 The Real Food Festival is supporting a new, harrowing documentary that has been made by Tracy Worcester, called Pig Business. The film shows how big corporations are selling us inferior meat, putting small farms out of business, seriously damaging the environment (and getting taxpayers to clean up the mess!), and causing untold suffering to workers, communities and to pigs.   Channel 4 was due to broadcast this in Februry but it was cancelled because of legal fears. A planned screening at the Frontline Club in London earlier this year was also called off.
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On Wednesday 27th May, London's Barbican centre was forced to delay a screening of the film after Smithfield's lawyers wrote a letter saying that the film was defamatory and included untrue claims. The show went ahead when the filmmaker, Tracy Worcester, signed an indemnity taking personal responsibility for its content. The public need to see this film and it is disappointing that Smithfield, a company that controls a quarter of the pork market in the US and which slaughtered 26 million pigs in 2006 has been able to block it so far. Particularly when you discover that this is the compant that was fined $12.6 million for illegally discharging pollutants into the Pagan river in Virginia.
A spokesman for Smithfield said that the company had never threatened to sue the filmmaker or tried to prevent the film being screened, but had requested that inaccuracies or false allegations be removed. |
