Excerpt from Il Fatto Alimentare: forty days after Greenpeace published a video showing dozens of rats inside the sheds of a pig farm whose animals were destined for La Pellegrina’s Prosciutto PDO supply chain—a company controlled by the Veronesi Group (AIA)—new footage reports similarly serious conditions at another facility linked to the same company in Bondeno, in the province of Ferrara, at a farm owned by Società Agricola Allevamenti Cascone, a contract supplier under a soccida arrangement (*) to La Pellegrina.
Photos and videos verified by Greenpeace also document, in this case, a rat infestation throughout the facility and in the pens where the pigs are kept. Conditions are disastrous: pigs with severe wounds, hernias, lacerations to ears, and tails that are often bitten and mutilated. The images show carcasses left abandoned in an advanced state of decomposition, being eaten by other pigs, and clear signs of inflammation consistent with prolonged contact with feces and urine…
(*) Soccida is a contract between a farmer (in this case, Cascone) and a contracting party (in this case, La Pellegrina). Under the contract, the farmer receives weaned piglets, feed, and sometimes medicines from the contracting party, and is responsible for raising the animals. At the end of the cycle, La Pellegrina collects the animals and sends them to slaughter, where they will enter the Prosciutto PDO supply chain and other PDO cured-meat supply chains.
Photo below: Il Fatto Alimentare
