New Lawsuit Challenges Hormel’s “Natural” Claims as Misleading

Late last year, COK’s gut-wrenching undercover video inside a Hormel Foods pig slaughterhouse went viral. The footage not only exposed extreme cruelty, but it also called into question the efficacy of the USDA’s high-speed slaughter pilot program, known as HIMP.

This shocking story continues to garner attention — including a temporary USDA shutdown of the facility and a powerful letter opposing HIMP sent to the USDA by 60 Members of Congress. As the expansion of the HIMP program is still pending, we’ve asked, “Big Pork vs. Consumers: Whose side is the USDA on?”

And now Hormel is generating new headlines.

Yesterday, the Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF) filed a lawsuit against Hormel alleging that the company is misleading consumers through its marketing claims on a line of meat products known as “Natural Choice.”

According to the complaint, Hormel’s claims that “Natural Choice products are natural, clean, and wholesome are materially false and misleading.” The suit further alleges that “All animals raised and slaughtered for Hormel’s product lines, regardless of whether they ultimately become Natural Choice products are raised on industrial, pharmaceutical-dependent factory farms. The animals are raised completely indoors in abusive conditions and given hormones, antibiotics, and other drugs. All animals are sent to the same processing facilities, where they are slaughtered in the same inhumane way.”

More details, including an investigative video inside a Nebraska-based Hormel pig supplier, are outlined in the must-read piece in New Republic by Ted Genoways: The Stomach-Turning Truth Behind Hormel’s “Natural” Pork.

You can also take action to stop the dangerous high-speed slaughter of pigs by signing and sharing our brave investigator’s Change.org petition.

And while Hormel uses the slogan “Make the Natural Choice,” we say “Make the Compassionate Choice” by leaving pigs and other animals off our plates! Get started today at TryVeg.com.