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Swine Industry President Interview Anti-Specist Activist in U.S. Fox Chain
  • A different voice came to viewers of the Fox Business TV show on 23 December last. Presenter María Bartiromo thought Dennis Organ was the president of the giant company Smithfield Foods, but he was actually an animal rights activist. The initiative has been used to denounce the practices of this company in the pig industry.
Lander Arbelaitz Mitxelena @larbelaitz 2020ko abenduaren 30
Ekintzaile antiespezista batek Fox telebista engainatzea lortu du bere mezua zuzenean zabalduz.

Following the style of entrepreneurs The Yes Men, direct Action Everywhere (DxE) has managed to deceive the conservative TV channel Fox, which premieres next Sunday. Program journalist Mornings with Maria Bartiromo interviewed entrepreneur Matt Johnson thinking Dennis Organ was the president of multinational Smithfield Foods. Johnson has taken advantage of his television presence to denounce the abuses that this company is making in public health, in the environment, in animals and in their workers. The journalist Bartiromo, later on in the programme, has denounced the deceit.

The dialogue has started innocently, the Journalist has asked about the spread of COVID-19 among workers at the Smithfield Foods plant in South Dakota. Johnson, as if he were Organ, said that as President he wants to extol the value and dedication of the workers and that they will improve the workers' protection teams. However, two minutes later, the dialogue has been taking another path, when the interviewee said that he promises that from now on they will begin to act more transparently and that he also knows the responsibility that plants have like his to provoke new pandemics.

The entrepreneur has denounced to thousands of spectators – also later, for the impact that the initiative has had on the world – the responsibility of the funeral company. "The pandemic is hitting global society hard, the sky is burning, slaughterhouse workers are dying and billions of animals are suffering needlessly. The signals cannot be clearer: we have to do something now." For about six minutes he has been live on television, until the interviewee has realized he was "fooling".

 

According to DxE activists, this action has been part of the No More Factory Farms campaign launched by the Caja Laboral Foundation. The Government is being called upon to avoid the new pandemics of the future by allocating a moratorium on the construction of large slaughterhouses and large farms. DxE activists enter farms, slaughterhouses and other buildings, documenting animal abuse and rescuing injured and sick animals. In recent years, initiatives have been taken against leather products, particularly in California, which have denounced that they are in the FBI's sights.

This practice was taken advantage of by entrepreneurs The Yës Men on more than one occasion, entering the role of those responsible for the big companies of the world and giving interviews in the mass media. The documentary The Yes Men Fix the World can be seen in the multimedia channel of ARGIA with subtitles in Basque, thanks to the distributions Eguzki Bideo.