Meet Your Meat

our society got all worked up getting mad and condemning michael vick and his animal cruelty and then of course go out to eat at mcdonalds or wherever without a pause. those same people will then get mad at YOU for showing them this video.

Wouldn't they become immune to empathizing with the feelings of others after years of this sort of thing?

I hope not! As a guy I can tell you that sometimes men can compartmentalize doing what they have to, ( but would rather not), from the rest of their lives. Like men who had no choice but to commit cruelty and death on the enemy in war and then come home and are loving and caring husbands and fathers. Sometimes it comes down to a man, ( or woman), has go to do what they have to do whether they like it or not. Have a great weekend!
Dave Briggs :~)

With due apologies to Sinclair, that footage will hit you in the stomach, if not the heart. I'm quite surprised that our meat is as(relatively) safe as it is with those standards for health and soundness of animals.
As for the effect on the workers, I strongly suspect that they do become quite inured to suffering. Reports of people going above and beyond the call of duty, as it were, in handling the animals are fairly common, which suggests a degree of enthusiasm that surpasses necessity.
In the mid and long term, we'll be eating less meat whether we like it or not, given the rising costs of food supplies. Hopefully we'll manage to refine the production of vat grown tissues for the rest. It isn't meat per se, it's the fact that the meat has a brain that makes the practice troubling.

Safe now? What about the next virus, bacterium, or more likely, protozoan, that is coming down the pipe, unidentified as of yet....That video is proof.....upon the piles of existing proof that Americans choose to ignore.

Hooray giant commercial farms! Boo, wild foods (and game) and local produce and meat! Our economy is making a mockery of Americans' common sense!

I suspect that many of the workers in that video are immigrants, perhaps undocumented. If so, then it is yet another example of how we Americans exploit others to perform jobs that none of us is willing to do (and often don't even want to know about). An undocumented worker who is struggling to feed his family is not likely to complain about cruelty to animals in the slaughterhouse...I'm not saying that the cruelty is justified, because it's not, but rather that many of those workers are trapped by circumstance and necessity. After all, the slaughterhouse workers are just the (poorly) paid assassins for those who eat meat-the "bad karma" (if there is such a thing) belongs to the consumer.

I've been wondering when PETA was going to target the meat production industry, after years of being annoyed with their focus on animal research. With IACUC standards, Xenopus tadpoles, mouse pups, and chicken embryos are housed, treated, and/or killed in much more humane manners than are the adult chickens, pigs, and cattle in that video. Even the "bad old days" of euthanasia by cervical dislocation for lab rodents were far more humane than any of the methods shown in the video. IACUC also has strict rules about numbers of animals per cage, criteria for euthanasia (skin lesions, tumors, paralysis, wasting), separation of rodents that barber or fight, anesthetic and analgesic requirements for procedures, etc. None of these (justifiable) concerns for humane treatment of animals seems to apply to the meat industry...why is that???

Somewhere on the back of one of my bookshelves is a book I read years ago about animal sacrifices in pagan Europe and the near-East in ancient and classical times.

Animal sacrifice was far from the barbaric practice it's usually regarded as today. Generally, for most people, the meat from the sacrifice was the only meat they would eat all year. Animals marked for sacrifice were extraordinarily well treated, and the slaughter of the animal was an elaborate and socially proscribed ritual in which the whole community was involved. At least with blood sacrifice, you've no illusions about where your meal comes from.

I suspect that if we in modern times knew that if we wanted to eat meat, we had to kill the animal in front of everyone, and then share the meat equally with the whole community, we'd probably be a lot healthier, in more ways than one.

Instead, of course, animal sacrifice is outlawed in most places, in what has to be understood as a religious blue law rather than a public health law.

I say, bring back the bloody altars!

Agreed! (half-joking). I've travelled around about half of the world, and have never observed the level of disconnect between populace and food, that we "enjoy" in the USA. Peoples' decision on whether they eat meat, IMO, should be partially based on whether they can bear to watch (or even listen to) how meat gets to their table. It sounds harsh, but I really think it's important. We are human beings. For us to eat anything (of value), a plant or animal must die. The end. I wish people would just acknowledge that reality, and eat consciously. Wishful thinking.

I have one major issue with this video: it reuses the same footage that has been floating around for years (or vise-versa). If the problems are as widespread as we are led to believe, shouldn't there be more evidence by now? Furthermore, I have a hard time believing that the charges levied are the norm because if they were, incidents of even more excessive abuses would be widespread.

I think the industry is in a bad position -- think of Buddhist butchers who take all the bad karma for people's desires to eat meat -- and is a little unfairly treated. Although, I would be happy if modern standards were introduced into the industry, so even though I don't eat a lot of meat -- I'm more of a "flavoured with meat" type of person, but it would be nice if I didn't have to feel guilty about it.

I used to run an animal sanctuary for companion and farm special needs (think ill/injured/disabled/disfigured) and senior animals. I once had to pick up a flock of chickens from a factory egg farm which had a tornado bring down several battery cage barns which housed over one million chickens. The chickens were still in rows of these cages, which had been ripped from their barn anchors and which now dangled in the open air. There was an open cargo truck into which thousands of the live chickens were being manually hurled to await their - "humane" asphixiation with piped in CO2. The chickens - a variant of a leghorn - arrived at the sanctuary unable to walk or move their wings, due to the extreme confinement. They had to learn how to be chickens, and the looks of amazement from them the first few times they stretched their wings, took halting steps, ran and luxuriated in dust baths in the horse barn aisle made deep, lasting impressions. I referred to all of the chickens at the sanctuary as the girls or the boys. I never had to chase them - they willingly came to me for handling. I held roosters and trimmed their spurs. I handled them to give them medications or to inspect them for external parasites. I "borrowed" hens to mother newly hatched chicks. The chickens, goats and horses all mingled freely, and on one fine spring day, a guinea hen appeared and joined the chicken flock.

The local factory and large-scale livestock farmers hated me with a violent fury simply for stewarding these animals. I believe that - at least from my anecdotal experience - that animal abuse leaves lasting psychologic damage on the part of the farmers/abusers/handlers. I don't see much, if any, difference between how it affects these people and how it affects soldiers. The PTSD symptoms and behavioral manifestations are the same: uncontrolled violence, aggression and attempts at self-anesthetization.

In cultures which honored the animals hunted via rituals of thanksgiving, harvesting and preparation, egregious violence is much more minimal.