I think most people don’t support this kind of mistreatment but the main reasons that Big Meat is still allowed to do things like this are 1) most people just don’t want to think about how the meat they eat is produced and 2) there is a lot of money and political power dedicated to upholding the status quo for the meat industry.
It’s not like this cruelty is even a necessary part of producing meat. I have been a vegetarian for several years but my SO is a meat eater. We stopped purchasing conventional grocery store meat forever after finding out about this sort of behavior. We now only purchase meat from a local farmer who keeps his animals humanely or at our local natural food grocery store which already has humane standards for their meat department. It’s not hard and it’s really not that expensive.
Good for you. Not everyone lives within range of a local farm. Nor can people and families already living hand-to-mouth afford to pay several times more per pound for meat.
BTW, this “cruelty” is more of a result of shitty labor laws than anything else. When you make barely over minimum wage chopping off pig heads every day for years and years, you get inured to seeing them as anything but “product”. Much the same way that a jaded tech support call center rep doesn’t see their callers so much as real people with real problems who need real help, but as products–for which they do as little as humanly possible to get them off the phone as fast as humanly possible (and maybe eke out a slightly better average time, meaning more money). These kinds of jobs are all assembly-line at their heart, and people get fucking bored.
I don’t think animal cruelty is alright, but I don’t think it’s reasonable to demand that everyone go to grass-fed hippie meat, or that it isn’t hard. It is fucking hard for some people. Fuck that.
That’s terrible! But I’m even more distressed by the Time “Magazine” Quote of the Day listed at the bottom of that page:
*
“You’re honor, the defense rests.”*
JOSE BAEZ, lead attorney for Casey Anthony, wrapping up the defense’s case in the murder trial of Anthony’s 2-year-old daughter; Anthony did not testify in her own defense
Tail docking is nothing major.
Botching castrations IS.
Keeping adult pigs in small pens isn’t major, but it is distasteful.
Animals with uterine prolapses should be euthanized promptly.
Piglets squeal at everything. Moving them roughly isn’t harming them.
Most of the injuries in that video were from other pigs, who will eat each other. That is unacceptable practice if it occurs often. In any commercial scale breeding operation you will have still borns, weak infants and the like. I’m not scarred by the poor dying piglets. It happens. In the wild or on a free range far, the sow would likely eat the runts if they can’t make it.
So mostly I see a rather unethical commercial farm that has a few poor practices. They need a visit from the FDA and the local animal authorities. Yawn, Next. :rolleyes:
Well, it’s also the scale and structure of the factories. Even well-paid slaughterhouse workers with good healthcare would be inclined to see them as product in such surroundings.
So I would say it’s the result of shitty environmental and animal-treatment laws (or shitty enforcement), and other direct and indirect subsidies for “big meat,” as well as the shitty labor laws.
Eating good meat is hard and expensive for most people in the present system, but it’s hardly just a meat issue. Eating good food is hard and expensive for most people. In many cases, for health and economy the best decision unaffluent folks can make with respect to meat is to not depend on it. If the choice is between “conventional” meats and “conventional” plant foods, even cheap meat is a rip-off.
I’ll grant that the accusations, if true, are distasteful and probably unnecessarily rough on the animals, and that they could be treated more gently without sacritifing efficiency.
But i’ve never bought into the idea that just because something is distasteful or “gross” means that it’s wrong. That’s the same kind of “Look at this picture of an aborted fetus!” thing that pro-lifers use to try to make their case. (And i’d be surprised if most of THOSE photos weren’t just baby dolls and hog intestines anyway.) The slaughterhouse industry is dehumanizing, for certain, but it’s also because of industrialized agriculture that we’re able to produce enough food to feed hundreds of millions of people in a land that only supported 25 million a few centuries ago.
Oh, FFS. The choice is not between horrible animal torture abuse meat and ridiculously priced happy animal sunshine meat. There are other options; for instance, if you can’t find a meat producer that treats their animals in a way you find appropriate for a price you can afford, you could always. . . not eat meat. Hell, when my budget is tightened and I can’t get the good stuff, I just go without. There are oodles of ways to have a balanced vegetarian diet, whether it’s a temporary adaption or permanent. Frankly, I’d rather go vegetarian for the rest of my life than eat meat if my only choice was a company where workers are literally finger raping turkeys. (Fortunately, there are options than Butter Ball).
Sorry, but I’m so sick of this argument being made on the Dope constantly. “WAH! THAT’S NICE FOR YOU TO SAY, RICHY RICHER, BUT WONT SOMEONE THINK OF THE POOR PEOPLE?!” Look, nobody is saying that everyone can afford grassfed happy steaks, but that is just one of many options. If your choice is that you aren’t hip to those options, that’s fine, but let’s not pretend you’re faced with some impossible decision due to the circumstances of your finances here.
Being fair to the OP, the vast majority of people in America and Europe could. For starters the western diet is way too heavy in meat. On average we’re now eating about twice as much meat as we actually need for protein, and cutting back would actually be beneficial health wise. Secondly, we’re pretty shit now at using ingredients effectively, obvious examples being the purchase of chicken breast rather than a whole chicken, from which you can get twice as many meals for similar price.
So quite why you reckon they’re a douchebag for stating something that is true, if annoying…nope, don’t get it.
Gary just reminded me that I need to learn how to cook a whole chicken. I’ve never done it but he’s right: the more processed the meat is, the more expensive it becomes. My Mom used to buy whole chickens, take the guts and giblets out, etc. People work more nowadays and there’s often less time to fix a meal like that. Or people are squicked at dealing with a carcass. Or fucking lazy. Or all of the above.
So in my adult life, its been breasts all the time. Chicken breasts.
Piglets and pig can squeal a lot. You really need to see the video without the sound. That’s when the cruelty and horror exposes itself to me.
And more disturbing than the blood are those God awful stalls and crowded conditions.
Why do they have to have their tails docked anyway ?
Why can’t their castration be bloodless ? Takes too long ? Three to four minutes as I remember being told.
I used to spend time on my uncles farm in the summer as a kid and he used to keep several dozen pigs or so, not including piglets. They were quite noisy when not feeding . I never saw blood, or docked tails. I know he used a bloodless clamp for castration of bull calfs but I never saw that operation. I do recall feeling squeamish about the metal eartags.
I’m glad we get our meat from a local hobby farmer friend. These animal at least have some sense of a comfortable life.
I’ve seen one guy say that the bloodless castration is actually more cruel–at least in lambs. That Dirty Jobs guy did it the humane way, and the animal was out of commission for days, versus just a few hours with just hacking them off.
