PIGS
Outrage After Pig Abuse Videotaped, Followed By The Usual Empty Promise Of Change
CRUELTY IS STANDARD PRACTICE IN PIG PRODUCTION, and the video just released by the advocacy group Mercy for Animals proves it.
The nauseating video, which depicts workers slamming sick piglets to the ground for quick killing, and being castrated or “docked” without anesthesia, was shot by a worker who deliberately sought work at Iowa Select Farms.
“I saw things that will haunt me the rest of my life,” the undercover animal rights worker, a vegetarian, told the DesMoines Register Wednesday.
Like the dozens before it, the video is provoking a storm of reaction from the media, as well as the usual denial and spin from the company.
“We will pursue this investigation thoroughly, and we’ll take any appropriate action that needs to be taken,” Howard Hill, the company’s senior veterinarian and director of external affairs, told Time. He said the video “does not really depict what happens on our farms day to day,” and charged in a previous interview that the video was staged.
Yet, according to Time, “nearly all of the practices shown in the video actually qualify as ‘standard practice’ in the pork industry.” Mercy For Animals wants to change that reality, but there’s little likelihood of that happening until the public is outraged.
It’s one thing to be a meat eater; it’s another altogether to tolerate the blatant inhumanity exposed on the video below.
So far, three of the four retail chains whose pork is supplied by Iowa Select Farms — Safeway, Kroger and Costco — say they will stop doing business with Iowa Select Farms. A fourth, Hy-Vee, tells Time says they’re “following up with all of our suppliers to … make sure that they’re following the accepted industry standards for the treatment of animals used for food.”
We already know that answer to that: this is standard practice. So until consumers either demand new legislation or seek out meat from farmers who slaughter humanely, we’ll have blood on our hands.
2 Comments
Cases of animal abuse are widespread and well-documented and they are not isolated incidents. And in this latest incident, Kroger, Safeway, and Costco must have thought the video showed rampant abuse because they have suspended purchases from the supplier in the video.
Any time someone turns on the video camera, they can find abuse because it is standard industry practice-and for a very good reason. Abusing animals adds a large percentage to the profits of factory farmers. The more animals are crammed into smaller spaces, moved quicker through assembly lines, and treated as machines instead of the creatures they are, the more money they make. That’s why the tail-docking, castration, debeaking and overcrowding are standard practices. It’s cheaper that way.
Last year several spokespersons for the egg industry admitted that grinding live male chicks up in a wood-chipper-machine or suffocating them in plastic bags was standard practice. That they can advocate this with a straight face- while denying abuse — tells us about the depths of their inhumanity.
Cases of animal abuse are widespread and well-documented and they are not isolated incidents. And in this latest incident, Kroger, Safeway, and Costco must have thought the video showed rampant abuse because they have suspended purchases from the supplier in the video.
Any time someone turns on the video camera, they can find abuse because it is standard industry practice-and for a very good reason. Abusing animals adds a large percentage to the profits of factory farmers. The more animals are crammed into smaller spaces, moved quicker through assembly lines, and treated as machines instead of the creatures they are, the more money they make. That’s why the tail-docking, castration, debeaking and overcrowding are standard practices. It’s cheaper that way.
Last year several spokespersons for the egg industry admitted that grinding live male chicks up in a wood-chipper-machine or suffocating them in plastic bags was standard practice. That they can advocate this with a straight face- while denying abuse — tells us about the depths of their inhumanity.