Those who, by their purchases, require animals to be killed have no right to be shielded from the slaughterhouse or any other aspect of the production of the meat they buy. If it is distasteful for humans to think about, what can it be like for the animals to experience it?

~Peter Singer

Farm to Fridge

I recently joined the organization "Mercy for Animals." While perusing the information on their website, I came across this video entitled "Farm to Fridge" which provides a brief glimpse on the torturous life of animals.

If you continue to consume meat you should be required to bear witness to the suffering you cause.  

Your Holiday Feast

As the holiday season approaches, the murder and sale of turkeys, chickens, ducks, fish, and pigs will skyrocket.   I thought it would be the perfect time to highlight the lives about the animals whose carcasses will grace your holiday tables this holiday season.


Let's start with the pig.

Smithfield Farms, a multinational company, is the world's largest producers of pigs for slaughter.  The company raises approximately 14 million pigs a year and  produces 1.4 billion pounds of pork each year. The pigs raised by Smithfield  are sold under a number of brand names including: Patrick Cudahy, Stefano's, Krakus Ham, Cook's Ham and John Morrell. If you eat a pig in the U.S., it is safe to assume that you are eating a pig raised, killed and sold by Smithfield.

In 2010, the Humane Society of the United States conducted an undercover investigation of Smithfield Farm factories after a worker sent anonymous pictures showcasing the abuse and torture faced by the animals.

Disclosure: Smithfield responded to the backlash caused by the above video by terminating 4 employees. They further promised to eliminate gestation crates from the facilities by 2017. However, Smithfield recently put out a press release that they would be unable to meet their 2017 deadline due to the economic downturn.  In other news, Smithfield just reported one of it's most profitable quarters ever - I'll let you draw your own conclusions.

Unfortunately, the torture of pigs raised for slaughter is not a exceptional occurrence; it is the norm in facilities all over the U.S.

"One time I took my knife . . . and sliced the end of a hog's nose, just like a piece of bologna. The hog went crazy for a few seconds. Then it just sat there looking kind of stupid. So I took a handful of salt brine and ground it into his nose. Now that hog really went nuts, pushing its nose all over the place. I still had a bunch of salt left on my hand - I was wearing a rubber glove - and I stuck the salt right up the hog's ass. The poor hog didn't know whether to shit or go blind . . . . I wasn't the only guy doing this kind of stuff. One guy I work with actually chases hogs into the scalding tank. Everybody knows it, all of it."

"At an industrial pig breeding facility in North Carolina, videotape taken by undercover investigators showed some workers administering daily beatings, bludgeoning pregnant sows with a wrench and ramming an iron pole a foot deep into mother pig's rectums and vaginas . . . In other videotaped instances at the farm, workers sawed off pigs' legs and skinned them while they were still conscious."

"At another facility operated by one of the largest pork producers in the United States, some employees were videotaped throwing, beating, and kicking pigs; slamming them against concrete floors and bludgeoning them with metal gate rods and hammers."

"At another farm, a yearlong investigation found systematic abuse of tens of thousands of pigs. The investigation documented workers extinguishing cigarettes on the animal's bodies, beating them with rakes and shovels, strangling them, and throwing them into manure pits to drown.  Workers also stuck electric prods in pigs' ears, mouth, vaginas and anuses. The investigation concluded that managers condoned these abuses, but authorities have refused to prosecute."

Even without the active brutalization by factory workers and managers, the pigs live a miserable existence. A pregnant sow will spend her entire gestational period - a total of 16 weeks- in a "gestation crate." These gestation crates, as documented in the video above, are so small that pigs are unable to turn around leading to large open sores all over their bodies. As they are not allowed to roam free and expend energy, the pregnant pigs are often underfed to prevent weight gain and ensure that they will fit in the crate. The gestation crates have slatted floors and the pigs must lie in their own feces to force it through the slatted floor. After her 16 weeks of torture, the sow is not released from her confinement, and instead is pumped with hormones to make her ready for artificial insemination within 2 to 3 weeks.

"One worker said it's necessary to 'beat the shit out of the [pregnant pigs] to get them inside the crate, because they don't want to go' . . . Another employee at a different farm described the routine use of rods to beat the sows bloody: 'One guy smashed a sow's nose in so bad that she ended up dying of starvation.'"

Once the little piglets are born, they are kept in the same confined space as the mother, causing them to bite each other in an attempt to get their mother's milk. Instead of providing a larger area for the mother and her piglets, the factory farms solved the problem by ripping out the piglets' teeth and cutting off their tails within 48 hours of their birth - with no anesthesia.

In nature, piglets are weaned at 15 weeks, in factory farms they are weaned in as little as 12 days and separated from the mother so that she may be inseminated again. Once weaned, the piglets are pumped with vitamins and minerals and fed dried blood plasma to make sure they gain weight rapidly. Piglets that do not gain weight at an astronomically high rate are a drain on resources and are picked up by their hind legs and bashed onto the floor. This practice is so commonplace it has an industry name - "thumping"

"We just swing them, thump them, then toss them aside. Then, after you've thumped ten, twelve, fourteen of them, you take them to the chute room and some are still alive, then you have to thump them all over again. There've been times I've walked in that room and they'd be running around with an eyeball hanging down the side of their face, just bleeding like crazy, or their jaw would be broken."

I would love to be able to write a poignant conclusion to this post, but I truly do not know what to say. No matter how many times I read about the accounts of SYSTEMATIC animal abuse in factory farms, I am repulsed each and every time. The emotions I feel after reading about the daily indignities and torture these animals are subject to is immense anger at carnists for refusing to change their eating habits, anger at businesses who treat animals like commodities, and anger at the government for turning a blind eye to injustices in order to protect big businesses. Lastly, I am heartbroken at the sheer panic, frustration, and pain these animals are subjected to every second of their miserable existence.

*All quotes are from multiple investigations done over a number of years as quoted in "Eating Animals" by Jonathan Safran Foer.