Along a cordoned-off stretch of highway in Ohio, state troopers and other emergency responders work late into the night, wrangling hundreds of piglets that sprang loose from an overturned semi-truck. The driver failed to negotiate a curve while hauling a trailer of 1,900 piglets, according to Ohio State Highway Patrol records. Most escapees were left to roam the interstate ramp. But some were flung to their deaths.
The aftermath of this crash is captured in police bodycam footage from November 2023, obtained by the legal advocacy group Animal Partisan. It shows a livestock farmer approaching Sgt. Jeremy Wheeland, of the Ohio State Highway Patrol (OSHP), to ask a favor: direct the media to stop filming before the emergency crew unloads the dead piglets from the trailer.
It’s part of a broader pattern of police deference to the meat industry in preventing media access. In videos from three livestock crashes reviewed by Sentient, police deliberately block the media’s access to crash sites beyond what is reasonable to protect public safety, citing concerns about animal rights activists…