Factory Farming Must be Called to the Slaughterhouse

[nosmokes]

original-commondreams/sydney morning herald
Published on Wednesday, February 21, 2007 by the Sydney Morning Herald (Australia)
Exposing the Beast: Factory Farming Must be Called to the Slaughterhouse

by J.M. Coetzee

To any thinking person, it must be obvious there is something terribly wrong with relations between human beings and the animals they rely on for food. It must also be obvious that in the past 100 or 150 years, whatever is wrong has become wrong on a huge scale, as traditional animal husbandry has been turned into an industry using industrial methods of production.

There are many other ways in which our relationship with animals is wrong (to name two: the fur trade and experimentation on animals in laboratories), but the food industry, which turns living animals into what it euphemistically calls animal products and by-products, dwarfs all others in the number of individual animal lives it affects.

The vast majority of the public has an equivocal attitude to the industrial use of animals: they make use of the products of that industry, but are nevertheless a little sickened, a little queasy, when they think of what happens on factory farms and abattoirs. Therefore they arrange their lives in such a way that they need be reminded of farms and abattoirs as little as possible, and they do their best to ensure their children are kept in the dark too, because children have tender hearts and are easily moved.

The transformation of animals into production units dates back to the late 19th century, and since that time we have already had one warning on the grandest scale that there is something deeply, cosmically wrong with regarding and treating fellow beings as mere units of any kind.
~snip~
.
.
.
complete article here

[Annces]

1. Yes - it should be outlawed

It is cruelty.

We are all related.

[MazeRat7]

10. Yes.. its beyond cruel and should have severe penalties attached to the practice -nt

[catgirl]

2. I became a vegetarian because of factory farming!

It's a repulsive industry.

[kestrel91316]

4. I'm getting pretty goddamned close. And I happen to LOVE meat.

[Bukowski Fan]

8. So did I

I have no problem with meat other than the factory farming aspect (which basically makes me a vegetarian since eating meat makes me incredibly sick). When I first moved to DC was right when the festeria outbreak occured in the Chesapeake. After that, I swore off factory farmed meat forever.

[kestrel91316]

3. But factory farming is such a neat and tidy alternative to that ICKY

business of people having a (gasp) relationship of sorts with livestock. And besides, with old-fashioned family farms, isn't there an awful lot of that disgusting POOP around???

Factory farming: the sanitary alternative(TM)

[bagrman]

5. Our way of producing food has caused the problem we're in now.

Too many people can survive in areas of the world, that can't naturally support them.

[MountainLaurel]

7. Even that's now having repercussions

Like the male fish in the Potomac that also have ovaries thanks to the hormones fed in the chicken farms in the mountains. How long before we start seeing these mutations in humans as well? How will people feel about their 99 cents a pound chicken breasts then?

[kestrel91316]

9. Also, the food corporations have convinced people that food

MUST be produced in a factory-like environment in order to be sanitary and safe. That's fine, if the factory has food safety as it's primary goal, and not maximum short-term financial gain.

[Blue Diadem]

11. Factory farm poop lagoons are also a problem

Some are using "it" to obtain fuel, but from what I've heard and read, there is so much of it at one location that seepage and run off is a worry.

[nam78_two]

6. K&R-Thanks for posting as always NS.nt

:thumbsup: