind these products? Well, one thing is clear: not all processed meat products are of equal risk to consumers. Most commonly, the pork leg is cured and smoked to produce ham. It can also be dry cured and aged to produce prosciutto. Retail and smoked cuts from the leg are shown in Table The pork loin is commonly split into three sections: the rib, sirloin, and loin centre. Alternatively, the pork loin can be split at the end of the tenderloin, labelling the two halves as pork loin rib half and pork loin sirloin half.
The pork loin is most often merchandised fresh for chops and roasts. The loin in the most tender primal of the hog and is ideal for dry heat cookery.
It can be cured and smoked to make favourites such as back bacon. Retail and smoked cuts from the loin are shown in Table The pork shoulder is very popular for use in sausage making due to the higher fat content. The sub-primals pork shoulder blade and pork shoulder picnic are derived from the shoulder along with a pork hock and a pork foot.
Preparation is another factor. While pulled pork needs to cook for a long time, you can prepare this version of chopped pork in a hurry. As barbecue enthusiasts, we would also argue that pulled pork has more flavor.
The bold seasoning adheres to the meat, which makes it more intense. As a bonus, the low-and-slow cooking technique gives the pork a rich, almost candy-like quality. This is true especially if you prepare it using a grill or smoker. Both, of course, are made from large cuts of pork. Moreover, the cuts that are typically used for each are both taken from the foreleg section of the pig.
While pork butt refers to the upper portion of the shoulder, the picnic roast is cut from the lower region, toward the shank. This makes a slight difference in terms of texture and cooking times. Chopped pork and pulled pork are both popular sandwich fillings, especially in the South.
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