Are videos of animal cruelty in farms & slaughterhouses generally representative & factually true?
Please see following example:
Is it really this bad?That video presents a mixture of truths, half-truths, and lies.
To take a fairly cut-and-dried example, pigs may indeed be gassed to death with CO[sub]2[/sub]. But, this is an approved, humane procedure. It’s not painful, like the video says it is.
One of the videos of a dead pig looked like rubber, but everything else looked real. However, just because something is real doesn’t mean we know the provenance of it. Some of it may be staged, some an isolated incident (presumably followed by someone getting fired), some filmed on other countries with traditional practices that wouldn’t be accepted in the US, and some completely unrelated. For all I know, the picture of the pig with the bloody face could be from a veterinarian’s office, of a piglet that accidentally hurt itself.
Ultimately, “ethical” and “humane” aren’t rigorous terms. I can’t guarantee that, if you investigated the reality of the situation, that you would agree that the way we raise and slaughter animals is humane. Pigs probably are raised in - what would seem to us - to be extremely crowded situations, if not completely immobile. A mama sow is basically forced to lie still for 4 months after giving birth, for example. I might be happy enough lying in bed for 4 months, but I would have a TV, some books, and hopefully a cute nurse. The sow just has to stay immobile and bored.
On the other hand, we’ve basically been treating animals like this for thousands of years. If you put a human or a wild animal into a situation like this it would probably kill itself, go insane, cause problems, and be unable to breed. Domesticated animals are relaxed, breed on cue, and there’s no measurable spike in their body chemistry to indicate stress or dissatisfaction despite these situations we keep them in. It’s likely that we’ve bred them to be, basically, born lobotomized. All the ancestral pigs who weren’t happy to be in a crowded, boring, situation didn’t reproduce. The ones who were okay with that did reproduce and thousands of years later, we’re left with a breed of animals that seems to be pretty amenable to crappy treatment.
Personally, I’d suggest voting for vat-grown meats. Then we don’t have to worry about stuff like this anymore.
I wasn’t aware we could vote on reality, why didn’t anyone tell me?!
I believe Sage Rat was referring to the inevitable debates that will occur in a few years, when vat-grown meats become commercially feasible. You’ll have the cattle industry lobbying for a ban on “Franken-Meat” (or at least for huge taxes on vats) and eventually you may be able to choose sides in an election.
Yea I know I was joking, I wish I could vote for vat grown meat though 
But just think - they’ll sell the meat like they sell milk - pick your fat content: lean, 1%, 3.5%, 10%…
You’ll also have the same people that make videos like the one in the OP lobbying and advertising against it, as well.
The video is generally factually true – actual video taken onsite. (Though often edited, with only part of it released.)
The audio accompanying the video may or may not be true. A narrator can say anything they want about what is happening, even completely false descriptions of ehat the video shows. And added sound effects are quite common.
And generally neither are very representative of actual daily activity at the site. If it was an everyday occurrence, they wouldn’t have to go undercover for months to get those few minutes of video.
Can’t speak to the factory farms, can speak to a limited number of slaughterhouses.
Not as savage as usually depicted; could be made more humane.
The transportation from farm to factory is what seems horrible, not that I think there is any animal precognition. Imagine spending your life with hooves on the earth (or even cement), then suddenly you’re hurtling at 65 MPH down a highway, odds are, facing backward. If there’s any aspect of the animal industry I could change, this would be my first or second choice.
NM
You may want to get the other side of the story, too.
Dr Temple Grandin, a leader in humane animal handling, has made several videos that walk you through the slaughter process at a well run facility. Ones that are up to her standards of animal treatment. They might be interesting for comparison purposes:
Beef
Her handling guidelines are found here:
http://www.grandin.com/RecAnimalHandlingGuidelines.html
I am fairly familiar with Grandin’s work, which is why I say that there are more humane processes to be found: hers.
Chicken and turkey slaughter can be pretty nasty, especially if there’s a size differential among the birds. Think about how often, if you buy whole birds, how often you find leg damage to joints or less often, bones. It’s pretty frequent.
The way to get insight into the answer to the OP’s question is to consider this one:
Would have anybody have a personal interest (however misguided) in creating or disseminating such videos that are not generally representative and factually true?
They will not happen unless somebody makes them happen, so consider motivation.