‘Brazen’ pigmeat producer jailed for cruelty
Horrific evidence of pigs being cannibalised was heard at Cork Circuit Criminal Court. Pigs were also deprived of a proper water supply in rat-infested pens during hot, sunny weather. Other examples had been presented during the sentencing of Rory O’Brien, aged 60, whose brazenness, in defying department officials, was noted by Judge Seán Ó Donnabháin.
The defence had presented a catastrophic financial background where O’Brien owed over €22m.
But the prosecution claimed basic management would not have cost much. Furthermore, it could have spared animals terrible cruelty on a farm which housed up to 20,000 pigs. Department of Agriculture inspector John McConville said: “Mr O’Brien had choices — the pigs had none.”
Judge Ó Donnabháin said he had never came across anything like the cruelty on the farm of the accused at Killicane, Mitchelstown, Co Cork, between May and September 2011. He said: “This is cruelty on an industrial scale by one of the biggest pig farmers in the country.
“On a continuous basis he knowingly and without regard [acted in this way]. When first confronted by the department he openly defied them. He wrote to them more or less looking for a gold medal for his treatment of pigs. What brazenness.
“I have no doubt this man was financially in a calamitous situation but that does not excuse or explain the level of what was going on here. It is not [the] individual cruelty, it is that it went on in the face of departmental involvement over a prolonged period.”
Judge Ó Donnabháin accepted defence submissions O’Brien was a hardworking man who developed the business and worked tirelessly to build it up and maintain it.
He said: “I do accept he pleaded guilty and that it would have been a particularly long trial. It is very much on the higher end level of welfare and cruelty cases.
“If convicted by a jury I would have had no difficulty imposing the maximum sentence of three years.”
