Reality Of Animal Farms: A Story Of Cruelty

[Stine]

Cows and chickens aren't as smart, no, but that doesn't mean they don't have feelings and can't feel depression, stress, sadness, sorrow, pain and fear. Those cows were in obvious pain and fear, and the mother's were obviously depressed and sad over the theft of their children, so they obviously have a bond.

Just because they're not as smart as humans, cats or dogs, doesn't mean they deserve that kind of treatment. A newborn child isn't very intelligent either, but that doesn't mean you can treat it however you want. An animal's intelligence has nothing to do with how it deserves to be treated.

And pigs are one of the smartest animals in the animal kingdom. They're just as smart as dogs - if not smarter - and can be taught tricks, just like dogs.

I'm not saying to stop eating meat (that just happen to be bad commercial in the videos). I love meat myself, but there ARE other options than meat from badly handles animals. With enough of an outrage over videos like that, you, too (like in Sweden) might start getting a special mark on your meat, meaning the meat comes from certified farms where animals aren't tortured to death.

And of course not all farms treat their animals like that, but even one farm is one farm too many.

I might have sounded insensitive. I didn't mean it in that way. Definitely agree that they don't deserve to be treated like they are in the videos. I was just saying why I wouldn't eat dog or cat compared to chickens or cows. Yeah I'm more worried about what they put into the animals but treating them more humanely would make the animal easier to manage and produce better meat. I really don't see why they wouldn't other than it would take more time and thus money to raise the animals. It would be more expensive for consumers in the long run but smaller farms would be able to make more money off of the animals that they raise.

I don't see why they even clip the chicks' beaks. Chickens are pretty docile other than the roosters. When you go into a chicken house you were some good sturdy clothes because of the claws on their feet. I'm sure that in the other videos that there are a lot of unnecessary abuse towards the other animals as well.

 

[Tok]

"I'm the daughter of a chicken farmer...I know how to raise cock."

that's pretty fuckin hot right there

and on topic...A lion doesn't feel guilty about slaughtering a gazelle, nor does a bear feel guilty about picking off salmon as they try to reproduce...why should I feel be made to feel guilty about eating a tasty steak

 

[bigbroon]

The first video, for me, was pretty shocking, until right at the end, when I laughed. I love meat as much as anyone else, LOVE IT. I think the first video was good until it tried to say the resolution to animal cruelty was to go Vegan - I love my meat, but the level of cruelty apparent from the videos isn't necessary. Just because you love meat doesn't mean the way the animals you're eating are treated before they die is irrelevant. I'm not going veggie any time soon, but there's no need to put animals through more pain before they die to become our next meal. At least maintain a level of care for them until they're slaughtered - eating meat isn't going to go away any time soon, thank God, but cruelty still isn't necessary.

 

[Uzor]

that's pretty fuckin hot right there

and on topic...A lion doesn't feel guilty about slaughtering a gazelle, nor does a bear feel guilty about picking off salmon as they try to reproduce...why should I feel be made to feel guilty about eating a tasty steak

How about "I used to farm in FFXI... I love cock meat"?

 

[Valandil]

There is another element to the torture of animals pre-butchering that a lot of people don't realize. If you're going to torture an animal before you cut it up, the meat that the consumer is going to be eating down the road will be laced with all kinds of hormones as a result of the state of fear, i.e. fight or flight response. Also, there is a larger amount of blood that becomes trapped in the muscle tissue. All of this has an effect on the consumer whether they are aware of it or not. This is also a notion that has been around for thousands of years. Greek, Romans, and Jews would not sacrifice an animal that did not come to the altar willingly/peaceably. While this rule was dressed up with religious symbolism, it had a practical application and reason behind. I would much rather buy my meat from a local farmer who butchers his own herd, than from some giant meat processing facility that processes hundreds of thousands of animals which they probably had no part in raising.

 

[Ecks]

that's pretty fuckin hot right there

and on topic...A lion doesn't feel guilty about slaughtering a gazelle, nor does a bear feel guilty about picking off salmon as they try to reproduce...why should I feel be made to feel guilty about eating a tasty steak

You shouldn't feel guilty for eating a tasty steak. Fuck, I had a decent one on Tuesday. I don't think anyone is saying anyone should be guilty about eating meat. I thought this was more along the lines of treatment of animals. Whether or not said animal is destine to be killed for my or someone else's food one night doesn't mean they should be tortured and brutalized before they meet their end. They are living creatures until they're dead, so if the objective is just to kill them for consumption, then that is what should be done. A lion and bear don't torture their food. They eat when they're hungry, and then kill whatever it is they're hunting and eat it. They only stay on their pray long enough to kill it and make sure that it's dead before eating it or picking it up and taking it somewhere else to eat. A bear doesn't sit there and lightly rake it's claws over a salmon and peel off layers of it's skin while it's still alive just to get a kick out of it and feel superior, and then keep it alive to torture some more. No, a bear just kills it's prey and moves on to the eating phase.

 

[Dancingweapon]

and on topic...A lion doesn't feel guilty about slaughtering a gazelle, nor does a bear feel guilty about picking off salmon as they try to reproduce...why should I feel be made to feel guilty about eating a tasty steak

Yes, and I'm sure if we were still cave men we wouldn't feel bad about kicking and punching said cow before we eat it. However, we aren't. No one is saying you should feel guilty about eating a steak, the main message is to not needlessly hurt an animal before it's killed.

 

[Eilistrae]

FIrst of all, if those cows were going to meat, then OK, they were still treated HORRIBLE... HOWEVER, those cows are for the dairy industry... they aren't slaughtered for their meat, they are kept alive and milked on a daily basis. They should be treated SO much better than that. That second video really sickened me, and made me wonder if those guys wives/girlfriends/children aren't being abused as well. The first video, and the infections/injuries, I thought was pretty awful, not only because the animal is suffering, but because they are harvesting milk from those animals that have those infections... they AREN'T healthy animals, makes me glad I'm lactose intolerant.

The area I live in is a pretty big dairy farming area and I live within 8 miles of a Land o Lakes factory. Most of the farmers in our area are family owned dairy businesses and the farms are very well maintained as are the animals, because they HAVE to be. That Ohio and New York (was it?) dairy operation was awful and need to be more closely regulated and watched.

 

[Dejavu]

Why does it matter if an animal is intelligent or not when determining what you are going to eat?

 

[Lukas]

I've butchered chickens before. My old restaurant had a Charcuterie and the Chef running the place insisted on travelling to his supplier and supervising to make sure everything was up to standard. He was a great, old school Charcutier, but a bit of a nut. Said that the quality of the product suffers if slaughtering isn't done correctly.

Anyway, so one day he drags me down to the poultry farm where we got our ducks, geese and chickens from. Beautiful place, the people running it didn't really do much to the animals aside from letting them run around acreage. The bastard made me chase after and catch five chickens and five ducks while he had a drink with the farmer. He then showed me how to kill them - you basically let them peck around for a bit until they've settled down (one of them slept on my lap and scratched the fuck out of my knees), then you put them upside down in funnel with their head poking out the bottom and make a quick incision across the throat to sever the main arteries and nerve endings. They die instantly, don't even move for the five or so minutes you have to let them bleed out.

It was an interesting experience, just to find out how all that product gets into our cool rooms. We did it old school and it was humane - the chickens live a good life, pecking around a field all day and shit The problem with modern poultry farming now is ridiculous demand combined with consumer stupidity. People want meat and they want it yesterday. In the past meat wasn't an everyday thing, and when you did get it for dinner it was normally stretched out with carbs, starches or pastry to make it run that little bit longer. Now most people go to the supermarket and buy in bulk because they can, and because the industry accomodates.

A battery chicken lives for six weeks before slaughter. At that stage they're not really adult yet so they are pumped full of growth hormones so that they produce large portions of meat in minimal time. They are shoved into cages where they cannot move. They have a portion of their beaks removed so that they do not eat each other in such close quarters. A lot of them die in the cages because their legs cannot carry their bloated weight. Or because the air is so thick with ammonia from their shit. Or because living in a cage doesn't allow their bodies to deal too well with weather. A lot of them die when they're crammed into trucks to be transported. A lot of them die when they're being hung on conveyor belts ready for slaughter because their little legs are so weak. Or their death takes 10-20 minutes because it's all done by machine and machines make mistakes. Yet some of them live and are processed alive, so their meat comes out red as they were not bled properly.

Ultimately though, the happy shopper gets their big, juicy chicken breast and they get it right now - so who gives a fuck? The quality of food clearly comes down to what it looks like and how big it is. I always compare it to tomatoes. A good, ripe tomato should be fairly small, sweet, deep red and very soft. But all the tomatoes you see in shops are these massive things that are hard, bitter and just gross. That's what people want, they buy food that looks a certain way because they don't know any better. Just don't ask what they jack those tomatoes with.

 

[Thelona]

really its all about the consumers choice, if you don't mind the cruelty then get your meat from the grocery store from large distributors, if the cruelty really really bothers you, do some research and find some local farms in your area.

living in NC I know alot of farmers around in my area, and I don't know of a single one that treat any of their livestock like the monsters in that video. and typically the meat is MUCH higher quality and much safer from the smaller farms as well.

 

[Uzor]

Ultimately though, the happy shopper gets their big, juicy chicken breast and they get it right now - so who gives a fuck? The quality of food clearly comes down to what it looks like and how big it is. I always compare it to tomatoes. A good, ripe tomato should be fairly small, sweet, deep red and very soft. But all the tomatoes you see in shops are these massive things that are hard, bitter and just gross. That's what people want, they buy food that looks a certain way because they don't know any better. Just don't ask what they jack those tomatoes with.

Exactly - and its quite sad. Larger does not equal better, and I always laugh when people at the grocery store pick the largest wares with the most color. When they're larger, that just mean they lose a lot of their flavor - and when they have more color than they do naturally, that just means its fake. Did you know most store-bought salmon is actually colored to make it appear more red? They do that with a lot of wares, because consumers like color and associate color with it being more fresh, which is often a fake assumption.

The best tasting and most healthy wares are not the largest most colorful ones, its usually the slightly more expensive, smaller and less colorful ones. Because they don't give their animals growth hormones and genetically manipulate their vegetables while throwing every possible legalized poison at it.