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In May, The Intercept reported on a gruesome mass-extermination technique being used by Iowa s largest pork producer, Iowa Select Farms, to kill large numbers of pigs which were deemed unnecessary and in need of depopulation due to the pandemic. The technique, called ventilation shutdown, or VSD, involves cutting off the air supply in barns and turning up the heat to intense levels so that most pigs — though not all — die after hours of suffering from a combination of being suffocated and roasted to death. The pigs who survive this excruciating ordeal are then shot in the head in the morning by farm employees. A video report produced by The Intercept and the video documentarian Leighton Woodhouse based on footage obtained inside an Iowa Select barn by DxE as the pigs were slowly dying was viewed by more than 150,000 people.
Numerous veterinarians were shocked by the use of this unspeakably cruel and gratuitous mass-extermination tactic, which imposes extreme, protracted suffering on highly intelligent, socially complex, sentient animals. And it created serious problems for the industry, with McDonald s demanding an explanation it could use publicly, and even discussions from the National Pork Producers Council to invent a new, more pleasant and euphemistic name for the extermination technique:
One of the veterinarians indignant about ventilation shutdown extermination programs was Dr. Heath. She was part of a group of hundreds of her veterinarian colleagues to launch a campaign urging the American Veterinarian Medical Association to withdraw its approval of the use of this technique in limited, proscribed circumstances. Though the AVMA says it was not involved in the specific use of the extermination technique by Iowa Select, its guidelines approving of VSD were, as The Intercept documented, cited as justification by the company and its allies.
Dr. Heath was quoted in one news report on the controversy as saying: I believe the majority of AVMA members do not approve of VSD except as a last resort depopulation method and AVMA intended VSD to be used only in extreme conditions of infectious or zoonotic disease outbreaks or natural disasters. AVMA approval has allowed pig and poultry producers to use VSD as a cost-savings procedure to cheaply destroy unprofitable or excess animals.
Due to her criticisms of these factory farm practices and her work with DxE in advocating industry reform, industry groups focused on her. In one email from April, a vice president of the Animal Agriculture Alliance, Hannah Thompson-Weeman, revealed that an alert had been sent about Dr. Heath to California members, accusing her of engaging in extreme activism and encouraging groups to spread the word to your veterinarian contacts in California where Dr. Heath practices using private, members only channels.
Following that alert, Dr. Heath began experiencing targeted campaigns against her online and within her profession. Though it cannot be proven that this was the result of the Alliance s alert, what began happening to her for the first time in the wake of that alert tracked the language used against her by these industry groups. (The Alliance and Thompson-Weeman did not respond to The Intercept s request for comments. Thompson-Weeman locked her Twitter account yesterday after we previewed this article and the SYSTEM UPDATE episode. The AVMA has denied that it was involved in Iowa Select s use of VSD.)
What perhaps alerted the Alliance was one veterinarian group that accused her of being part of an active campaign to cause as much harm as possible to our clients and ourselves, announcing that they had alerted the Alliance about her. Veterinarian groups on Facebook posted their own warnings about her, and she was banned from some groups. Comments began appearing on her own Facebook page, purportedly from other veterinarians, accusing her of deranged activism, being a liar who makes up stories, bastardizing our profession through every available method, and claiming that she is literally, by name, a topic of conversation in board rooms from Ag business to organized veterinarian medicine across the nation. Your name is literally toxic.
What alarmed Dr. Heath most was the emergence online of anonymous flyers which contained a BEWARE warning at the top, along with her photo and a string of accusations, some of which were false, that claimed she harbors an agenda that doesn t include anything positive for our profession and expresses fondness for domestic terrorist organizations. It warned that even allowing her access to the social media pages of veterinarians could be dangerous, and thus urged that she be blocked from all online forums, personal profiles, and social media groups.
It goes without saying that this sort of a campaign could be devastating to the career opportunities or ability to earn a livelihood of any veterinarian. Fortunately for Dr. Heath, she believes her hard-earned reputation with area clinics developed over many years will enable her to continue to work, but she believes, for very good reason, that alerts and campaigns of this sort would make it extremely difficult if not impossible for her to find work anywhere else. For a younger or less-established veterinarian seeing what was done to her, they would obviously think twice about speaking out or working against the factory farm industry, the obvious goal of such campaigns.
That the U.S. Department of Agriculture was in possession of the emails and other documents circulated by industry groups, and thus produced them as part of the FOIA request, indicates that, at the very least, government officials are being included in these discussions (the flyer about Dr. Heath and other social media postings regarding her were obtained by The Intercept from Dr. Heath, not by the FOIA request). What is clear is that the animal agricultural industry essentially operates their own private surveillance and warning networks, and uses their extensive influence within the halls of government power to aid their efforts to punish and retaliate against its critics and activists.
Dr. Heath is my guest on this week s SYSTEM UPDATE. The episode, which can be viewed on The Intercept s YouTube channel or on the player below, first reviews these new documents in detail obtained by the FOIA request, and I then speak to Dr. Heath about what she has endured as a result of her speaking out against this very powerful industry.
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