Louisville Magazine is Louisville's city magazine, covering Louisville people, lifestyles, politics, sports, restaurants, entertainment and homes. Includes a monthly calendar of events.
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LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 7.17 67 Others bury their heads between the butts of others. ("Pigs aren't bubble-wrapped," another trucker says.) e pigs grunt. e beginning of the line. Welcome to the big pig sea. Waves of pale pink rising and falling. Ceiling spouts drizzle a soft static of water inside the unloading barn. Fans whir in summer. e sun shines through the roof slats like makeshift skylights. Eyes in the sky: cam- eras in the barn rafters. Hundreds of them. Protectors of the pigs. Cameras watch for humane handling — practices that cause a minimum of excitement, pain, injury or discomfort. "We are easily one of the most heavily regulated industries out there," says John Cliff, who was plant manager for almost 27 years at the Louisville location until his retirement in January. Cliff's a tough man's man. He wants to take you fishing or to the shooting range. His slicked-back gray hair ripples like a quiet river. Cliff can re- member days on his grandparents' farm as a boy. ey'd kill a pig by hitting it in the head with a sledgehammer. He started in the industry when he was 18 years old in Nebraska, moving to the pig plant across the road when the beef factory workers went on strike. "We run around two and a half million hogs per year and, to comply with ani- mal-welfare standards, we have to do 100 percent out of 100 percent," Cliff says. "One egregious act" — any measure that causes extreme harm to the animal — "and we can be shut down for half a day or more." An egregious act can be as simple as making a stressed-out pig move. "Non-am- bulatory" describes the pigs that can't walk, weakened from ride or heat or an unfa- miliar environment compared with the super-sterile farms where they don't move too much. "ere's no pigs walking around on the farm anymore. ey're in a con- fined housing operation to control disease. ey've been walking around in their little building. Nothing more than a 30-foot square, depending on the size of the pens," says Wallin, who was at JBS's corporate office in Colorado before succeeding Cliff as plant manager. How the pigs can pant. Shallow breath. ey walk some 300 yards through a tunnel underneath the railroad tracks and up the other side, to slots that lead to death. e eye spies Eduardo Rodriguez looking for non-ambulatory pigs. Rodriguez once knew a similar al- ways-watching eye while growing up in Cuba under Castro's dictatorship. "We're practically born in a jail," he says, his En-