Big Meat

Blogger Infidel753 linked to a devastating article in Rolling Stone, and it is, IMO, important for as many people as possible to read it.

Although I'm not a vegetarian, I do not include much red meat in my diet, or much meat at all. But after reading this expose in Rolling Stone, I will find it very difficult to continue my quasi-vegetarian eating habits and not go full vegan.

I was horrified to read about how our food animals are treated--actually tortured, abused in the most horrific manner.  How can food taste good that has been stressed and subjected to this sort of hellish treatment?

And what is more, who would want to eat it?

Why must we lose our humanity in order to feed ourselves?

I urge everyone to read this and ask themselves why we should continue to accept this hideous sort of abuse and slaughter that delivers meat to our tables:


"In its scrutiny of Big Meat – a cartel of corporations that have swallowed family farms, moved the animals indoors to prison-style plants in the middle of rural nowhere, far from the gaze of nervous consumers, and bred their livestock to and past exhaustion – the Humane Society (and outfits like PETA and Mercy for Animals) is performing a service that the federal government can’t, or won’t, render: keeping an eye on the way American meat is grown. 

That’s rightfully the job of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, but the agency is so short-staffed that it typically only sends inspectors out to slaughterhouses, where they check a small sample of pigs, cows and sheep before they’re put to death. That hour before her end is usually the only time a pig sees a government rep; from the moment she’s born, she’s on her own, spending four or five years in a tiny crate and kept perpetually pregnant and made sick from breathing in her own waste while fed food packed with growth-promoting drugs, and sometimes even garbage. (The word “garbage” isn’t proverbial: Mixed in with the grain can be an assortment of trash, including ground glass from light bulbs, used syringes and the crushed testicles of their young. Very little on a factory farm is ever discarded.) Save the occasional staffer who becomes disgruntled and uploads pictures of factory crimes on Facebook, undercover activists like Juan and Sarah are our only lens into what goes on in those plants – and soon, if Big Meat has its way, we’ll not have even them to set us straight. 

A wave of new laws, almost entirely drafted by lawmakers and lobbyists and referred to as “Ag-Gag” bills, are making it illegal to take a farm job undercover; apply for a farm job without disclosing a background as a journalist or animal-rights activist; and hold evidence of animal abuse past 24 to 48 hours before turning it over to authorities. 

Since it takes weeks or sometimes months to develop a case – and since groups like HSUS have pledged not to break the law – these bills are stopping watchdogs in their tracks and giving factory farmers free rein behind their walls."  


Since we now live in an era where our laws are proposed and written by big corporation lobbyists, and not "the people," it is very likely that passage of the "Ag-Gag" bills will protect the agri-businesses that allow the continued inhumane treatment of our food animals.  This is not acceptable.

What will you do about it?