Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumBuried-Alive Chickens Exposed at Nation's Second-Largest Producer
No excuse whatsoever for this.
http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/24478-buried-alive-chickens-exposed-at-nations-second-largest-producer
After watching Pilgrims Shame: Chickens Buried Alive, its tough to decide which is more disturbingthe combination of physical abuse and inhumane killing of chickens or the murderous mentality of the animal farmers who were secretly taped earlier this year.
The brief video and accompanying report on CNNs Erin Burnett Out Front actually makes a case for the latter. Hearing an animal farmer laugh about creating a gravy that is simmering and squirming from the buried-alive chickens he had just finished abusing is about as chilling as anything uncovered by an animal rights activist in recent years.
The video was produced by Washington DC-based Compassion Over Killing (COK), which had an investigator pose as a wide-eyed intern to get access to the atrocities at Prince Poultry, a North Carolina chicken factory. That factory supplies Pilgrims Corp., the second-largest chicken producer in the country. Aside from its own line, Pilgrims supplies chicken to huge companies like Walmart, Kroger, Costco, Chick-fil-A, Wendys, Burger King, Publix and others.
chervilant
(8,267 posts)one key reason to choose a Vegan lifestyle.
flvegan
(64,412 posts)If only there was something that each of us could do to eliminate this sort of thing?
Oh, wait...
stuntcat
(12,022 posts)They had a whole pile-on back-slapping thread about it, followed by a group smack-down of end-civers.
Real good crowd here
Tumbulu
(6,292 posts)And inhumane practices that are standard need to be criminalized.
One major problem is that all sorts of people have this idea that eating cheap meat is some sort of human right. If you ever raised any livestock (I do) you would learn fast how hard it is to raise an animal humanely. To kill it humanely requires real design of facility (thank you Temple Grandin, et al) , and well paid employees and no rushing allowed. This again raises the price of the meat.
So, meat becomes something for only those with lots of higher disposable incomes. Or for those willing to hunt it themselves or raise the animals themselves. And then you have a bunch of people whose idea of humane is not at all my idea, or perhaps your idea.
There is this effect of people in these industries just getting used to being cruel. And this is not minor. They have to or else they cannot produce the meat for anything other than super high prices. The market will not pay for it. And they begin to think of animals as units rather than as beings. Beings with feelings and relationships with each other.
I do eat meat. I eat the meat from the roosters that grow up and fight each other. I eat the meat of the ram lambs who knock me down or beat up the older wethers. I do take these animals to the humane slaughter facility. But, that does not mean that I don't feel bad about it. I think once we divorce ourselves from the fact that it is plain mean to kill another animal that all sorts of bad things become normalized.
Cheap meat is only that way because a whole group of people are payed very little to do this nasty work.
I hope in my lifetime that it is all made illegal and that people who make money doing these things go to jail for it. And that the workers who do this sort of work are more fairly compensated and allowed to work at the speed required to keep it humane.
We have a long way to go. But we have made progress.