With his thinning white hair and black Polo-style shirt with a Niman Ranch “Raised With Care” logo over his heart, Paul Willis looks like a kindly grandfather. This soft-spoken man certainly doesn’t look like a pig killer. But that’s the business he’s in. Willis, a high-profile spokesman for the “humane meat” movement, co-founded and manages the Niman Ranch Pork Company, a division of Niman Ranch, whose purchase was recently announced by Perdue Farms, the third biggest U.S. factory farm company raising chickens. In addition to running the Niman Ranch Pork Company, in years past, Willis raised between 2,500 and 3,000 pigs a year on his Willis Free Range Pig Farm in Thornton, Iowa, two hours north of Des Moines. He still raises hundreds of pigs each year, part of the nine billion land animals a year slaughtered in the U.S. annually. At about six months of age, Willis’s pigs are driven to the Sioux-Preme Packing Company, a slaughterhouse in Sioux Center, Iowa, where they are gassed and have their throats slit. Willis is responsible for the slaughter of far more pigs than the ones he raises on his own farm. The Niman Ranch Pork Company is a network of over … Continue reading “Humanely Raised” Claims Challenged at a Berkeley Butcher Shop