Realtor Says 1,000 Abandoned, Starved Pigs Is "Very Normal"

Editor's Note: The quotes from Rebecca Glesner, Dennis Bumbaugh, and Gary Sheeder originally appeared in an article by Jim Tuttle in Public Opinion.

Realtor Rebecca Glesner of Long and Foster Real Estate has a listing for a 218-acre farm in Fulton County, Pennsylvania. She knew there had been some dead animals up there and said she wasn't concerned about the effect on the property's selling price. "I think this is very normal in a lot of farming operations, that you're going to have dead animals."

To be more specific, she's talking about nearly 1,000 pigs who had been abandoned months ago to die of starvation.

I know it's a tough market out there, but that does not qualify as "very normal."

Pennsylvania Humane Society officer, Dennis Bumbaugh, said he's never seen anything like it. The pigs had been kept in buildings on the farm, and though a few managed to escape and die outdoors, most were still shut in as they wasted away. "It was a horrible situation," Bumbaugh said. "They struggled and fought to get out."

The farm had belonged to Daniel and Kerron Clark, who had separated in recent years. Daniel had been living on the farm and reportedly left — abandoning the pigs — sometime in August. It was only after recently acquiring the property that Kerron returned after a two year absence and made the gruesome discovery.

Union Township Supervisor Gary Sheeder was shocked to learn that the pigs had all been left behind to starve. "This is unbelievable as far as I'm concerned. I can't believe, with as many kids as [Daniel Clark] had, that life didn't mean more to him."

We know that pigs are not only intelligent and able to feel pain, but they also have complex emotional lives. Being locked inside barns, without food (and likely without a water source), amid the panic and dying of other animals around them would have caused immense suffering.

Pennsylvania state animal cruelty laws prohibit abuse, ill treatment, neglect, abandonment and "[depriving] any animal of necessary sustenance." Like many states, farm animals fall outside the protection of the law if they're part of "normal agricultural operations." But as Laura Allen of the Animal Law Coalition points out: "There is nothing 'normal' about this, and nearly 1,000 counts of animal cruelty could mean justice for these animals."

Pigs are regularly subjected to abuse in animal agriculture, from the use of gestation crates, which keep sows so tightly confined that they can't turn around or extend their limbs, to allowing farmers to use any means necessary, including dragging with chains and moving with forklifts, to get "downed" pigs — those too sick or injured to move on their own — to the slaughterhouse floor.

Yet even among the institutionalized cruelty considered "standard" by the agriculture industry, leaving a 1,000 pigs to starve to death is not normal.

Join the Animal Law Coalition in urging Fulton County authorities to prosecute Daniel Clark and anyone else found to be responsible for the suffering of these pigs to the full extent of the law.

Photo credit: mattyturner