Viewers Cringe at Slaughter Video While USDA Spins
You wouldn’t think you could “spin” a video that shows slaughterhouse workers electric shocking downer cows, “water boarding” them, jabbing their eyes with herding paddles and ramming them with forklift blades while they squeal in pain, posted at www.hsus.org, but USDA is trying.
Bad enough the slaughterhouse, Hallmark Meat Packing Co. in Chino, CA, supplies the National School Lunch Program, a certain portion of children have already eaten the meat.
Bad enough US downer cattle are, according to Cattlenetwork, “being forced to their feet in order to pass inspection and be processed,” in violation of mad cow regulations, USDA inspectors were onsite–at the plant–while the video was made.
Bad enough Jack-In-the-Box and In-N-Out have pulled beef from the Chino slaughterhouse, what happens to the five year long charm offense toward Asian nations since the last mad cow scare?
You’d be spinning too if you were USDA!
Just look at the history.
Less than two years after diners in 11 restaurants in nine California counties ate meat from the first US mad cow according to the San Francisco Chronicle, newly appointed US agriculture secretary Mike Johanns who left last year vowed to reverse the ban on downer cattle.
“I supported Ann Veneman when she announced that–just to assure the public that we were aggressively on top of this issue,” said Johanns. “But gosh the testing that has been done [shows the risks are low] and our animals have done well.”
A year into Johanns’ tenure, the Houston Chronicle reported 29 downers untested for mad cow got into in the food supply because inspectors “did not believe that they had the authority” to go into the animals’ pens.
Meat executives tried to claim the animals suffered injury after passing inspection–which would make slaughter legal–but investigators found no records of injuries after arrival for 20 of the downers that ended up on US dinner plates.
How can USDA spin a video that’s convinced 150 school districts from New York City to Los Angeles to quarantine their meat? Called “something out of Dante’s Inferno” by Gene Evans of Oregon’s school system?
Well first of all, “there’s no evidence that any of the animals, particularly downers in particular, did in fact enter the food supply,” said Dr. Kenneth Peterson, assistant administrator, Office of Field Operations for USDA’s Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) in a conference phone call on Thursday. “Now perhaps they moved them in an unacceptable manner but the fact remains, did they go into the food supply?” he told reporters. Maybe “the facility was moving them back out of the slaughter chain.”
Right. And maybe they were taking them to dinner and a movie.
Then there’s the fact that the video represents “allegations” only pending USDA’s own investigation says Peterson to which Bill Tomson of Dow Jones News Wire responded incredulously, “I mean, do you actually expect to go down there and ask them if they were doing anything illegal, and people to say, well yes we were?”
There’s also the fact that no one has gotten sick yet, say FSIS officials, deliberately confusing bacteria like e Coli and salmonella which cause treatable conditions that make you sick right away and can be cooked out of food with the mad cow prion which is an untreatable replicating protein that is virtually indestructible and manifests years later.
Then there’s the fact that the downers in the video aren’t battered from unremitting abuse on mega dairy farms which created mad cow disease by feeding dead cows to live ones–a cheap and plentiful protein for rBGH frenzied metabolisms–they just have broken legs and hips from unfortunate accidents, says Peterson.
The important thing is the USDA mad cow prevention system that relies on filtering out Specific Risk Material (SRM) like brains and spinal cords–isn’t an entire downer SRM?–and the unsupervised honor system known as HACCP, works!
So well, restaurants who got the meat won’t be notified says Peterson, because, “I have a lot of information from this plant both on the obviously the inspectional side but also plant records…that all point to a singular conclusion that the product coming out of the plant not only meets regulatory requirements but is safe and wholesome.”
We believe their meat is safe because we believe their meat is safe.
But reporters weren’t buying it.
How can inspectors observe slaughter activity and “be discreet” when “all the workers know who they are?” asked the Oregonian’s Andy Dworkin.
“It seems like maybe the folks had outsmarted the inspection system,” observed Steve Cornet with Beef Today. “Is this a system that’s…easily circumvented?”
“Just so that I understand you clearly, you suspended Westland [a distributor of the Hallmark meat] for…allegations rather than what an inspector directly observed?” probed Steve Kay of Cattle Buyers Weekly, possibly wondering what USDA is being paid for if the Humane Society is doing its work.
Yes, responded Peterson. Any more questions?
Martha Rosenberg is a cartoonist for the Evanston Roundtable in Evanston, Illinois.
Here is an informative read on BSE cows spreading prion disease in the U.S. in the early ninties.
From: The Brain Eaters:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/2505braineater.html
For endless reading on various forms of prion disease, try www.mad-cow.org
US agriculture secretary Mike Johanns, appointed by george w. bush
/edited for clarity.
one fuck up after another…
/and 30% of the country still continue to defend this kinda of crap.
dearest 30% of americans,
did you know that goerge bush doesn’t give a shit about you, your family nor anyone you know either?
maybe you should stop voting according to who’s more religious or who’s willing to overlook evidence showing that all their assumptions are just the opposite of what’s correct.
but i suppose, get the fools on your side…
As long as our fat happy society continues to scarf up twice digested beef, the beef industry will continue to meet the demand. Hopefully the videos will be widely viewed and the chewy red stuff will start to stick in our throats.
How about those slaughterhouse workers getting some sort of brain disease from cleaning out pig skulls?
Because there are people who just love pig’s brains.
In Florida people are slaughtering deer-using spear guns, because they are angry about environmental laws affecting development.
Humans are a failed species.
People who think otherwise cant see straight because they have their heads up their rear ends in self adulation.
Gross! Go vegetarian!!! It’s so easy to do now. :o)
If they lie about WMDs they will lie about the shit they feed you.
Hoa binh
kelmer - Last summer I visited my home town in western Montana. Deer are still protected outside of hunting season, but their numbers are up so that you see them in the middle of town standing in front yards and sometimes munching unfenced flower beds. It is a very charming thing to a Bambi hugger like me. But I started hearing a lot of deer-bashing from Montanans, who want very badly to be allowed to shoot them. Stuff like: “Yeah they tell you deer are gentle, but they ain’t. Actually they’re mean as hell.” or: “I’ve seen a deer push a white man right off the sidewalk.” or: “the only good deer is a dead deer.”
Not to say that Montanans don’t have a soft spot in their hearts for animals. They line up around the block for licenses to participate in the annual Yellowstone Park buffalo shoot, motivated by pity for all the animals that will starve if the herd isn’t thinned. It is very moving to see all those unshaven rednecks clutching their rifles, their cheeks full of Copenhagen, their eyes brimming with tears….
You simply arent a progressive if you eat meat. You are a regressive. That is fact.
Why so surprised? It’s Faith Based Food Service. “I looked into the eyes of that there cow and I could tell it was a dern good cow, see. Not a sicky, but a dern good cow. My gut tells me all dees cows is dern good, too. See, the Mer’kin peeple have to un’erstan - the President’s job is to protect the peeple, from angry ter’ists and angry cows and any other animal planning to launch Bi-O-Logik-call Warfares on the peeples, see…”
This cruelty at slaughterhouses is one problem that everyone should be outraged about. As a former cattleman that treated his animals like one of the family, it pains me to hear about such abuses being tolerated by the companies or the government authorities. I do not know what we can do but call attention to this and get on our congresspeople.
Did somebody say they were surprised? We’re animals just like cows are, except we have this genetic predisposition to brain tumors that we euphemistically call “cortexes,” as if they’re normal and healthy and make us evolutionarily superior, rather than the diseased mutants we are.
If you don’t personally know the person who raises your meat, you should be a vegetarian.
Although I’m a vegetarian, I’m open to small amounts of self-raised meat raised as part of an integrated system, like Permaculture. Animals can provide many services besides being crammed into tiny pens and force-fed fossil-energy-intensive feed. They can lead long, happy lives of mutual benefit with humans, and then eaten as a final sacrament of thanks. But that is certainly not how factory farming works.
How different things would be if humans had predators! I would think it an honour to provide nourishment to such beasts, if that was to be.
Oh wait… we do have predators. I forgot about the banks, the capitalists, the government pretending to be caring for us while sending us off to slaughter. No matter; I can take this with grace; to them, I say, “Eat me!”
If we just got rid of inspections and regulations in the food industry, the market would solve this problem as well as medicare and social security funding.
No one would live long enough to collect medicare and social security.
Wow, a video shows incredibly horrible abuse of animals and the question is, how does this affect me?
It’s OK to torture animals as long as when we eat them, we don’t get sick?
There’s something wrong with this article.
We’ve had this discussion before. I’m waiting for the meat-eaters to come forth and proclaim all the “good” practices they employ in slaughtering just to satisfy their selfish little tastebuds.
Kernel wrote: As a former cattleman that treated his animals like one of the family…
So when Uncle Tom got old, how did he taste? Or did he need extra seasoning?
Yup, meat-eaters will say anything to justify their denial.
The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated … I hold that, the more helpless a creature, the more entitled it is to protection by man from the cruelty of man. - Mohandas Gandhi
The link below is to the Human Society videos of how animals are treated at factory farms and slaughterhouses.
http://video.hsus.org/
Perosnally, I have eaten “reasonable” amounts of meat all of my life. These videos are making me rethink my position on this. I agree with Jan (above). I am going to have to take personal responsibility for my choices now that I know how I have contributed to this nightmare. Starting today, I am going to make sure that any meat, eggs, or dairy products are sourced from farms that humanly treat their animals. I will source directly from our local farmers or my local co-op. Of course that means that I will have to pay a fair price to the farmers which will be higher. That means I will have to do with less meat. I do not consider that to be a sacrifice. It is the least I can do.
And to WTF, you need to understand that many humans will always be meat eaters. It’s not a good idea for vegetarians to make “war” with us because it will do nothing for better treatment of farm animals. The moral issue is how the animals are treated, not that they are eaten. It’s all a matter of balance. The one thing I’m sure we can agree on is that the factory farms that are causing these attrocities out of greed are the enemy. Not each other.
This is the same USDA that refused to allow one of the slaughterhouses in the MidWest to inspect every cow for Mad Cow Disease (as is done in Japan) because, since this would exceed the USDA requirement that only one in many (can’t remember how many .. thousands?) be inspected, it did not comply with the USDA regulations.
They wanted to do TOO good a job of inspecting.
Oh! No! Not here in the US!!
Mad cow disease might just solve our population problems.
Imagine 5 years from now people start showing the symptoms of mad cow disease. Followed by more cases and more and more and more….
Untreatable, almost for sure death that comes many, many years after eating the meat.
Forgiveness, maybe that explains the 48% of the population who voted for Bush.
Heh, that makes a lot of sense to me.
No pressure or rancor from me–I used to be the kid who ate the marrow out of the hambone and hid the bacon under the couch cushions so I could enjoy it at my leisure. But I’ve been a vegan for almost 10 years now, and I highly recommend it for many, many reasons.
I’m a vegatarian. What else can I do? I’m asking for a real answer. What else can I do? I always send off Calls for Actions for any animal issue. I want to do more…
Um. Most humanely/ sustainably raised, small family farmer type meat is still “processed” at slaughterhouses that “process” conventional, factory-farmed animals. The overall quality of life of the animals may be improved overall, and the environmental impacts may be mitigated, but if it’s the horror of the slaughter itself (like this article is mentioning) that’s turning your stomach, you best know the folks who kill the animal as well as the folks who raised it.
My guess is that most of our friends at CD are like Rebel Farmer and enjoy a nice steak from time to time. We all grew up doing this.
Some change is incremental. 20 years ago I was a smoker, and I strongly resented a pack of busybodies telling me I couldn’t stub out my cigarettes in my mashed potatoes after dinner or fire up a cigar while sitting on a passenger plane next to an elderly lady (I have done both of those things). I stopped smoking in 1990. Today a few defiant smokers remain among my good and valuable friends, though I can’t imagine why they would want to smell that way.
The slaughterhouse video is opening some eyes, so we who no longer eat cows and pigs should not get on our high horse at this point. It is hard to be consistent with the no-meat thing. Though I am appalled at the treatment of chickens, I still eat poultry and a little fish. I feel bad about it, and will probably quit when I get some better eggplant recipes. I know people who won’t eat cheese or drink milk. I don’t know if I can give those up. My point is that we are all someplace out in the moral middle, and we should applaud anybody who is willing to adjust their lives to any degree because of better awareness or the clamor of conscience.
I worked a summer in an industrial egg producing facility in rural Quebec some years back, and the incredible brutality and sadism I witnessed there gave me nightmares and made me automatically retch if I tried to eat eggs or chicken for years later.
After six weeks in the incredibly crowded cages of this facility, you could not recognize the poor creatures as chickens. Missing most of their feathers, eyes, bloody, broken and unable to walk, our job was to grab these birds, by any means necessary, and throw them into a truck. Where did the truck go? To a chicken soup plant a few towns over. Unable to sell these bruised and battered chickens as whole chickens, the egg plant owners would sell them to be made into soup base. As if their lives were not hellish enough to that point, these birds would be flung, often after being battered against the pillars of the plant and kicked a few times for fun by the sadistic workers, who were mainly teenagers and weird illiterate country bumpkins. The chickens, nearly dead, would be transported in unheated trucks to the soup plant to be battered and likely boiled alive to make soup . . .
I found myself trying to pay off my debt to chicken-kind living on a Guerilla “Urban Farm” any years later. The concept of the Urban Farm was that chickens could be a well-loved members of a anarchist commune because they loved to eat compost and produced great poop that allowed for incredibly successful organic gardens. The community embraced us and brought all their compost and we hosted daily school groups, urban crazies, rough native folks, mohawked punks, everyone and anyone. The chickens ate compost and day-old bread and bagels from a local bakery. As we and our visitors turned the compost, the chickens were on worm and bug eating overdrive. No one was allowed to eat the chickens, but they produced an abundance of the best eggs I ever ate. I had made peace with myself, and every morning, would sit with multiple chicken friends and we would eat day-old bagels together. Our gentle revolution fired up the whole community as more and more people grew huge gardens and kept their own compost-eating chickens.
One day, a young man came knocking on the door. He explained he was a worker in an industrial meat hen facility. His boss wanted him to kill a box of surplus chicks by stomping on the box with his boots. He told me he just couldn’t, and had run away . . . with the box, which he had smuggled out and brought to our place. So we adopted these meat hens to add to our flock of urban chickens. Soon enough, in a matter of weeks, these genetic mutants had swollen up plump and barely able to support their own weight. We had to dispatch them by hand which we did as humanely as possible . . . the first and only birds we had to kill. Our other egg-laying birds were well-loved, trained to come on command, socialized to be picked up, and often shared in our meals. They lived long lives and either died of old age or were killed by racoons. Oh ya, and many of them chose to sleep twenty feet up in a laurel tree. Laurels have low branches, and these chickens would hop, hop, hop until they were way up above the farm in a tree.
“Mad cow” disease - much like HIV/AIDS amongst healthy heterosexuals -hasn’t happened & just ain’t gonna happen.
You may have a lot of resasons that justify your choices - but please - cut the BS about BSE.
How many years has it been since the big cow kill in the UK? Bring out your dead! Bring out your dead!
What? No corpses? Must be Karl Rove telling Rupert Murdoch to keep blonde murder victims front & center so we won’t notice the funerals.
I suppose all you PETA types can keep hope alive - and contiune to try and scare each other with your voodoo.
I’ve been a vegetarian for about 13 years now, but I usually don’t approve of the shock&awe tactics of many animal rights groups. I’m a vegetarian because I believe it to offer the least impact on the planet, given my current living situation (basically on some of the most fertile soil in the world). If I were living at the fringe of society, a tiny town in Canada at the edge of the bush, etc. it would make more sense to hunt & fish locally than to eat processed/transported foods from hundreds of miles away.
I have nothing but contempt for sport hunting, though. Killing for sport can’t even be seen as a primitive vestige — subsistence/traditional humans killed in order to survive.
I have no interest in watching the video myself, because my imagination suffices. But the basic disconnect in the modern era is that the uniformly shaped burger in your hand, from the drive-thru at McDonalds, was a living, breathing and shitting cud-chewing mammal not long ago.
I’ve toured auto manufacturing plants, and other factories and found it quite fascinating to see how things are made. Breweries are one of my favorites. Why don’t people like to tour slaughterhouses? The other industrial activity, interestingly, that most people would probably never want to tour is a sewage/waste management plant.
Now we have a worthy item! The preservation of American’s precious bodily fluids is very serious business. A million dead Iraqis haven’t entered American consciousness but this surely will; it involves food, and specifically meat. Eating sick animals is nobody’s favorite thing.
Immediate action must be taken to preserve America’s right to get fat without poisoning of one’s bodily fluids. Feed the downers to the Iraqis.
ABE W GOODMAN
well i love your transgression from a factory farmhand to a saviour of chickens. and funnily enough, just the other day i witnessed a group of chickens and a cockrel perched up in a tree. i couldn’t believe my eyes and wondered how on earth they had got up there. but got up there they had. it was an amazing sight with the sun setting behind them and the cockrel stretching his neck to crow. i did think it was an unusual time of the day to be crowing………….but then i’m not a cockrel.
G L TIREBITER
unusual name you have………..probably goes with your unusual fixation with voodoo
Those people in Montana are shooting at the last remaining wild Bison in America. They are protected in Yellowstone and the only thing they do is wander outside of the park for food. They also shoot them from helicopters after running them to near death.
To Rebel Farmer. As much as I respect and enjoy your posts, I cannot agree with you on this one. Allow me to take your very words, change 3 nouns and 1 verb in 2 sentences, and see how it reads:
[Y]ou need to understand that many humans will always be violent. It’s not a good idea for pacifists to make “war” with us because it will do nothing for better treatment of innocent people.
See, even though the logic is identical, it makes no sense to a progressive wanting universal peace. Thats why I wont buy into your contention.
The moral issue is that we are all equal. We all have to share this planet and its resources. Only supremacists think otherwise.
Paul Bramscher asked: Why don’t people like to tour slaughterhouses? The other industrial activity, interestingly, that most people would probably never want to tour is a sewage/waste management plant.
Having spent 61 years in abject curiosity, I have toured a abattoir. People will not go through one because it is sickening and terrifying. It also forces people to face horrifying death. Most people are terrified of death.
I have also toured waste-water treatment plants, and can assure you that it is really fascinating! Although you will be convinced that the water is safe to consume, you will never go near bottled water again. One reason why my well taps into an aquifer that pre-dates native America Indians.
So people don’t protest the ongoing slaughter in Iraq but they protest the slaughter of cattle?! Doesn’t anyone see something WRONG with this view? I mean they are cows. COWS. These are not people, they are not (despite attempts to prove otherwise) sentient in the same way as people. We are NOT naturally vegans no matter what people try to tell you. Have we all gone crazy? We care more about the lives of cattle than we do about the lives of HUMAN BEINGS! Grow up, people.
NorthATheBorder is clearly a newbie. Take note, junior:
1) The current thread is about slaughtering animals. For CDers commenting on the Iraq war (and violence in general), look at the zillion other threads on CD.
2) I can hear your mother calling. Dinner is ready.
I believe that no matter how many peiople choose to not eat meat, as is their perfect right, there will always be a great many that will want to. We need to keep the pressure on anyone that is involved in the raising or the processing of animals, also the authorities responsible for oversight. My own belief is that if animals are taken good care of during their lifespan, then a quick death to furnish food to people that want it is not a terrible thing. Some brood cows live better lives than some people do for 12-15 years and have only two uses at death, food or rendering for other uses. It is unfortunate that some animals have to be caged and penned up for their lives, but all we can do is work for their humane treatment, as we will not be returning to the days when every farm had a few cows, pigs, chickens, and others running around on the loose. I do not believe in raising veal calves in crates with no chance of normal life.
NorthATheBorder: I care about people, and I also care about cows. It’s not so crazy when you think about it.
I raise and eat my own organic beef and I can tell you that this video sickens me. But why isn’t anyone commenting on the quality of the cattle involved? These are dairy cattle, not beef animals. And one has to ask, “How long before these videos were taken were these animals being milked, with their milk going into production?” I have seen similar old, sick animals at a Federally licensed slaughterhouse in my area, and it makes me sick to think of their meat getting into the human food chain. The huge production dairies need to be held accountable for putting these cattle into these circumstances.
NorthATheBorder,
Your attitude is precisely the problem. Cows ARE sentient - look up the definition. As far as I’m concerned, any cruelty to animals is an abomination and should be a capital crime, for the same reason that crimes against children are particularly heinous. Animals are innocent and completely in our care. That doesn’t mean we can’t have farms and eat meat, but where is the respect for life and the gratitude for the life of these animals? People who work in slaughterhouses are either sadistic psychopaths or illegal immigrants. No one with a choice and normal empathy would ever work in such places. And where do you get the idea that people who are concerned about animals care less about humans, especially humans who have done us no harm, like Iraqis? You’re the one who makes a distinction where there is none. You either care about living things or you don’t, and you obviously don’t. You’re the one who needs to grow up.
If you want to talk about the Iraq war go to another thread? I don’t think so. 1 million dead cannot be confined to the appropiate threads. There is nothing more important than stopping the rape of Iraq. The same is true for Palestine. There is a link here, man’s capacity for inhumanity is visible everywhere. Cows, Iraqis, it is the same people doing both.
Wouldnt it be nice a disease that only affects human carnivourse and omnivores.
This kind of thing needs to be advertised more so people have to think about what thay are eating while they are eating it.
Slaughter house videos for all
If I eat enough mad cow burgers… then I’ll forget I ever saw that terrible video. Maybe I’ll even forget these last 8 years under Bush.
caroler -
When you say “capital crime” you do mean “put to death those found guilty” right?
‘Cause the Irony there is just sooooooo Hi-larious!
As far as Sentient, I’ll give you pigs, and maybe cattle if they’re really bright. But sheep? chickens? c’mon that’s a bit of a stretch.
Doesn’t really matter though, cruelty to animals, cruelty to people, cruelty to ANTHING says something bad about the people practising it and raises concerns for all of us.
But some of you “veggie-people” and PETAish folks seem always circling -like CARRION EATERS, waiting to dive onto any relatable subject to Peck at the bloated Flesh of your human co-existers who “still” eat the concetrated protein and calories in “meat”.
The Irony is as delicious as the nutrient-packed animals that I often kill and eat. yummm.
—————————————————–
Factory Meat farms - BAD.
Factory Meat Slauterhouses - BAD.
Factory Plant Farms - BAD.
Factory Plant processing Centers - BAD.
If we could only find the commonality linking all these, we could focus on altering that, and get over these squabbles.
Now, what do they have in common?…hmm,…anybody spot it?… caroler?…anybody?
have fun,
-matti.
It took me 50 years to learn this-
Heat is energy. Cold is not. Cold is simply the relative absence of heat. One cannot manufacture a machine that produces cold. To make something cold, remove the heat.
Light is energy. Darkness is not. Darkness is simply the relative absence of light. One cannot manufacture a machine that produces darkness. To make something dark, remove the light.
Compassion (love) is energy. Evil is not. Evil is the relative absence of compassion. To make something evil, remove compassion.
The degree to which one lacks compassion is the degree to which one serves evil. This is true regardless of religious beliefs, political alignment or anything else.
Imagine yourself in a giant auditorium with all of the lights turned off. Total darkness. In your hand is a flashlight. A flick of the thumb sends a beam through the darkness. While the flashlights beam is not infinitely powerful, all of the darkness in the universe, if you could bring it into the auditorium, would have no effect on it whatsoever. There is no battle between darkness and light. Darkness is powerless. The battle takes place in the thumb.
The same thing can be said for the trigger finger. The battle between good and evil does not take place “out there” where the bullet is. It takes place in the finger.
Open the door to a dark room. Does the darkness flow out or the light rush in?
Truth Faerie
The_truth_faerie@yahoo.com
I’ve found that as I grow older I no longer see an axis of good vs. evil. I can’t even cleanly define the words any more. But what I do know is that there is generosity, reason, compassion and self-determination. And there is greed, ignorance, hate and oppression.
truth faerie: love your post.
satr9prodxns and lizard: again right on the money-while this in part can be an issue to (again) discuss vegetarian choices it really is about the bigger picture, almighty profits and the administrations irresponsibilities and incompetence and harm to this planet. We are all one, with each other, with the planet, and with every living thing (at least those beings and creatures that have a face). Our ability to reason should have allowed each of us to arrive at this conclusion. People 5000 years ago began to figure this out. Rich white men will be the last to know.
10 years ago I married a woman who did not eat cow. Rather then cook two different meals every day, I followed suit in order to simplify things. Thank God I did. The few times I have tried to eat beef at restaurants, I have become violently ill…even had to call in sick once. I now stay as far away from that crap as possible. Besides prions, there are a multitude of reasons not to subject our bodies to this poison; hormones , uric acid and fat to name a few.
Try it…you won’t be sorry. Just the sight of a hamburger on a commercial turns my stomach. They say you are what you eat. Perhaps this explains why Americans have ceased to be the hearty individualists they once were and are now just a mindless heard waiting to be told what to think, what to like, what to eat.
Good to see yet another thread about the problems with industrial agriculture in one of its more animatedly gruesome forms. Cruelty to animals, to people, to ecosystems is rightly decried on CD from several different perspectives, and I’m glad to see that this is no exception.
As a conscientious occasional meat eater myself (yes, I know that I’m going to hell and that I can’t call myself a progressive and that I don’t deserve to be posting on this thread and that my killing of animals for food makes me a warmonger because all violence of any kind is identical and immoral etc. ad nauseum) I’d like to offer a quick recommendation for folks who want to try to find local farms in their area to wean themselves off of industrial meat without going vegetarian or vegan. Check out www.eatwild.com for info about farms that raise pasture-fed animals of all kinds in beyond-organic ways. Go visit the farms yourself, meet the farmers and animals, and see if everything stacks up to your values.
If you’d prefer actual wild meat, take a hunter’s safety and education class (usually through your state’s Dept. of Wildlife) and challenge your idea of what hunting and hunters are (always all) like. You might find that there are overpopulated wild animals in your area whose populations can be restored to a healthy balance with more historically appropriate levels of predation that civilized humans have eliminated (along with the wolves, bears, and big cats). If you kill your own there is no question of slaughterhouses, and you might just find yourself more strongly connected to the ecosystem in which you live.
Also, if you can find no way to morally kill animals for food then it’s best to avoid eating meat altogether (tip of the hat to WTF - nice to see your posts again).
Everyone who is saying just go vegetarian is kidding themselves. Just one reason why.. do you have any idea how many wild animals die when the land to grow all of your soy protein is cleared (mostly virgin rainforest)? It’s burned, treated with herbiicides, and otherwise cleansed of all the important species that once inhabited it. Beyond that, animals die in harvest… mice and other small rodents ground up in combines,etc. The solution to this and many other issues is not for everyone to stop eating meat, it’s for ALL humans to be more involved in the producion of their food wheather by seeking out local suppliers they know whose operation they can see first hand or, if possible, growing/raising their own food. This problem will persist as long as the majority of people are satisfied with not knowing and now wanting to know. It will be more difficult to get back to that point now that we have allowed ourselves to drift so far off course, but, in my opinion, it’s the only way out.
I toured a sewage treatment plant years ago. It was fascinating. Turns out I had been drinking treated wastewater my whole life, since my water was pumped downstream from the plant. It never made me sick, but it did taste bad. That was probably the minerals, though. I’m convinced that there was no human waste in it by the time I got it.
Now I live next door to a sewage treatment plant. It only smells when the wind blows from the southeast, which, luckily, it rarely does. I feel safe in assuming that urban sprawl will not come too close to me, since how many people want to live by a sewage treatment plant?
Simple Sauce - My deceased mother and father were bird hunters. My brothers hunt, and many of my friends who are good and honest people with whose ethical underpinnings I have no quarrel. But if it were up to me I would ban hunting altogether and leave “wildlife management” to trained experts who take no pleasure in it. Hunters are full of rational justifications for the practice of barging out into nature looking for things to kill. We eat what we shoot. If we didn’t shoot them they’d starve. Our ancestors did it. God made us fond of deer meat. Etc. I believe that the vast majority of hunters just like to watch the fur fly and things fall dead, and in that way it is akin to soldiery. If we removed from the army everybody except those truly concerned with bringing representative democracy to the arabs, we’d have a pretty small army. Likewise with hunters, if we issued licenses only to those truly concerned for mother nature and denied them to people motivated by the thrill of stalking living creatures and blowing them into oblivion, we’d have very few Elmer Fudds in the woods. The fact that some perverse thing in the human animal enjoys killing is the thing that interests and disgusts me. It is the troll under the bridge, the common denominator skulking behind our national gun fetish, the death penalty, war, simulated tv murders, sadism, snuff porn and sport hunting, and I think we ought to pull the creepy bastard up into the sunlight and have a look at him.
Vox-
We all have our notions of what we’d do if we were in charge… I guess I don’t understand your point, other than to say that the hunters you know personally are moral but the vast majority are trigger-happy sadists. The origin of said trigger-happy sadism is debatable, and I don’t believe that it’s innate in all humans, but you seem to disagree.
I’ll give you a quick example of “wildlife management” left to the experts. In Rocky Mountain Nat’l Park, the wildlife managers have wanted to introduce wolves to restore the migratory habits of the elk herds. They can’t for many political reasons (namely the ranchers and the yuppies). Thus, they’re doing the next best thing: bringing in military sharpshooters to cull the herd, since the elk are over-grazing the foliage and destroying sensitive and rare ecosystems in the park. They thought about having a licensed hunt, but decided against it because they didn’t want bad press if someone got sick because some of the elk have shown signs of Chronic Wasting Disease. For similar reasons, they were planning to destroy the entire animal remains, including the meat.
One point that I think you’re missing in leaving management of wildlife to professionals is that their single most effective tool for population management is to issue hunting licenses. How else do they achieve their targeted herd numbers in the absence of natural predators?
Now that we’re far off topic, why don’t we look at the nature of industrialization, division of labor, and the origins of the disconnection that so many of us feel from the natural world? To me, that’s where we start getting at your “creepy bastard” whose perverse sense of morality allows such abhorrent behavior.
I’ve seen some of the hunters you’re talking about, and likewise I’ve seen some equally cruel, inhumane, and dangerous vegetarians. It seems to me that whether one supports sweatshops or oil barons or factory farms or ocean trawlers or illegal loggers or coal power plants, there’s a cruelty to life and to the natural world that manifests itself through our actions, whether acknowledged or not.
For me I think that bringing life down to a more human scale is what we need. I want to participate in my ecosystem, which means that to eat what is abundant here is to hunt. Therefore I take life to support my own, and not without acknowledging what a responsibility that entails. In my view, hunting is a tool, just as is agriculture (which does violence to the land and the plants consumed), to feed humans in our environments. I think that it’s worth it to look at all of the tools that we use and evaluate which ones fit our values and which ones do not.
Simple Sauce - Thanks for your response. I need to learn to speak more clearly. I’m interested in the psychological origins of human predation and sadism because I think it underlies a lot of the problems it creates for ourselves and what remains of the natural world. My friends and family love watching the fur and feathers fly as much as anybody else. I used to love it myself, and probably still do at some medullar level.
I don’t argue with the issuance of hunting licenses as a means of wildlife management, given that due to human encroachment it seems to require management at all. I don’t think the Fish and Wildlife Service suffers from the compulsion to dominate animals, although the people they give those licenses to might. That enjoyment of killing is all I’m pointing to, and it is something I find in all kinds of people, not just Blackwater and meat industry employees but also nice people who teach their kids to pop squirrels with the .22s they got for Christmas. As you say, we’re all capable of cruelty and inhumanity. It reveals itself in every disconnect between ourselves and nature from the removal of mountaintops in Appalachia to cowboys competing in rodeos to prove their superiority over barnyard animals. Hunting is not the problem if you happen to be a bushman with a hungry family. Dilettante hunting, hunting with our buddies in our florescent Walmart hunting vests and our Budweiser and our manhood issues, hunting for a set of antlers to nail up over the fireplace, hunting for the joy of killing is, however, caused by the same hidden virus that has decimated most of the wildlife on this planet and is going to get us too if we don’t start noticing it.
A few points:
1. The simplest answer is to become a vegetarian. Doing so will not only avoid the cruelty to animals as described in this article, but it will be the quickest way we can do something about global warming. And not eating meat frees up huge areas of arable land that could be used to plant crops, crops which could far more efficiently feed people than cattle ranches can.
2. Since not all people will become vegetarians, perhaps we should enforce already existing cruelty to animals laws.
3. If you have to eat meat, maybe you should buy meat only from local, meadow-raised beef farms. Sure, it will cost more than regular meat, but Americans eat far more meat than is good for them already. Is it impossible to eat meat, say, once a week, instead of twice a day?
4. People who are cruel to animals scare me because allowing yourself to be cruel to animals is just one step away from allowing yourself to be cruel to humans.
Rabbits!!! They’re easy to raise…you can mass produce them in your own back yard, thus controlling what they eat (clover, grass, kitchen trimmings, left over lettuce, etc) without chemicals or hormones. They are virtually fat-free and go from birth to ideal slaughter size in six to eight weeks. One buck and four does will produce all you can eat year round. Yes, you must kill them and skin them but isn’t it about time you quit paying someone else to do your killing for you? I make it a spiritual thing and thank them for their contribution to my existence while acknowledging I too will someday be food for others. And fresh? I can have the rabbit out of the cage and into the pan in under five minutes. Depending on how you cook it it can taste like chicken or chicken fried steak or almost anything else. The composted manure is far superior to any chemical fertilizer for growing the best tasting veggies you have ever had…the trimmings of which go back to the rabbits. Takes about 20 sq. ft. of space and you can re-enter Mother Earth’s cycle as you were meant to.
As a wise person once said,”Life is nature’s way of keeping meat fresh.”
Matti -
No irony intended. I realize nuance is perhaps beyond your reach, so let me spell it out for you: I am not opposed to killing in all circumstances. I’m pro-choice (1st trimester only); think the death penalty would be entirely appropriate for bush, cheney, greenspan, and assorted other traitors (Greenspan because he said he manipulated the interest rates in this country to affect presidential elections); eat meat on occasion, but never from factories (that means only from local farms raised as humanely as possible); and I’m not opposed to war in all circumstances (for example, overthrowing dictators to prevent genocide). But I am opposed to concentration camps for animals, also known as factory farms; to hunting for sport (but not meat); and to all other forms of animal exploitation. If I saw someone committing acts of cruelty to animals, I would hurt that person very badly. I wouldn’t think about it for a second. That’s why I can’t look at these videos. I know this stuff happens all the time, and there is a simple solution to start with, which is to not exempt agriculture from animal welfare laws (at the state level, and perhaps federal too). Yes, they are currently exempt. If you treated your dog or cat like these a-holes treat cows and pigs, you would go to jail like Michael Vick (which rarely happens by the way), but the big farm boys got an exemption for themselves. So, let’s get to work and remove that exemption. While we’re at it, let’s overturn the “Animal Enterprise Protection Act.” If you try to protect animals, like the dairy cows in the video, that law says you’re a terrorist. I agree, Matti, factory farms are an abomination. If people are concerned, write to your representatives(assuming they’re not part of the problem, and if they are, work to get them out of office). Let’s get these laws changed.
Watch this film to forever change your view on our fellow species. I warn you that it is extremely disturbing. Stop being ignorant to the massive suffering that we humans cause.
http://www.watch-movies.net/movies/earthlings
ICantBelieveItsNotDemocracy,
The goal is to decrease one’s footprint, no sensible person is arguing that it’s possible to walk on air.
voxclamatis,
I believe it was both John Muir and Thoreau who’ve spoken out against sport hunting, and as I recall Dick Proeneke (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Proenneke), a hunter himself, has also made negative comments about sport hunting. There is sustainable hunting for survival, and there is sadistic joy of killing.
Some people have commented that housecats often toy cruelly with their prey, if they should catch a mouse, whereas their wild counterparts do not — they hunt only to kill. I believe that humans were never meant to live in cramped quarters, windowless cubicles, 100% on the grid, controlled, spied on, stamped, branded, and owned like domestic livestock. It is an unnatural social arrangement which probably gives rise to sadism. At least, this explains hunters who live in the cities, and drive out of town on weekends.
I have no explanation for rural people. Boredom maybe? I’ve seen many rural people who have little or no respect for the very environment they live in. Rather than as a place to relax, soak up the scenery, read, hike, contemplate, etc. — it is a place to cut, shoot, fish, erode with ATV’s, and generally lay waste toward.
To RMouse: ouch!
“You simply arent a progressive if you eat meat. You are a regressive. That is fact.”
For one thing, that is opinion, not fact.
So it’s black and white then…if you don’t do it ALL right, then NONE of it counts?
Okay, so say I go vegetarian, which I certainly should. I’ll be pure , right? Oh wait a minute…what about the vegetables I eat..won’t they have been picked by badly treated migrant farm workers? I can’t buy all local because we can’t grow vegetables in winter up here. And how about the packaging my vegetables come in? Probably made of plastic. Isn’t plastic a petroleum product? So now I’m supporting the oil companies, and through them, the war.And the factories that produce the products pollute, and that’s bad for the animals.
Plus- how to I get to the place where I buy my vegetables? Can’t drive or take public transportation- that would use oil. I guess I’ll walk or ride my bike. Now , who made my shoes and how were they treated? And what materials are they made of? Neither plastic nor leather is good. Where was my bike made and by whom?
I know- I’ll go live in the wilderness somewhere and make everything I use myself. But then I won’t have a computer or a phone or transportation (they use electricity- bad for the environment), so I won’t know what’s going on and I won’t be participating in the political process. Which helps no one.
Another point- is just not eating meat really enough? I mean, that’s like saying you are helping in the fight against child abuse just because you don’t personally abuse any children.
Maybe I could just kill myself. Then I wouldn’t be polluting (much) or eating or using anything!
Anyhow, imagine my relief at finding that as long as I eat meat I am a “regressive”! Nothing I do matters when I am committing that sin. So I guess I can abandon all my political and volunteer work because it’s all meaningless anyway as long as I eat meat! Wow, life’s going to be easier from now on.
Factory farming reeks of suffering, greed and filth: Can one ingest such stuff without being contaminated? I think not. Greed turns everything ugly, untouchable, inedible.
Right on you guys!
Hey if I can stop eating meat and wake up, and I’m no Einstein (who was a vegetarian) then anyone can. Especially if there is meat substitutes out there like www.veggiebrothers.com
which can send it right to your door, and dont make you feel like your giving up anything.
Hey there is even a YouTube video link on the Veggie Brothers web site to show you how simple it is. Lets stop the insanity, and start living in peace, love, health and higher awareness for the consciouness of our actions.
IT’S ENOUGH TO MAKE YOU A VEGETARIAN!!! Can YOU say, “Vegetarian diet!”, kids? Vegetarianism reduces animal cruelty and thus, suffering. Reducing suffering makes Buddhists moan in orgasm. Just like The Edge of U2 embracing his Inner Scientist. Oh baby, oh baby, I’m SO a vegetarian tonight baby…. like, eating meat is SO 20th century, man!!!!