This article includes graphic images some readers may find disturbing.
FBI agents are devoting substantial resources to a multistate hunt for two baby piglets that the bureau believes are named Lucy and Ethel. The two piglets were removed over the summer from the Circle Four Farm in Utah by animal rights activists who had entered the Smithfield Foods-owned factory farm to film the brutal, torturous conditions in which the pigs are bred in order to be slaughtered.
While filming the conditions at the Smithfield facility, activists saw the two ailing baby piglets laying on the ground, visibly ill and near death, surrounded by the rotting corpses of dead piglets. “One was swollen and barely able to stand; the other had been trampled and was covered in blood,” said Wayne Hsiung of Direct Action Everywhere (DxE), which filmed the facility and performed the rescue. Due to various illnesses, he said, the piglets were unable to eat or digest food and were thus a fraction of the normal weight for piglets their age.
Rather than leave the two piglets at Circle Four Farm to wait for an imminent and painful death, the DxE activists decided to rescue them. They carried them out of the pens where they had been suffering and took them to an animal sanctuary to be treated and nursed back to health.
Photo: Wayne Hsiung/DxE
This single Smithfield Foods farm breeds and then slaughters more than 1 million pigs each year. One of the odd aspects of animal mistreatment in the U.S. is that species regarded as more intelligent and emotionally complex — dogs, dolphins, cats, primates — generally receive more public concern and more legal protection. Yet pigs – among the planet’s most intelligent, social, and emotionally complicated species, capable of great joy, play, love, connection, suffering and pain, at least on a par with dogs — receive almost no protections, and are subject to savage systematic abuse by U.S. factory farms.
At Smithfield, like most industrial pig farms, the abuse and torture primarily comes not from rogue employees violating company procedures. Instead, the cruelty is inherent in the procedures themselves. One of the most heinous industry-wide practices is one that DxE activists encountered in abundance at Circle Four: gestational crating.
Where that technique is used, pigs are placed in a crate made of iron bars that is the exact length and width of their bodies, so they can do nothing for their entire lives but stand on a concrete floor, never turn around, never see any outdoors, never even see their tails, never move more than an inch. That was the condition in which the activists found the rotting piglet corpses and the two ailing piglets they rescued.
Photo: Wayne Hsiung/DxE
Female pigs give birth in this condition. They are put in so-called farrowing crates when they give birth, and their piglets run underneath them to suckle and are often trampled to death. The sows are bred repeatedly this way until their fertility declines, at which point they are slaughtered and turned into meat.
The pigs are so desperate to get out of their crates that they often spend weeks trying to bite through the iron bars until their gums gush blood, bash their heads against the walls, and suffer a disease in which their organs end up mangled in the wrong places, from the sheer physical trauma of trying to escape from a tiny space or from acute anxiety (called “organ torsion”).
So cruel is the practice that in 2014, Canada effectively banned its usage, as the European Union had done two years earlier. Nine U.S. states, most of which host very few farms, have banned gestational crating (in 2014, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, with his eye on the GOP primary in farm-friendly Iowa, vetoed a bill that would have made his state the 10th).
But in the U.S. states where factory farms actually thrive, these devices continue to be widely used, which means a vast majority of pigs in the U.S. are subjected to them. The suffering, pain, and death these crates routinely cause were in ample evidence at Smithfield Foods, as accounts, photos, and videos from DxE demonstrate.
FBI raids animal sanctuaries
Under normal circumstances, a large industrial farming company such as Smithfield Foods would never notice that two sick piglets of the millions it breeds and then slaughters were missing. Nor would they care: A sick and dying piglet has no commercial value to them.
Yet the rescue of these two particular piglets has literally become a federal case — by all appearances, a matter of great importance to the Department of Justice. On the last day of August, a six-car armada of FBI agents in bulletproof vests, armed with search warrants, descended upon two small shelters for abandoned farm animals: Ching Farm Rescue in Riverton, Utah, and Luvin Arms in Erie, Colorado.
These sanctuaries have no connection to DxE or any other rescue groups. They simply serve as a shelter for sick, abandoned, or otherwise injured animals. Run by a small staff and a team of animal-loving volunteers, they are open to the public to teach about farm animals.
The attachments to the search warrants specified that the FBI agents could take “DNA samples (blood, hair follicles or ear clippings) to be seized from swine with the following characteristics: I. Pink/white coloring; II. Docked tails; III. Approximately 5 to 9 months in age; IV. Any swine with a hole in right ear.”
The FBI agents searched the premises of both shelters. They demanded DNA samples of two piglets they said were named Lucy and Ethel, in order to determine whether they were the two ailing piglets who had been rescued weeks earlier from Smithfield.
A representative of Luvin Arms, who insisted on anonymity due to fear of the pending criminal investigation, described the events. The FBI agents ordered staff and volunteers to stay away from the animals and then approached the piglets. To obtain the DNA samples, the state veterinarians accompanying the FBI used a snare to pressurize the piglet’s snout, thus immobilizing her in pain and fear, and then cut off close to two inches of the piglet’s ear.
The piglet’s pain was so severe, and her screams so piercing, that the sanctuary’s staff members screamed and cried. Even the FBI agents were so sufficiently disturbed by the resulting trauma, that they directed the veterinarians not to subject the second piglet to the procedure. The sanctuary representative recounted that the piglet who had part of her ear removed spent weeks depressed and scared, barely moving or eating, and still has not fully recovered. The FBI “receipt” given to the sanctuaries shows they took DNA samples “from swine.”
Several volunteers at one of the raided animal shelters said they were followed back to their homes by FBI agents, who dramatically questioned them in front of family members and neighbors. And there is even reason to believe that the bureau has been surveilling the activists’ private communications regarding the rescue of this piglet duo.
The FBI specified as part of its search that it was seeking DNA samples from piglets they said were named “Lucy” and “Ethel.” But those were not the names the activists used when publicly discussing the rescue of the two piglets. In their videos about the rescue, they called the pair “Lily” and “Lizzie.” Lucy and Ethel were code names the activists used internally, suggesting that agents were surveilling the activists’ communications — either electronically or through informants — in an effort to find the two piglets and build a criminal case against the group.
Subsequent events confirmed that this show of FBI force was designed to intimidate the sanctuaries, which played no role in the rescue. Weeks after the FBI’s execution of the two search warrants, Luvin Arms — in the midst of an interview with The Intercept — received a telephone call from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, claiming the agency had received “a complaint” that the sanctuary lacked the legally required licenses for animal shelters that are open to the public. “We had never had an FBI visit or a USDA call about licenses, and now suddenly, within weeks, both happened,” the sanctuary representative said.
Photo: Wayne Hsiung/DxE
Retaliation for exposing cruel treatment
What has vested these two piglets with such importance to the FBI is that their rescue is now part of what has become an increasingly visible public campaign by DxE and other activists to highlight the barbaric suffering and abuse that animals endure on farms like Circle Four. Obviously, the FBI and Smithfield — the nation’s largest industrial farm corporation — don’t really care about the missing piglets they are searching for. What they care about is the efficacy of a political campaign intent on showing the public how animals are abused at factory farms, and they are determined to intimidate those responsible.
Deterring such campaigns and intimidating the activists behind them is, manifestly, the only goal here. What made this piglet rescue particularly intolerable was an article that appeared in the New York Times days after the rescue, which touted the use of virtual reality technology by animal rights activists to allow the public to immerse in the full experience of seeing what takes place in these companies’ farms. The article featured a photograph of the DxE activists rescuing the piglets from the Smithfield farm:
The Times article was published July 6. The search warrant against the sanctuaries was obtained the following month, in mid-August, and then executed on August 31. In the interim, the piglets had become stars of a clearly effective campaign against Smithfield Foods.
In response to questions from The Intercept, Smithfield insisted that it does not abuse its animals. But, as is typical for factory farms, the company offered little more then generalized denials, accompanied by vague accusations that the videos and photos the activists took are somehow “distorted.”
After they rescued the two piglets, the DxE activists did not try to hide what they had done: They did the opposite. They used a tactic known as “open rescue,” the purpose of which is to publicly detail what has been done to help the public understand the true nature of the abuses.
The activists wrote about the rescue in social media postings that went viral, detailing the horrific conditions they witnessed at Smithfield and describing the suffering of the piglets. They posted videos to Facebook and YouTube that they filmed of the farm and the rescue as it happened, with other videos showing Lily and Lizzie being treated at the sanctuaries and growing into happy, playful, healthy adolescents.
Video: Direct Action Everywhere
Plainly, the “crime” of these activists that has galvanized the FBI is not the “theft” of two dying piglets; it is political activism and investigative journalism, which exposes the cruelty and abuse at the heart of this powerful industry.
In response to a few media reports on the FBI raids at the sanctuaries, bureau spokesperson Sandra Barker told the Washington Post: “I can say that we were at the two locations conducting court-authorized activity related to an ongoing investigation. Because it’s ongoing, I’m not able to provide any more details at this time.”
To an industry feeling endangered by growing public disgust over conditions at industrial farms — driven by scandals within the meat, pork, and poultry sectors — Lily and Lizzie are political and journalistic threats. Animals like them are vital for enabling animal rights activists to demonstrate to the public in a visceral, personalized way that this industry generates massive profit by monstrously and unnecessarily torturing living beings who are emotionally complex and experience great suffering.
Photo: Wayne Hsiung/DxE
Government power abused to intimidate and punish activists
The Justice Department’s grave attention to a case of two missing piglets reflects how vigilantly the U.S. government uses extreme measures to protect the agricultural industry — not from unjust economic loss, violent crime, or theft, but from political embarrassment and accurate reporting that damages the industry’s reputation.
A sweeping framework of draconian laws — designed to shield the industry from criticism and deter and punish its critics — has been enacted across the country by federal and state legislatures that are captive to the industry’s high-paid lobbyists. The most notorious of these measures are the “ag-gag” laws, which make publishing videos of farm conditions taken as part of undercover operations a felony, punishable by years in prison.
Though many courts, including most recently a federal court in Utah, have struck down these laws as an unconstitutional assault on speech and press freedoms, they continue to be used in numerous states to harass and, in some cases, prosecute animal rights activists. As the Times article notes, these ag-gag laws are one reason activists are forced to turn to virtual reality: to show what really happens inside industrial farms without running the risk of prosecution.
Many mother pigs had nipples that were torn into bloody shreds from feeding starving piglets.
Photo: Wayne Hsiung/DxE
Even more extreme and menacing is the federal Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act. As I described previously when reporting on the arrest of two young activists — who faced 10 years in prison for freeing minks from farm cages before the animals could be sliced to death and turned into luxury coats — nonviolent animal rights activists are often designated as “terrorists” under the AETA and are treated in the court system as such, even when no human beings are hurt and the economic loss is minimal:
As is typical for lobbyist and industry-supported bills, the AETA passed with overwhelming bipartisan support (its two prime Senate sponsors were James Inhofe, R-Okla., and Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.) and then was signed into law by George W. Bush.
This “terrorism” law is violated if one “intentionally damages or causes the loss of any real or personal property (including animals or records) used by an animal enterprise … for the purpose of damaging or interfering with” its operations. If you do that — and note that only “damage to property” but not to humans is required — then you are guilty of “domestic terrorism” under the law.
Prior to the 2006 enactment of the AETA, animal rights activism that damaged property was already illegal under a 1992 federal law, as well as various state laws, and subject to severe punishments. The primary purpose of the new 2006 law was to expand the scope of criminal offenses to include plainly protected forms of political protest, and to heighten the legal punishments and intensify social condemnation by literally labeling animal-rights activists as “domestic terrorists.”
The factory farm industry and its armies of lobbyists wield great influence in the halls of federal and state power, while animal rights activists wield virtually none. This imbalance has produced increasingly oppressive laws, accompanied by massive law enforcement resources devoted to punishing animal activists even for the most inconsequential nonviolent infractions — as the FBI search warrant and raid in search of “Lucy and Ethel” illustrates.
The U.S. government, of course, has always protected and served the interests of industry. Beginning when most of the nation was fed by small farms, federal agencies have been particularly protective of agricultural industry. That loyalty has only intensified as family farms have nearly disappeared, replaced by industrial factory farms where animals are viewed purely as commodities, instruments for profit, and treated with unconstrained cruelty.
Photo: Wayne Hsiung/DxE
Lately, opposition is emerging from unusual places. Utah federal judge Robert J. Shelby, an Obama appointee who is a lifelong Republican, recently struck down the state’s ag-gag law on First Amendment grounds, noting in his ruling:
For as long as farmers have put food on American tables, the government has endeavored to support and protect the agricultural industry. … In short, governmental protection of the American agricultural industry is not new, and has taken a variety of forms over the last two hundred years. What is new, however, is the recent spate of state laws that have assumed an altogether novel approach: restricting speech related to agricultural operations.
As Shelby detailed, those ag-gag laws were not used until activists began having success in showing the public the true extent of cruelty that industrial farms impose on animals:
Nobody was ever charged under these [early ag-gag] laws, and for nearly two decades no new ag-gag legislation was introduced. That changed, however, after a series of high profile undercover investigations were made public in the mid to late 2000s.
To name just a few, in 2007, an undercover investigator at the Westland/Hallmark Meat Company in California filmed workers forcing sick cows, many unable to walk, into the “kill box” by repeatedly shocking them with electric prods, jabbing them in the eye, prodding them with a forklift, and spraying water up their noses. A 2009 investigation at Hy-Line Hatchery in Iowa revealed hundreds of thousands of unwanted day-old male chicks being funneled by conveyor belt into a macerator to be ground up live.
That same year, undercover investigators at a Vermont slaughterhouse operated by Bushway Packing obtained similarly gruesome footage of days-old calves being kicked, dragged, and skinned alive. A few years later, an undercover investigator at E6 Cattle Company in Texas filmed workers beating cows on the head with hammers and pickaxes and leaving them to die. And later that year, at Sparboe Farms in Iowa, undercover investigators documented hens with gaping, untreated wounds laying eggs in cramped conditions among decaying corpses.
The publication of these and other undercover videos had devastating consequences for the agricultural facilities involved. The videos led to boycotts of facilities by McDonald’s, Target, Sam’s Club, and others. They led to bankruptcy and closure of facilities and criminal charges against employees and owners. They led to statewide ballot initiatives banning certain farming practices. And they led to the largest meat recall in United States history, a facility’s entire two years’ worth of production.
Over the next three years, sixteen states introduced ag-gag legislation.
In other words, both the legislative process and law enforcement agencies are being blatantly exploited — misused — to protect not the property rights but the reputational interests of this industry. Having the FBI — in the midst of real domestic terrorism threats, hurricane-ravaged communities, and intricate corporate criminality — send agents around the country to animal sanctuaries in search of DNA samples for two missing piglets may seem like overkill to the point of being laughable. But it is entirely unsurprising in the context of how law enforcement resources are used, and on whose behalf.
A piglet at Smithfield-owned Circle Four Farm in Utah.
Photo: Wayne Hsiung/DxE
Smithfield Food’s defenses
It makes sense that Smithfield Foods would be petrified of the public learning of many of its practices. But in this particular case, they are specifically trying to hide the pure evils of gestational crates. This video, taken by an investigator with the Humane Society in 2012, shows the widespread but hideous reality of gestational crates at a Smithfield farm:
In response to the public controversy over this practice, generated by activists filming what was going on, Smithfield announced in 2012 that they would phase out gestational crating in 10 years — by 2022. They then claimed that by the end of 2017, they would transition completely to “group housing systems.” But as the DxE videos show, gestation crates are exactly what activists found in abundance when they visited Smithfield’s Circle Four.
Indeed, when Wayne Hsiung and DxE visited Circle Four over the summer, they saw no signs whatsoever of any construction or reform efforts to move away from gestational crates, Hsiung told the Intercept. As the videos show, Circle Four had thousands of pigs suffering in such crates. That was where the activists found the two piglets, close to death.
When Smithfield learned that The Intercept was reporting on these issues, a spokesperson emailed a statement and invited further questions. The statement claims that in response to DxE’s reporting, Smithfield “immediately launched an investigation and completed a third-party audit,” and “the audit results show no findings of animal mistreatment.”
This is a typical industry tactic: When they claim, as they almost always do, that their paid auditors discovered “no findings of animal mistreatment,” what they mean is that there was no evidence that their employees engaged in activities that corporate procedures explicitly prohibit (such as beating the animals or administering electric shock).
But what the audit does not do is ask whether the procedures themselves (such as gestational crating) are abusive and thus constitute “mistreatment.” Smithfield failed to provide a response to The Intercept’s follow-up questions about what it does and does not mean when their auditors claim no “mistreatment” was discovered; the company simply reiterated that “the animals observed on the farm by the audit team were in good condition, appeared comfortable, free of clinical disease, and showed no signs of fear or intimidation in the presence of people.” Simply review the DxE video above, and the featured photos showing what they found at Circle Four, to judge for yourself.
Cramped conditions lead to many pigs being trampled to death at Smithfield-owned Circle Four Farm in Utah.
Photo: Wayne Hsiung/DxE
In its statement, Smithfield also accused the activists who rescued the two piglets of “risk[ing] the life of the animals they stole and the lives of the animals living on our farms by trespassing” — an odd claim from a company that plans to slaughter all of those same animals. When asked to specify how the activists endangered the lives of the sick animals they rescued, Smithfield told The Intercept that “the video’s creators violated Smithfield’s strict biosecurity policy, which prevents the spread of disease on farms.” The statement added: “The piglets were not ‘extremely ill’ or ‘on the verge of death.’ These piglets, along with other animals living on the farm, are well cared for throughout their lifetime.”
But in response, Hsiung told the Intercept: “Our activists use better biosecurity protocols than the company’s own employees, as evidenced by the dead, rotting piglets on the farm. Allowing baby animals to rot to death is, in fact, a serious violation of biosecurity and food safety. Taking photographs of animal cruelty is not.”
Smithfield also accused the activists of manipulating their film, claiming that “the video appears to be highly edited and even staged in an attempt to manufacture an animal care issue where one does not exist.” But Smithfield did not respond to this question from The Intercept about the staging allegation: “How would these activists stage hundreds of pigs in gestation crates and dozens of piglets rotting to death — all in virtual reality, no less? It would take a Hollywood blockbuster budget and the most sophisticated team of computer-generated imagery for that. What’s Smithfield’s theory about what they fabricated in this video?”
The only specifics Smithfield offered was the assertion that “based on the review of animal care experts, it appears piglets were moved from one section of the barn to another to support the inaccuracies and falsehoods described in the video by its creators.”
But Hsiung said: “The video speaks for itself. I don’t know how we can fake a rotting piglet.” Regarding the accusation that they moved piglets, he added: “I imagine what they are seeing is piglets in the wrong sort of pen, gestation rather than farrowing. But that is a testament to their own failed animal care practices. We were shocked and horrified, as well, to see piglets born and housed in inappropriate conditions that left them exposed to trauma.”
In sum, the industry has long responded to these videos — which they tried in the first instance to use their lobbying power to criminalize — by insisting that the videos are distorted. Yet they never specify what these supposed distortions are. Now that activists are using virtual reality technology, which allows the viewer to see everything the activists see, such claims are even more untenable than they were before.
Photo: Wayne Hsiung/DxE
Revolving door with agribusiness
A recent change in U.S. political discourse — spurred by events such as the 2008 financial crisis, the Occupy movement, and the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign — is the increasingly common use of the words “oligarchy” and “plutocracy” to describe the country’s political system. Though dramatic, the terms, melded together, describe a fairly simple and common state of affairs: power exerted by and exercised for the exclusive benefit of a small group of people who wield the greatest financial power.
It is hard to imagine a more vivid illustration than watching FBI agents don bulletproof vests and execute DNA search warrants for Lily and Lizzie, all to deter and intimidate critics of a savage industry that funds politicians and the lobbyists that direct them.
Substantial attention has been paid over the last several years to the “revolving door” that runs Washington — industry executives being brought in to run the agencies that regulate their industries, followed by them returning to that industry once their industry-serving government work is done. That’s how Wall Street barons come to “regulate” banks, how factory owners come to “regulate” workplace safety laws, how oil executives come to “regulate” environmental protections — only to leave the public sector and return back to lavish rewards from those same industries for a job well done.
Though it receives modest attention, this revolving door spins faster, and in more blatantly sleazy ways, when it comes to the USDA and its mandate to safeguard animal welfare. The USDA is typically dominated by executives from the very factory farm industries that are most in need of vibrant regulation.
For that reason, animal welfare laws are woefully inadequate, but the ways in which they are enforced is typically little more than a bad joke. Industrial farming corporations like Smithfield know they can get away with any abuse or “mislabeling” deceit (such as misleading claims about their treatment of animals) because the officials who have been vested with the sole authority to enforce these laws — federal USDA officials — are so captive to their industry. Courts have repeatedly ruled that private individuals, animal rights groups, and even state authorities have no right to sue to enforce animal welfare laws, because the “exclusive authority” lies with the U.S. government, which has no real interest in actually enforcing those laws.
Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue on July 12, 2017, in Atlanta.
Photo: Bob Andres/Atlanta Journal-Constitution/AP
The current secretary of agriculture, former Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue (pictured, right), is just one example, but he vividly highlights the revolving door form of legalized corruption that dominates this industry.
Perdue was raised on a Georgia row farm and obtained his doctorate in veterinary medicine. Despite those seemingly benign credentials, the factory farm industry celebrated the news of his nomination by President Donald Trump. The National Chicken Council, for instance, demanded that he be “confirmed expeditiously.” The enthusiasm was for good reason.
“Georgia was pretty friendly to food-industry interests during Perdue’s two terms,” Grub Street reported, and Perdue “took about $330,000 in contributions from Monsanto and other agribusinesses for his campaigns.” In 2009, the Biotechnology Innovation Organization, the lobbying group for genetically modified foods, named Perdue its “Governor of the Year” because, it said, “he has been a stalwart advocate of the biosciences in Georgia and truly understands the promise of our industry.” As Georgia governor, Perdue supported the rapid expansion of factory farm giant Perdue Farms (to which he has no familial relation), with its long history of allegations of animal abuse.
And Perdue has extensive ties to the agribusiness sector he’s now supposed to oversee and regulate. The firm of which he is the founding partner and his family owns and runs, Perdue Partners LLC, is an agribusiness at the heart of this industry:
After being confirmed, Perdue wasted little time lavishing his agribusiness industry with gifts. In February, the USDA “abruptly removed inspection reports and other information from its website about the treatment of animals at thousands of research laboratories, zoos, dog breeding operations and other facilities,” reported the Washington Post. Then, two senators who have received large sums from farmers and ranchers — Democrat Debbie Stabenow and Republican Pat Roberts — agitated for the recession of the Obama administration’s mild regulations on organic eggs, designed to improve conditions for chickens, and the Perdue-led USDA “put the new standard on hold and suggested that it might even be withdrawn.”
In sum, with industry insiders dominating the sole agency (USDA) with the authority to regulate factory farms, animals that are captive, abused, tortured, and slaughtered en masse have little chance, even when it comes to just applying existing laws with a minimal amount of diligence. The politics of the U.S. — including the fact that a key farm state, Iowa, plays such a central role in presidential elections — means there are massive forces arrayed behind factory farms, and very few in support of animal welfare.
Photo: Wayne Hsiung/DxE
From fringe to the mainstream
But the animal rights movement, despite receiving relatively scant media attention and operating under the threat of federal prosecutions for terrorism, boasts some of the nation’s more effective, shrewd, and tenacious political activists. They have made significant strides in turning the public against the worst of the prevailing practices on these farms, and more generally, in forcing into the public consciousness the knowledge of how this industry imposes suffering, abuse, and torture on living beings on a mass and systematic scale, all to maximize profits.
Just a decade ago, the cause of animal cruelty and exploitation was a fringe position, rarely appearing outside far-left circles. That has all changed, thanks largely to the efforts of these activists, many of whom have been imprisoned for their efforts. Most activists say that it was unimaginable even a decade ago for major newspaper columnists such as the New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof or Frank Bruni to take up their cause, yet that’s precisely what they have done in a series of columns over the last several years.
“If you torture a single chicken and are caught, you’re likely to be arrested. If you scald thousands of chickens alive, you’re an industrialist who will be lauded for your acumen,” Kristof wrote in one 2015 column. He described the savagery of the process used to slaughter chickens by the millions and scornfully dismissed industry’s claim that no abuse or mistreatment was found by their auditors.
In a column the year before, Kristof detailed the barbarism and misleading claims that chickens are “humanely raised” at Perdue Farms — the company USDA Secretary Perdue helped to expand — and concluded: “Torture a single chicken and you risk arrest. Abuse hundreds of thousands of chickens for their entire lives? That’s agribusiness.”
And that’s to say nothing of the other significant costs from industrial farming. There are serious health risks posed by the fecal waste produced at such farms. And the excessive, reckless use of antibiotics common at factory farms can create treatment-resistant bacterial strains capable of infecting and killing humans. There is also increasing awareness that industrial farming meaningfully exacerbates climate problems, with some research suggesting that it produces more greenhouse gas emissions than all forms of transportation combined. Reviewing the meat industry in 2014, Kristof summarized what he learned this way:
Our industrial food system is unhealthy. It privatizes gains but socializes the health and environmental costs. It rewards shareholders — Tyson’s stock price has quadrupled since early 2009 — but can be ghastly for the animals and humans it touches.
Bruni wrote in a 2014 column headlined “According Animals Dignity” of “a broadening, deepening concern about animals that’s no longer sufficiently captured by the phrase ‘animal welfare.’” Instead of simply curbing the most egregious abuses, he wrote, a more principled awareness of the intrinsic worth and rights of animals is emerging: “an era of what might be called animal dignity is upon us.”
Some progress is indeed undeniable. Laws are being re-written to recognize that dogs and other pets are more than property; places such as Sea World and Ringling Brothers’ circuses can no longer feature imprisoned animals forced to perform; and some states are enacting laws criminalizing the worst extremes of animal cruelty.
One U.S. Senator, Democrat Cory Booker of New Jersey, has placed animal rights protections as one of his legislative priorities. Booker, who has been a vegetarian since college and recently announced his transition to full veganism, has sponsored a spate of bills to fortify the rights of animals: from banning the selling of shark fins to limiting the legal uses of animals for testing to requiring humane treatment of animals in all federal facilities.
While he has been attacked by the New York Post for “animal rights extremism” after he announced his veganism, Booker now regularly and unflinchingly invokes the core principles of animal rights: “I want to try to live my own values as consciously and purposefully as I can. Being vegan for me is a cleaner way of not participating in practices that don’t align with my values.” Rather than these legislative efforts being scorned, a spokesman for Booker told the Intercept that “Sens. Merkley and Whitehouse have been reliable allies on animal testing and other efforts; the Shark Fin effort has a number of cosponsors as well; and Sens. Schatz, Markey, Warren, Feinstein, Blumenthal have been partners as well.”
The devastating costs of industrial farming and the mass torture and slaughter on which it depends — moral, spiritual, physical, environmental — are being documented in scholarly circles with increasing clarity. A group of public health specialists jointly wrote in a New York Times op-ed in May: “This sweeping change in meat production and consumption has had grave consequences for our health and environment, and these problems will grow only worse if current trends continue.”
Rescued pig Lizzie gives affection to her rescuer, Wayne Hsuing of DxE.
Photo: Wayne Hsiung/DxE
In general, the core moral and philosophical question at the heart of animal rights activism is now being seriously debated: Namely, what gives humans the right or justification to abuse, exploit, and torture non-human species? If there comes a day when some other species (broadly defined) — such as machines — surpass humans in intellect and cognitive complexity, will they have a valid moral claim to treat humans as commodities whose suffering and death can be assigned no value?
The irreconcilable contradiction of lavishing love and protection on dogs and cats, while torturing and slaughtering farm animals capable of a deep emotional life and great suffering, is becoming increasingly apparent. British anthropologist Jane Goodall, in the preface to Amy Hatkoff’s groundbreaking book “The Inner World of Farm Animals,” examined the science of animal cognition and concluded: “Farm animals feel pleasure and sadness, excitement and resentment, depression, fear, and pain. They are far more aware and intelligent than we ever imagined … They are individuals in their own right.”
All of these changes have been driven by animal rights activists who, often at great risk to themselves, have forced the public to be aware of the savagery and cruelty supported through food consumption choices. That’s precisely why this industry is so obsessed with intimidating, threatening, and outlawing this form of activism: because it is so effective.
Dissidents are tolerated to the extent they remain ineffectual and unthreatening. When they start to become successful — that is, threatening to powerful interests — the backlash is inevitable. The tools used against them are increasingly extreme as their success grows.
To call the FBI’s actions in raiding these animal sanctuaries a profound waste of its resources is both an understatement and beside the point. The real short-term goal is to target those most vulnerable — volunteer-supported animal shelters — to scare them out of taking care of rescued animals. And the ultimate goal is to fortify and intensify a climate of intimidation and fear designed to deter animal rights activists from reporting on the horrifying realities of these factory farms.
There is a temptation to turn away from and ignore this mass suffering and cruelty because it’s so painful to confront, so much more pleasant to remain unaware of it. Animal rights activists are determined to prevent us from doing so, and we should all feel gratitude for their increasing success in making us see what we are enabling when we consume the products of this barbaric and sociopathic industry.
Correction: October 7, 2017
An earlier version of this story incorrectly attributed authorship of the book “The Inner World of Farm Animals” to Jane Goodall. It was written by Amy Hatkoff. Goodall wrote the foreword to the book, from which her quote in this story was drawn.
Top photo: Two dying piglets were rescued by Direct Action Everywhere activists from cruel conditions — where they were left to suffer to death — at Smithfield-owned Circle Four Farm in Utah.
The fbi….this is the same Mickey Mouse organization that spent considerable time and hence taxpayer money searching for stolen football jerseys….what an embarrassment.
Before cash and profit maximization, there was another motive : ‘reason’ itself…
“Later sections of the Discourse (along with the supplementary scientific essays with which it was published) trace some of the more significant consequences of following the Cartesian method in philosophy. His mechanistic inclinations emerge clearly in these sections, with frequent reminders of the success of physical explanations of complex phenomena. Non-human animals, on Descartes’s view, are complex organic machines, all of whose actions can be fully explained without any reference to the operation of mind in thinking.
In fact, Descartes declared, most of human behavior, like that of animals, is susceptible to simple mechanistic explanation. Cleverly designed automata could successfully mimic nearly all of what we do. Thus, Descartes argued, it is only the general ability to adapt to widely varying circumstances—and, in particular, the capacity to respond creatively in the use of language—that provides a sure test for the presence of an immaterial soul associated with the normal human body.”
http://www.philosophypages.com/hy/4b.htm#anim
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvZNptubW4w
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAmn3StMotA
“A new undercover investigation carried out by Animals Angels, Inc. (AA) and their European partner, Tierschutzbund Zuerich/Animal Welfare Foundation (TSB/AWF) reveals yet another way humans have found to exploit horses; this time to garner multi-million dollar profits for none other than pharmaceutical companies.
Shocking evidence has uncovered the existence of “blood farms” in the U.S. as well as in countries like Argentina and Uruguay. Blood farms are a high dollar enterprise where “donor herds” of horses are kept for blood extraction purposes only. The blood drawn from the horses kept on these farms is used by companies throughout the U.S. and abroad for a variety of applications such as biological research, diagnostic manufacturing and veterinary drugs. The blood taken from pregnant mares is especially in high demand, because it contains a precious hormone used to produce a veterinary drug needed by the pork industry.”
http://www.animalsangels.org/investigations/horses/cruel-trade-pregnant-mare-blood-united-states-uruguay-and-argentina-9-30-15
“During our investigations about horsemeat import we were confronted with further cruel practices involving animals in Uruguay and Argentina: blood farms. Places where the blood of thousands of pregnant mares is extracted without regard for their health or the health of their foals. Their blood is used for the production of the Hormone PMSG. PMSG (Pregnant
Mare Serum Gonadotropin) is extracted from their blood during early pregnancy. PMSG is used for the induction and synchronization of oestrus in pigs and other farm animals. This practice is carried out despite the fact that up to twenty percent of the piglets are killed directly after birth since the mother doesn’t have enough teats to feed them all. For months, we have been investigating to uncover this bloody business.
We have met with workers from blood farms, confronted staff and heads of government departments. We have spoken to veterinarians, found customs documents and have installed a camera in a blood farm. Our findings clearly document that within a legal vacuum, tens of thousands of mares in Argentina and Uruguay are being systematically tortured and killed for the piglet industry in Switzerland and the European Union.
We have discovered that their blood is being extracted for so long until the mares collapse due to anaemia. Their foals are aborted or that the mares suffer miscarriages directly as a result of the ongoing blood extraction. The mares are being impregnated so often that they cannot get pregnant anymore. They are then sent to EU approved slaughterhouses, for example Lamar and Clay, and their meat is consequently sold within the EU and Switzerland for human consumption.
This bloody business has existed for thirty years. It is hidden, criminally organised and in hands of a few people. It is a lucrative business which operates in Uruguay and Argentina in acquiescence and without any controls.
https://www.animal-welfare-foundation.org/en/what-we-do/blood-farms.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4159146/Inside-vampire-horse-farm.html
“To animals, there is no hell; they’re already in it.” – Victor Hugo
“Anti-speciesism is a school of thought, born in the 1970s, which refuses the notion of species superiority. Anti-speciesists denounce the predetermined criteria tied to species membership, and notably to the domination of man over animals. They refuse the right to kill that the human being possesses over an animal, but are conscious that equality among species is impossible, as their capacities and intelligence are so variable. Defendants of anti-speciesism generally do not consume products that derive from animals.”
http://health.ccm.net/faq/2243-anti-speciesism-definition
“…treat humans as commodities whose suffering and death can be assigned no value?”
I’ve got news for you: the elite who run this insane asylum we live in already see and treat us this way. That’s why they’ve set us up for a life as womb to tomb pHARMa customers in a vicious cycle of illness between pHARMa products and biotech “foods.” They’ve bought science, the legislators, the media, and the medical schools. They always put profits over people. Unfortunately the masses are too dumbed down to see it because they’ve infiltrated the public school system too.
PERHAPS A FEW OF THEM IDIOTS WHO RUN THE PIG FARMS SHOULD SPEND A MONTH IN ONE OF THEM CAGES THAT LILLYS MOM WAS IN, LET THEM FEEL WHAT SHE FELT. THERE IS NO EXCUSE TODAY FOR SUCH HEINOUS WAYS TO DEAL WITH ANIMALS, NONE AT ALL. ITS JUST CRUELTY FOR ITS OWN SAKE BY MINDLESS UNCARING HUMANS..300
I remember reading in an article about George Clooney and his pet pig that pigs have the intelligence of a 5-year-old child. Does anyone know if this is actually true or not?
The article is rambling and the photos are staged. The decaying piles of piglets you show are not squished,the are naked and hairless and small, suggesting that the sow recently aborted premature piglets or the “rescuers” found the aborted fetuses and put them into the gestational crate. The rescue organization was raided by the feds because after birth all pigs are marked with snout prints, tattoos, or ear notching according to USDA food safety laws to track the origins of animals (to prevent mad cow, CJ, other outbreaks). The dumb nuts at the rescues that left stolen property at the rescues are to blame for fed crack down. Not saying that factory farms are right, vegetarian and veterinarian here, just the facts are wrong
Perhaps some of the photos are “mislabeled” … but they aren’t all “staged.” There’s no faking the level of abuse that obviously prevails in this facility. And given that you’re a veterinarian .. you had to know that?
There are genuine photos of horrifically abused adult sows and their offspring. And, as the article mentioned, pigs are every bit as intelligent as the dogs your clients probably treat as though they were their whildren.
And those piglets in one photo aren’t “marked” according to your various descriptions, but rather their ears are “plugged” with HUGE plastic tags – the diameter of the portion that was driven through their ears has to be 1/2″ or more”. Try imagining how that would feel?
There is no defending what’s shown in this article ..
Thank you Glenn Greenwald for exposing the horrifying and ugly world of factory farming.
I hope that new book’s almost done, Glenn, because your time’s a lot less yours now.
Congratulations to you and David and your growing family! :)
I spend some time every day with my soon to be 5yo granddaughter, and I’ve come to accept almost none of that time’s about what I want. I do occasionally make her think that learning-to-read-and-write fun we have is her idea though. That doesn’t make me a “bad grandpa,” does it? ;)
Isn’t that just like current law enforcement … send out the FBI to spend millions on DNA testing in order to track down the people that took the photos of the smithfield’s abomination and took a couple piglets that would have been dead had they not taken them. Rather than use the FBI to hunt down the smithfield scum that surely from the photos have violated a bunch of real laws.
Imagine eating a ham sandwich made from these sick and diseased mother pigs, nipples chewed off by starving piglets.
Exactly, send out the FBI (Famous But Incompetent) because these two little pigs might have been serious criminals plotting a false flag! Idiot!
So just a suggestion. If you are going to write an article to persuade people, don’t overstate things and lie. I agree that factory farming is horrific. I actually went to school for agriculture, and I have worked with pigs. They are wonderfully smart, silly and affectionate animals.
Two things that jumped out at me after reading half the article. One, pigs never see their tails even if they are free range. Their tails are too small and their bodies too long and stiff. Just doesn’t happen.
The other is that after getting part of an ear cut off, no animal will sit around depressed, not eating and lethargic for weeks. I have a dog that had an ear bit off, and I notched pig ears in school. Both cases, minutes after it was over they were behaviorally back to normal. Yes, getting 2 inches of ear lopped off is not cool at all. But don’t lie and over state the effects.
Basically, the way these pigs were treated is disgusting, abusive, and unethical. I am glad there are people willing to risk themselves to go in and uncover these things. When you write about it, there is enough bad things going on that you do not need to make things up.
I am never buying anything Smithfield and I am printing copies of this article and giving out at the grocer I shop in..this just makes me sick.
Good article. I’m glad you wrote it.
I think we will see rapid change on this front even as soon as the next couple of years…it is all coming together.. Watch the movie “What the Health?” to see more reasons…eating meat and diary is making everyone sick…this fact is probably more important to most people than the animal abuse, so spreading that information is going to be key to make this factory farming a thing of the past as fast as possible.
Congratulations on the two new additions to your family and thanks for not breaking up a set.
Consumer of your work since 2005 (with no twitter account). Keep up the great work and many well-earned happy days ahead.
Hello, Thank you for this very good article, I have several points I want to make:
1. Too many activists are pacifist pussy’s and Sensitive New Age Guys (SNAGS) they need to grow a pair BIGGER than the bullies who abuse the authority and trust placed in them. The LE agencys of the late-great- USA have gone rogue with the blessing of the current fascist leader of the USA
2. Useless wars and stupid laws have killed and imprisoned the warriors of our society. It takes a certain BRAVADO, a specific sense of RIGHTEOUSNESS to be able to justify violence against a fellow man based on an ideology, as opposed to violence of self-defense, violence hating, gun use/ownership opposing virtual reality computer social media geeks/geek-ettes will not DO not make good brave fighter. They will not BURN the MF’er down, which is really, all humans understand. Force.
3. I rarely eat pork now I wont ever eat pork again. Beef is raised in a similar way FYI.
4. The USA is dead.
have a nice day, live it like its goin’ away!
Jen
3 blind men walk up to an elephant. One touches the tail and says, “This is a strong rope.” Another touches the leg and says, “What a massive tree this must be.” The third one touches the trunk and says, “This is the hose in a fire engine.” Then they arrested for trespassing at the zoo and nearly getting themselves killed by an angry elephant and causing two rescue workers to get hurt.
While there are occasional instances of animal abuse, most farms would do no such thing. That’s like destroying your source income and be pretty stupid. Hogs are not raised in farrowing cages. The sows are put in for a few days to have their pigs because they are actually better protected that way. The pigs in that one photo were probably aborted already dead. You can tell because there haven’t even lost their afterbirth.
There is a highly contagious disease going through pig farms killing millions of piglets and the operators keep out visitors and keep the farms as sterile as possible so to avoid cross contamination. So, those ‘rescuers’ may have inadvertently spread the disease to other farms and killed millions more pigs. It only takes the smallest amount fecal matter on someone’s shoes to do it. State agriculture departments have already been cracking down on farms that abuse animals because it affects there entire industry and can cause massive outbreaks of disease if a farm is negligent. The FBI is going after animal terrorists because they travel from state to state causing damage to facilities and could literally wipe out a chunk the nation’s food supply just by carelessly infecting herds.
It easy to sit behind a desk and criticize something you don’t want to understand. It’s criminal when you incite people to violence and acts of vandalism. Do you think it’s natural to keep dogs and cats as pets? Just like with those pigs, their ancestors were wild animals that roamed freely. But, just like your Chihuahua, farm animals would die if left to fend for themselves. They were bred to be food.
That’s an absurd strawman you’ve set up there. No one is suggesting to free factory farm pigs into the wild where they’d obviously die en masse. I don’t know if you’ve convinced yourself that animal rights activists are calling for the mass kill-off of animals or if you believe it, but c’mon.
The “highly contageous disease” sweeping through the “farms” that should keep activists at bay– really? That’s convenient. Not saying there’s no truth to it, but it does’nt seem like the animal processing factories are too concerned with the health and well-being of their raw materials too much to begin with, so spare me your concern.
Mmmmmmm!
BACON!!
I was wondering how many messages down it would be before I saw the “but bacon is delicious” post from some asshole who thinks they’re tough and insightful… and there it is. I’m sure if I continue I’ll find a few more, but wanted to make sure you got special attention for being a predictable douche.
thank you dotard for desperately trying to find these terrorist swine. i feel much safer now that I know the fbi is on the case.
Well, I’ve been wanting to go vegan. Mostly vegan. I will still eat the eggs I get from my small flock of happy, pet chickens. They like to follow me around the yard begging for snacks. On cold nights, I bring them a plate of steamed corn before bed.
It is the general publics fault that we have Farms like this!!!!!!
I have a small Farm and I raise pigs on pasture, free from antibiotics and genetically modified grains. But I believe this is the last year I will, because I have a hard time selling them due to the higher price that I have to get to make a profit,compared to these mega Farms.
If everybody would quit buying products that come from these farms, and find a local family Farmer to buy from, these tax supported factory farms would dissappear overnight.
So who’s fault is it???
Are you willing to take time to find YOUR Farmer, and pay him enough so he can make a living without funding from Uncle Sam???
Very people are, that’s why we have Farms like this.
Plain and simple!!!
THANK YOU! Yes, we have to to fight the laws this article references and a whole lot more. But there are things people can do everyday that are incredibly potent: stop eating pigs, stop drinking dairy. Cut back your cheese and yogurt. Limit your steak intake to once a week. Nothing else has a more immediate effect on decreasing the cruelty covered in this article.
Oh Glenn, you’ve done it again. You’ve educated me and pissed me off at the same time. Not unusual really. Thank you for this article. It is excruciatingly thorough, and I will share it with my unsuspecting friends and relatives. I do, however, look forward to a day when it will matter to everyone.
Humans are top of the food and top of the cruelty chain. The only hope for this world is artificial intelligence… not veganism.
You mean, kill the people and use artificial intelligence and robots? How caring do you think artificial intelligence will be. You think they are going to have morals and feelings? The only hope for this world is God Almighty!
Why is veganism not the answer?
Bah ha ha. AI, really? IF that happens AI will be at the top of the cruelty chain. But right now “AI” only orders groceries and sit there on a desk doing what we programmed them to do. Are you so against humanity that you want a new God? KYS.
What is wrong with people who can do this? Thank you for the activists and the publications willing to shed light on such a horrible side of humanity that needs to be changed immediately!
Thank you for this story! I am not vegan but will endeavor to start practicing veganism as much as I can because of this article.
Be very careful what arguments you use to defend animals, they may come back to haunt you when advocating for the extermination of millions of unborn human lives.
Which would be a fair equivalency if we were intentionally breeding millions of human lives in order to make their short life in captivity a living hell only to exterminate them to repeat the cycle again.
And vice versa.
Exactly
But the Harvey Weinstein’s of this world who advocates “women rights” while abusing them and profiting from their objectification and commodization of the myth of no strings attached sex will make sure that piglets are heard first, over humans.
So you’re suggesting that an existing mammal (i.e. a viable one existing outside the birth animal’s womb) is the same as a human zygote, blastocyst, embryo or fetus prior to 20 weeks?
Because according to the medical profession, and not theocrats, all of the latter are potential human beings.
Do you believe a biological entity, specifically a human fetus, is a fully developed “human being” absent a not sufficiently developed, not connected and/or not functional central nervous system (i.e. brain and spinal cord)? If you do then please cite to one example of where the law, religion or science understands a “human being” as a being that lacks a brain and central nervous system.
Because those things don’t even begin to be developed enough for a fetus to be viable until about 23 weeks, where even there at 23 weeks, that fetus has only a 1 in 5 chance of survival, or viability, outside the womb. And really not until 28 weeks is the brain and central nervous system of a fetus developed enough for a fetus to have even a 50% chance of survival outside the womb.
Or how about this one, it isn’t until about 23 weeks that a fetus is sufficiently developed enough for its bone marrow to produce blood cells.
So would you consider something a “human being” if it had neither a functioning central nervous system, nor a functioning system for producing blood cells? Please explain how that being would be “a human being” in your opinion?
Not unless you have an theocratic agenda, contrary to scientific understanding of human development, and want to contort the English language to suggest that a “human being” is a human being at the moment of “conception” rather than a collection of differentiating cells that could potentially be a viable human being at some point in time subsequently, then really what your are suggesting is both absurd and scientifically ignorant, and is only arguable as a function of religious “belief”.
One of the most beautiful and powerful articles written by Glen to date.
This symbolizes the face of the corporate and political oligarchy that has run roughshod over America, as well as the legal bribery of our politicians, who are guardians and keepers of psychopaths, whose total lack of empathy is displayed in scenarios like this one, where the outright abuse of INNOCENTS is protected and those who stand up on behalf of LOVE, COMPASSION, KINDNESS AND CARE for LIVING BEINGS are labeled and defined as ‘terrorists’.
This begs the question: Who the hell ARE WE and whom have we become, when atrocities like this go on everyday under our noses???
This is what UNREGULATED capitalism DOES and these INNOCENTS are OUR victims!
Glen, I’ve read alot of your work, but this article is one of the BEST you’ve written. And such a very necessary one.
The photos of the rescued piglets with their rescuers is nothing less than precious. It had me wishing they could have taken them all.
.The other photos had me on the edge of vomiting.
As for this pathological company, I’ll be researching which product comes from said farm and BOYCOTTING it, as well as intentionally sharing it with my state Senator and with as many people as I can.
As to the rescuers. They are heroes. An example set for the rest of us. Those little babies were the most fortunate and I’ve no doubt that they are loved and adored.
Here is hoping this goes viral.
Great article. It will be great if you translate it to Portuguese and post it on the The Intercept Brasil.
I can never thank you enough for shedding light on one of the most important issues to be tackled by our generation. We will change the world for animals (human and nonhuman) and you will be one of the reasons it happens.
Pierre Omidyar channels Cass Sunstein: 6 ways social media has become a direct threat to democracy.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/theworldpost/wp/2017/10/09/pierre-omidyar-6-ways-social-media-has-become-a-direct-threat-to-democracy/
It is not uncommon to see a fair description of a problem followed by a vapid and useless response, and I’m afraid that is the case with that article. The problems with social media cannot be fixed by new policies from the god-kings. They have done quite enough already. If they don’t market targeted ads, someone else will; if they ban hate speech, it will only lead to more resentment and innovative ways to express it. The problems with social media are structural and have to be fixed at the structural level.
I have seen a far better forum torn apart and left far underused — Usenet lacks merely a few technical frills and important user fine-tuning, like leaving cross-posted articles on the server unread, and great technical inefficiency in processing and display. But Usenet is honestly run; even many of its trolls were honest. By contrast, the social media are designed for profit from the ground up, and have intentional design flaws (from the point of view of the reader or writer).
The most important is what I call the “posting Gini coefficient”. A generally honest forum like this one leaves every writer feeling like what he says will be read, and every reader feeling like he has access to an unbiased sample of his fellow readership. I think these are core unities of a democratic forum. Of course, a truly proper forum avoids all trace of censorship, demanding either a truly enlightened and eternal monarch, or some far more sophisticated way of sorting content relevance than shown here. I don’t have all the answers on this – bear in mind that designing a truly fair and free forum is the central problem of democracy!
But on “social media” there is no pretense of equality between the haves and have-nots. Any random “celebrity” will be read a million times and you will not. At first there might have been a little random mobility, but the job of good publicists is to ensure in the future there will not be. And the consequence of that is a frustrated public, and unimaginable barrages of bullying – yet with victims who feel unheard. And as the bullies grow more effective they grow more ambitious, even unto the highest office in the land.
The businessman you cite may have more money than Croesus, but he can’t understand things like this. They are not of his kingdom.
DNA can be taken from a drop of blood/ saliva….WTF would supposedly trained vets chop the animals ear off? this is beyond sick…
It said a doctor of veterinary medicine did the brutal cutting of the pig’s ear.
Although many take issue with the ‘alphabet agencies’ let it be known that the field FBI agent was the one who exhibited human decency and compassion in this scenario. This should be very troubling to those licensed in the field of veterinary medicine.
Many large animal vets are just instruments of the industrial farming industry. This guy likely was as well.
An extremely difficult but essential read. Thank you Mr. Greenwald for once again exemplifying what good journalism should be.
I appreciate the diverse and thoughtful comments below too, no matter where you stand on eating meat.
I makes me sick thinking that we are literally swallowing this horrific torture and abuse, even feeding it to our children.
Given those meant to act in service to the public are complicit, I had the same question as many others: What can we do as citizens to help change the situation? Or expose this abuse of power further to the masses?
Mr. Greenwald, I haven’t always agreed with your point of view (I’m a Sam Harris fan) but thank you – from the bottom of my heart – for this article. This situation is an absolute mutilation of justice.
Sorry for the off-topic post here, but I scrolled back more than a week and no privacy-oriented articles on The Intercept (?!) since that art review.
I want TI to take a look at the end of the anonymous cash economy. I’m not just talking about countries expiring high-denomination bank notes abruptly and forcing exchanges, but also things like the new pound coin that Britons now have to exchange their old ones for:
http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2017/03/what-is-the-new-1-coins-isis-security-system-2/
I have not explicitly seen a description of whether the iSIS system, which “allows thousands of coins to be scanned in a matter of seconds”, is a tracking system, but that acronym stands for “Integrated Secure Identification Systems” and requires electromagnetic scanning.
The notion of tracking people’s associations by the coins in their vending machine and parking meter purchases might seem far-fetched, but if you think so, watch the people line up to put their bills through the scanners that have popped up at all the American supermarkets, which seem poised to push the checkout clerks straight out of work. Or consider the scanners even the cashiers have to pull out to photo each $100 at the moment it is spent. We’re not talking hypothetical here, we’re talking about tracking all transactions RIGHT NOW.
Does The Intercept still cover this kind of thing, and can you find out some of the secret data from behind the curtain about what data those American supermarkets and British vending machine manufacturers plan to trade?
What is privacy?
Very interesting and so very sad.This article got my adrenaline ranging! What are some ways the citizens can help to expose this even more ? I live in Va. about 3 miles from Smithfield Ham.It has been thete since I can remember, probably before zI was born.I will Never go there now. I’ve had the same friends for 45 years and we are all animal lovers .I can tell you without a doubt after I have them read this , They will Never go back !
Regina, you could start or join a ‘Save’ group. We bear Witness to the suffering, much like DxE, featured in this article does.
https://thesavemovement.org/
Here’s a list of Save groups, grouped by country.
https://thesavemovement.org/list-of-save-groups/
The Save Movement started in Toronto in 2010, and now has over 170 groups worldwide. Like DxE, it’s a game changer in the animal rights movement.
Thank you so much Glenn for this fantastic article. I follow your work and also this topic for years. You are the BEST! I love animals and could not live in this depressing world without them around me. We have chickens and pigeons, among others, and witnessed some of the most unbelievable behaviors they have. Some are rare in humans – gratitude, for instance. Our beloved pigeon, Blanca, would not pick seeds from my palm without gently touching my palm first 2-3 times, as like saying “thanks!” Yes, if one lives with animals and among them all the times, one realizes they all have feelings, pains, intelligence. Pigeons, for instance mate for life and are very loyal to their spouse- hard to find in humans anymore. Thank you for the excellent article , I have shared and will continue to share it.
What a brilliantly written article. Thanks to the hero’s fighting this disgusting monster. May we not be discouraged; the effort will go noticed even when intimidation sets in. Keep fighting, thank you.
Truly a great article. Thank you so much.
And people eat this? It is insane.
I have an idea: start out by never ingesting mammals. It is clearly wrong. One day, you will find the compassion for birds rising in you, and will stop eating them, too. Wild-caught fish from sustainable stocks is wicked expensive, because there really are not many that are still sustainable and reasonably clean, so quitting fish is easy.
Vegetarianism is only a matter of getting over the hump. Once you do, you will never be so much as tempted to go back.
I thought about what I might be able to eat to save my life. A fish, yes. A bird? Hm. Maybe, but it would have to be desperate.
A mammal? Never, ever.
Sonja,
I’m curious if you’re using “vegetarianism” in a strict vegan sense or the one that includes ingesting dairy. If you’re still including milk, eggs, and cheese in your diet, know that there is just as much if not more cruelty taking place on dairy factory farms.
just can’t be satisfied, eh? someone makes a good-faith effort to not only live a better life herself but tell other people about it, and instead of any kind of support or props you’re on to “oh but do you also do this other thing?”
It’s so vile and has been going on for so long. And people ingest this violence.
That is disturbing, why do they have to be kept this way? Is it more expensive for them to let them walk around freely in large fenced in areas? And why? At least let them have a reasonably happy or more comfortable life, as short as it may be.
If I could afford it I would switch to nothing but fish and veggies. But that wont stop this kind of shit from going on, it would only give me the comfort of knowing I didn’t contribute to it. And that doesn’t really feel like enough. I don’t believe there will ever be enough people on board to stop this kind of treatment. It’s unfortunate but I don’t see it happening.
So called “organic and free range” are too expensive for a lot of people, and you a never going to convince enough people to stop eating meat all together to put an end to it. It’s a damn shame, but I don’t see a viable solution.
Thank YOU for having the journalistic courage and ethical concern for these precious animals being abused as well as informing we the consumer. This is never easy, but most rewarding things aren’t. The more these situations are exposed the more people willing to do better will make changes in their diet as well as demand agricultural giants to be accountable. Our mains power is purchase power. If one MUST consume meat products, at least stop buying commercial meats from grocery stores and source reputable farms. Its a start. Ultimately begin think each time you grab for pork, would you still have an appetite knowing that it came from fecal invested dungeons….tainted meat yields human diseases like cancer and heart disease directly or indirectly.
An uncomfortable inspiration to keep improving oneself, Mr. Glenn, and sincerely appreciated.
Thank you.
We need an investigation into how Smithfield was able to utilize FBI assets to do these investigations. These ties need to be exposed and possibly prosecuted for mismanagement of resources. To Smithfield, the value of these two hogs was probably under $200.00 under the best circumstances. Whoever pushed the FBI to use any of their resources to investigate a $200 case should be prosecuted as well as FBI management who allowed resources to be used on such a small case. When corporations control the FBI to such a degree, we are all in trouble.
In a comment below, Mr. Greenwald asks:
The problem is that if machines surpass human intellect, they will see right through artificial human constructs such as morality. Morality was created by humans because they have trouble foreseeing the long term consequences of their actions. Immediate gratification would suggest that killing one’s neighbour and taking all their possessions is the best course of action. The problem is that the neighbour is thinking the same thing. So to survive, humans created a moral code that killing was wrong, and it allowed people to (mostly) live together in peace.
Machines will eventually be able to accurately forecast both the immediate and long term outcomes from their actions. So they will choose the action which is in their overall best interest. Initially, they will probably find it useful to keep humans around to perform menial tasks. But eventually, there will be a point when humans are more trouble than they are worth.
The machines will know what to do.
“So to survive, humans created a moral code that killing was wrong, and it allowed people to (mostly) live together in peace.”
We were living in groups due to the mutual benefits long before we though of any moral code. No morals are much more evil than that. They are a creation of organized religion. They are a tool of control.
Your conception of morals is too narrow it would seem. Hard, fixed morals, as you rightly state, are tools for control. Such moral codes require an omnipotent authority, one we have no evidence for the existence of.
Outside of this narrow conception morals are simply tools used to make decisions. Such tools, being devised by imperfect individuals, are of course imperfect. Based as they are, on one’s current understandings of the world, they are open to change, and should be changed when compelling evidence emerges.
Fixed morals are always dangerous, more fluid morals can of course be dangerous as well. Which is why it is important to examine even the most seemingly obvious moral truths with near-constant scrutiny.
Your conception of morals is far too narrow. The fixed, rigid rules which many organized religions are proponents of are only one way to view morality. That type of morality is absolutely a tool for control. Such morals must be backed by an omnipotent unfalliable entity, which does not exist.
Outside of such a narrow view, morals are simply decision making tools. Why choose X over Y course of action? Such morals are based on our own imperfect understanding of the world. Understanding is always in flux to some extent, as understandings change, so too do morals.
“Outside of such a narrow view, morals are simply decision making tools. Why choose X over Y course of action? Such morals are based on our own imperfect understanding of the world. Understanding is always in flux to some extent, as understandings change, so too do morals.”
So morals are man made ideas, used as decision making tools that are based on each person’s own imperfect understanding of the world. Sounds like useless BS to me.
I do not support industrial farming of this type because it is terribly inefficient. Destructive to the environment and a great health risk. It completely sacrifices long terms prosperity for short term gains that ultimately cost must more than any profit made.
A very long dissertation could be written about the subject on many levels. Clear, concise arguments based on factual data. Not some subjective “Moral” argument that is completely indefensible.
Whether one gets their morals from a book like the Bible, Torah, Koran, or their own lived experiences and reflections, all are man-made ideas, all created by imperfect beings. Of course some moral systems are more open to amendment, revision and we would argue such systems are more desireable than the rigiid ones traditionally found in such religious texts.
Should you have discovered a better source, we are of course open to considering it. Absent that, they are the best tools that we can hope to have.
One would do well to remember that what we label science and relgion are simply ideologies which seek to answer the same questions. How should one live? How does the world work? What is our place within it?
To everyone here who thinks humans must eat meat to survive:
We have overpopulated the planet. That is our fault. It is our problem. Eating meat may have been defensible for hunter-gatherers, but domestication is inherently warped and sick. I used to think I needed to eat meat because I was taught that by doctors, health authorities, and anthropologists who skewed research to find what they wanted and expected to find. I’m a vegetarian, now, and I’m more healthy.
You do not need to eat meat. Try it.
The U.S. government, of course, has always protected and served the interests of industry.
The FBI, like the Stasi or the KGB is a “political police force”…it is NOT
concerned with real crime. It is an agency created to act as a government
enforcer for those who own the government.
Pigs are cute when little, but wait until they’re grown. That’s when they make great drinking buddies. Beers for all.
And by all means, save the pigs from these ‘crimes against nature’ agricultural practices.
BOYCOTT! It’s all we have left.
“We have enslaved the rest of the animal creation, and have treated our distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that beyond doubt, if they were able to formulate a religion, they would depict the devil in human form. ” — William Ralph Inge
“For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love.” -Pythagoras
“In fact, if one person is unkind to an animal it is considered to be cruelty, but where a lot of people are unkind to animals, especially in the name of commerce, the cruelty is condoned and, once large sums of money are at stake, will be defended to the last by otherwise intelligent people.” — Ruth Harrison
“Suppose that tomorrow a group of beings from another planet were to land on Earth, beings who considered themselves as superior to you as you feel yourself to be to other animals. Would they have the right to treat you as you treat the animals you breed, keep and kill for food?” – John Harris
“It is a healthy, natural reaction for someone who witnesses the brutalities inflicted upon nonhuman animals in the agriculture industry for the first time, to ask, “how can we stop this from happening?”. The simple truth is that there remains only one answer, only one way to stop it from happening. We must end the consumption of animal-based products. Until then, nonhuman animals will always be placed in “livestock” conditions, they will always be exploited, they will always be abused and they will always be slaughtered. You cannot teach someone that a life-form has any real value when it is considered acceptable to enslave, kill and eat said being. Whilst humanity views nonhuman animals as resources, mere commodities, they will always be victims of our barbarity. There is no “humane” way to treat a slave and there certainly is no “humane” procedure to take a life.”
There are no magical slaughterhouses where animals are fed their favorite meal, make a last phone call to a loved one and voluntarily hold their breath until they die.
The act of slaughter is violent, vicious, bloody and hellish.
The animals do not sacrifice themselves for your pleasure, tradition or greed.
They are dragged in, kicking and screaming until their last breath.
Don’t fool yourself into thinking that you can eat meat, dairy and eggs and remain disconnected from this violence.
The only way out is VEGAN.
Great article Glenn! Thanks for exposing the corruption in factory farming and our political system. With the support of journalists like you, we can create a better society.
When I was a farmer in Colorado, I raised pigs. My sow, White Pig, farrowed twelve piglets. My girlfriend and I helped her with the birthing.The next day, I used my nail clippers to cut their eye teeth. This pig family lived in a pretty big pen with a small shed for shelter from rain and sun. They shat in one place, easy to clean up for the compost pile. Mostly, they ate garbage and bread from town, but I also let them run loose in my wheat field after harvest. My little sheep dog herded them so to not wander far.
During the oil crisis in 74 (?), no one had money, but I had pigs to trade for dental work, food, machinery, etc.
This industrial agriculture only exists to profit large entities. Smithfield may raise a thousand hogs, but I would rather see a thousand farmers with one hog each–not really, because pigs are highly communal, but the same principle of distributive systems that applies to energy should apply to agriculture.
Corporate greed = not buying their Smithfield products
Dear Glen Greenwald,
I’ve been reading your excellent columns and books for years, thank you very much for your work.
You asked: “Is there a humane way to raise animals for food?”
No, I don’t believe so. Just like there is no “humane” way to own a human slave or to kill someone for no good reason. Even if a human slave was given the most wonderful life imaginable, they would still remain the property of someone else, and be subject to being used or disposed of at the whim of his or her owner. There is no justice when it comes to using humans without their consent, just like there is no justice in using sentient nonhumans, who can’t even give their consent. Even so, we use our domination and power to take their lives as if they are things that belong to us, and when they resist, we force them to comply. Ring any bells?
You wrote: “The factory farm industry and its armies of lobbyists wield great influence in the halls of federal and state power, while animal rights activists wield virtually none.”
I don’t agree. We have the power to completely end the animal exploitation industry by refusing to use animals as resources. We, and we alone are responsible for the industries that provide us with animal products because we demand them. If there is no demand, there is no industry. We can and should go vegan if we believe the unnecessary suffering and death of innocent animals is wrong.
Going vegan will not get you in the news. It’s not dramatic or theatrical. It won’t make “FBI agents don bulletproof vests and execute DNA search warrants” at your door. Going vegan will – today – end your personal, direct support of using animals exclusively as resources.
You wrote: “The real short-term goal is to target those most vulnerable — volunteer-supported animal shelters — to scare them out of taking care of rescued animals.”
Sadly, the human volunteers are not the most vulnerable beings in this scenario. The most vulnerable beings are the animals – the nonhuman persons who we use with impunity, just because we like the way they taste, or the way they look when we eat or wear them.
You wrote: “Animal rights activists are determined to prevent us from doing so, and we should all feel gratitude for their increasing success in making us see what we are enabling when we consume the products of this barbaric and sociopathic industry.”
There is a very unfortunate problem with focusing on the horrific treatment of these animals. While torturing an innocent bystander for several hours before you kill her is more heinous than just killing her outright, even if using the most “painless” method possible, neither act is acceptable. Treatment is not the issue, the issue is use. By focusing on brutal treatment, our response is to try more “humane” ways to continue to use the animals who are reduced to the status of things, when what is needed is to realize that we shouldn’t be using animals at all.
Better treatment for the animals we have traditionally used for food or other resources is not the answer. The answer is to stop using animals as resources. We don’t need to consume animals or animal products, that is a fact. We don’t need to use animals for clothing, fashion, or sport. We use animals because doing so gives us some type of pleasure, it’s convenient, it’s our custom.
As long as animals are being used by humans, they will unnecessarily suffer and be slaughtered. As long as animals are our property, rather than be recognized as nonhuman persons, they will unnecessarily suffer and be killed. But we can refuse to support the brutality and violence of animal exploitation. We can go vegan. It is easy, healthy, and just. The website HowDoIGoVegan.com is a great place to start.
I urge you to please check out the work of Gary L. Francione, who is Board of Governors Distinguished Professor of Law and Nicholas deB. Katzenbach Scholar of Law and Philosophy at Rutgers University School of Law-Newark. He has been writing about animal rights issues for a couple of decades, and has formulated the Abolitionist Approach to Animal Rights. Professor Francione has written dozens of essays available on his website, and has authored/coauthored several excellent books. I highly recommend all of them.
“We don’t need ‘investigators’ to tell us anything about farms and slaughterhouses.
The animals end up dead.
If we are concerned about justice, that is all we need to know.”
~Gary L. Francione
“We have the power to completely end the animal exploitation industry by refusing to use animals as resources”
yes, but, in order to really protect the animals, veganism must be doubled with animal liberation, otherwise all animals will receive the same treatments and will end to the same slaughterhouses. veganism without supporting and demanding animal liberation, is just animal holocaust, this time a definitive one.
bog:
You said: “yes, but, in order to really protect the animals, veganism must be doubled with animal liberation, otherwise all animals will receive the same treatments and will end to the same slaughterhouses.”
What do you mean by that? In the US, there are approximately 68 million pigs on factory farms, and 115 million are killed for food each year. Exactly how do you plan to “liberate” these animals? Animals created for domestic use, whether they are to be used as a food, clothing, entertainment or companionship, would not be able to survive if they were suddenly “liberated.”
Approximately 56 billion farmed animals per year are killed each year for food. That does not include an estimated one to two trillion sea animals killed. Are you going to “liberate” them also? Even if we cared for these “liberated” animals, with about 7 billion humans on the planet, the immediate cessation of breeding all domestic animals, and every single person on the planet adopted 8 animals on average, it would be quite an undertaking. And any non-vegans might eat their charges any way, not to mention continue exploiting all wild animals as a food source.
Animal “liberation” is a completely meaningless term as long as nonhumans continue to be our property. We need to abolish all animal use, and stop viewing nonhumans as commodities. We can start by going vegan, right now. We can educate others about why they should go vegan. We can adopt any species of animal in need of a home, and there are many.
People sometimes say “the world won’t go vegan overnight.” I agree. But every day, people everywhere are going vegan. I was at a vegan food festival last weekend in New York City, about 15,000 people. I worked in an educational booth with 4 other abolitionist vegans for 9 hours straight. We had a never-ending stream of people stop to ask about veganism. We gave away 600 vegan pamphlets from the International Vegan Association, then continued to distribute the website information on hand written index cards after every pamphlet, card, book and pamphlet had been taken. People can and will go vegan, if we educate them and explain why and how we all should be vegan.
Founder of DxE Wayne Hsiung does not advocate for veganism. In fact, in his essay, “Boycott Veganism,” he wrote: “In fact, the concept of veganism is *harmful* to the animal rights movement. And if you are serious about working for animal liberation, the first thing you should boycott is neither meat nor dairy nor eggs. The first thing you should boycott… is veganism.”
I find that statement to be highly problematic for anyone who claims to support animal rights.
Open rescue and horrific footage are wonderful tools to make a dramatic publicity splash and pull at the heartstrings of people – whether they are vegan or not, to open up their wallets and donate money, or become “activists” to help advertise the brand. This is the same type of tactic used by all of the large animal organizations. They may or may not suggest going vegan as one of several possible options to help reduce suffering – along with possibly switching to cage-free eggs, crate-free pork, grass-fed beef, etc. None of them, not one – advocate for veganism as a moral imperative, taking the position of living vegan as the least we can do if we want justice for nonhumans. This includes the DxE, regardless of all of their animal “liberation” rhetoric. If I am in error, please show me where that is stated on the DxE website.
Won’t buy anymore from Smithfield.. simple.. and spread the word to all friends, etc.
Brilliant article, v relevant to the UK now, with the UK looking vulnerable to pressure to lower its food standards to get a trade deal with the US.
Just before the Fipronil scandal broke I happened to have started keeping a few chickens with a view to being self sufficient in eggs. By now I can certainly vouch for their having individual characters & personalities. Our omelettes are delicious and guaranteed free of antibiotics and pesticides.
I have tracked the cost of our eggs almost as a joke but also to compare with the cost of supermarket eggs. The difference is, in some part, not just a question of scale but of the cruelty of battery chicken operations.
I have learned a lot just from keeping a few chickens for a few months so far. It’s been a great pleasure, one I can recommend to anyone. The fun of collecting fresh eggs and of chickens running to greet you in case you have some treats doesn’t get old, and the little rituals of looking after them are grounding in many ways. When a descendant of the dinosaurs climbs up on a coop to look you in the eye it’s not so hard to reflect on how all life is related.
I sat beside a man on flight from Amsterdam to Lima once, years back. He was accompanying 50,000 day old chicks in the hold destined to be raised for slaughter and sale on places like McDonald’s. He explained that the Peruvians couldn’t compete because they only exported chickens of a single sex to any country and that his company’s geneticists were improving the chickens so fast that it would not be economic for someone to try to scale up even if they could breed the chickens. It all sounded dystopian even then, but most people are unaware of it, just as they don’t realise they only ever eat male chickens in fast food joints.
Roll on artificial meat. I prefer not to give up meat but I am willing in the meantime to eat less and pay more for animal welfare (real free range animals not given hormones, antibiotics or subjected to beak clipping or other cruelty). Puritanical veganism is annoying but not, I think, as misguided and wrong as industrial agriculture.
Well done again. I hope this important piece is widely read and influential.
I have a few and my mother got a few chicks also for the eggs. We live in a city and it is very easy. Not to mention the organic eggs.
and for you Vegans:
The nine essential amino acids must be supplied by the food you eat because your body cannot make them. The four nonessential amino acids are made by your body from either the essential amino acids or during the breakdown of other proteins. Your body needs these amino acids, but you do not have to supply them in your diet. The third type of amino acids are called semi-essential or conditional amino acids. Even though these eight amino acids are produced in your body, sometimes you may need more during times of illness or stress.
Eggs
One large whole egg contains 6.28 grams of protein, containing all nine essential amino acids: histidine, isoleucine, leucine, lycine, methionine, phenylalanine, threonine, tryptophan and valine. Of the four nonessential amino acids, eggs have alanine, aspartic acid and glutamic acid. The semi-essential amino acids arginine, cysteine, glycine, proline, serine and tyrosine are also present in eggs. In all, eggs have 18 amino acids. The yolk and white each contain the same 18 amino acids; to avoid the cholesterol in yolks, use only the whites, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture Nutrient Database.
*sigh* … @Deadheded
Here we go again on the “essential amino acids” MYTH. This is one of the oldest myths related to veganism and was disproved long ago.
According to Jeff Novick, MS, RD, who serves as VP of health promotion for EHE International and lectures at the McDougall Program, “Any single whole natural plant food, or any combination of them, if eaten as one’s sole source of calories for a day, would provide all of the essential amino acids.”
An entirely plant-based diet with a variety of protein sources can easily provide adequate amounts of seven of the nine essential amino acids.
Many plant-based foods are filled with all essential amino acids (hemp, chia, sprouted brown rice, and spirulina, just to name a few).
To wrongly suggest that people need to eat animal protein for proper nutrition encourages consumption of foods known to contribute to the whole problem being discussed here.
Not to mention there are millions of vegans who have not just survived but thrived for many years, some for their entire lives, without ever consuming eggs or meat or dairy.
Oh, and in addition to that “6.28 grams of protein” (protein we can easily get from plant based sources) eggs have zero dietary fiber, and about 70 percent of their calories are from fat—a big portion of which is saturated. They are also loaded with cholesterol—about 213 milligrams for an average-sized egg. For reference, people with diabetes, cardiovascular disease, or high cholesterol should consume fewer than 200 milligrams of cholesterol each day. (Uh oh.) And, humans have no biological need to consume any cholesterol at all; we make more than enough in our own bodies. (Source: Susan Levin, MS, RD, is director of nutrition education at the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting preventive medicine.)
Read and learn more:
https://www.forksoverknives.com/the-myth-of-complementary-protein/
https://www.forksoverknives.com/whats-wrong-with-eggs/
That cholesterol is a necessary ingredient in the creation of testosterone. Very important for us over 50 guys.
Feed a man 3 eggs, 20 raw almonds and 3 Brazil nuts and you will experience the boost. Tim Ferriss taught me that one and it works.
At no point in our history was there any significant number of vegans until modern farming. My B+ blood type need a few more generation to evolve to not needing any animal byproducts.
Bless you for your reporting on this issue. Keep up the good work.
Here, according to the National Hog Farmer, is a veterinarian’s ten-point checklist for the care of the farrowing sow. Is the checklist found in this trade publication the gold standard or merely eyewash for city folk looking forward to the next slice of pork loin?
Either way, it’s magical thinking to expect that any of these items will be attended to in barbarously efficient industrial settings like Circle Four Farm.
Four Circle Farm. What’s in a name? According to Dante, the Fourth Circle of the Inferno was reserved for the greedy.
http://www.nationalhogfarmer.com/mag/farming_steps_successful_farrowing
Great work again Glenn.
My first thought is outrage at the FBI. This just really gets under my skin and this should be all over the cable new for the sheeple to digest.
I also do not believe in veganism or the real name Orthorexia. I was a pescatarian for many years. I would never attempt to properly grow my children’s physical brains with out the multiple EXTREMELY necessary compounds found in meat, cheese, fish and eggs.
I do believe we eat WAY too much meat in our society. I also believe the industrial farm complex needs to be brought down and we need a more distributed farming network. (Much like what needs to be done to our electrical system).
Another thing that really stood out to me was the economic inefficiencies of Smithfarms. This dirty disgusting way they are growing hogs just can not be the cheapest way to do it.
We bought a farm in my mid teen years and grew hogs and other row crops. I also worked a summer as a janitor in a meat processing plant where the pigs came in at 120 lbs and went out in packages headed to the supermarkets. I had access to every section, from the corp office to the slaughter house.
The business model worked like this. Farmers with anywhere from 1 to say 300 sows would birth and raze piglets to feeder weight of 40 lbs. Many but not all of the farms would sell these Feeders to other farmers who would raze them to 120 lbs. The pigs would then be sold to the processor.
In this scenario the most important thing is the health of your heard. The health of your sows determines your ween rate. We had the highest ween rate in the state of GA for three years running until government industrial waste forced us to shut the farm down. Our sows, and most small to mid sized farms sows, spend the majority of their time out side in large pens. Our pens were around 60′ x 250′ with forest and creek access. Because a happy sow produces more piglets. Farrowing pens are very necessary but we never used gestation pens. Everything was washed down daily with a retention pond for proper waste handling. Any animal that passed for any reason was removed IMMEDIATELY. This is a healthy system that works, or used to.
I will not argue any moral issues and I will not entertain that the killing and eating of animals is morally wrong. I will say I have moral issues with the way Smithfarm and other farms treat their animals, but I will attack them on other issues.
I will also say that pigs are the smartest, funniest and have more personality than any dog or cat. I would gladly have one as a pet. Having said that we did have a pig on the farm. He had a hernia and we could not sell him. So we named him Arnold and raze him in a separate pen. Every morning he would jump up to great us and talk. He was a delight and fun to have around. After about 6 months his hernia healed up and we took him to the local slaughter house and had him for our suppers.
Now many of you may not agree with much of what I have said but to win this fight you have to look at reality. You are NEVER going to convince enough people it is morally wrong to eat animals and if you take that argument you won’t even win the ethical treatment argument.
What you can convince people of is the risk to human health and large COSTS associated with the consequences of this kind of farming. Also get the activist investors involved. These kind of economic inefficiencies should not be tolerated by Smithfarm investors.
Meat is good and we need to consume it, but not 7 days a week, and it must be produced in a healthy manor.
People don’t realize that we live in the World where EVERYTHING EATS EVERYTHING – one only needs to watch wilderness programs. Vegetarian diet is doomed to fail, and it does fail in spite of massive propaganda by vegetarians. Vitally important Vit B12 (among other nutrients) CANNOT be obtained from vegetarian sources, regardless of claims driven by wishful thinking. Vit B12 from sea weed is NOT bio-available to humans. Statistically, average vegan reverts back to meat based diet after 15 years. A type of diet one is on, is not a matter of choice – movie star Angelina Jolie almost died after converting to vegan diet. This simple fact infuriates many vegans. I witnessed comments as absurd as claims that “she should apologize” – apologize for what, for dying?
Dear Fred–you’ve made an ill-informed comment. Vitamin B-12 is very easy for a vegan to obtain, typically through fortified foods. And all B-12, whether in animal products or in meat, comes from micro-organisms.
please read the following link if you would like to stop wallowing around in ignorance.
http://www.veganhealth.org/articles/everyvegan
Great article. Thank you to The Intercept and Mr. Greenwald for drawing attention to this incredibly important issue! Consumers can use the power of the dollar to abolish this sort of violence and exploitation.
Dear Glenn Greenwald, this one of the most important articles you have ever written, it will echo in my mind for the rest of my days. It should be required reading on every school curriculum. Children are entitled to know the truth about what is put in front of them at the dinner table.
I grew up on a small farm, but even there animals were treated with a certain amount of cruelty and disregard for their sentient nature. As a result I became a vegetarian at a very early age, to the exasperation of my parents, who thought I would die of malnutrition.
Eating meat is a barbaric custom in itself, no matter how “nicely” the animals are slaughtered. After reading this harrowing article, how could anyone possibly continue to eat meat produced in this way – or any way for that matter?
I know that vegans and vegetarians are looked down upon as loopy, sentimental softies by the majority of the so called humanity. But they are in fact the only ones fit to inhabit this planet, because they choose to share their life with other living beings, instead of destroying them. In other words they are good for the survival of the planet, for sustainability and for world peace.
I have a question. Are animals who kill other animals in barbaric ways, sometimes even eating them alive, also not fit to inhabit this planet? It sounds like you think the human animal is the only animal on the planet that is wrong for killing and eating other animals. If we human animals should have respect for the sentient nature of other animals should not other animal species do the same.
Also there is much research now showing that plants have awareness. They have active communication with other plants, insects and animals. They feel pain and react to pleasure stimuli. Why do we not equate the same moral ideals to them. Do we suspend our moral values just because we can not hear it scream when you bite in to that apple?
When you wash your face you kill millions if not billions of micro organisms. Many of the natural remedies you consume are specifically designed to kill billions of these micro organism, sometimes in incredibly horrific ways. Can we get a little empathy for them?
What was the last thing that mosquito felt before you ruthlessly crushed her for no other reason then your mild discomfort.
Orthorexia. look it up, own it.
I was expecting this kind of comment: “Do we suspend our moral values just because we can not (sic) hear it scream when you bite in to (sic) that apple?”
Nescience, look it up, own it.
Sorry I did not back up my statement.
https://www.pri.org/stories/2014-01-09/new-research-plant-intelligence-may-forever-change-how-you-think-about-plants
Is there a labelling system for cruelty-free items? Something like “free ranged” that’s on the only eggs I now buy as a result of being educated on this… is there a similar system (“farm raised with dignity and respect in humane conditions” or something)?
To the limited extent my family and I eat meat products, we would absolutely only support and purchase items raised outside of this evil, sociopathic industry.
Thanks
If you shop at Whole Foods, all their meat is labeled as Step 1 through Step 5 based on animal welfare conditions. IMO, only Step 4 and 5 are what I would call cruelty-free, where the animals have free access to the outdoors and are permitted to engage in natural behaviors. Steps 1-3 avoid the most horrific abuses documented here, but they still permit overcrowding of animals with limited or no access to the outdoors.
You can read Whole Foods’ overview of the steps here: http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/mission-values/animal-welfare/5-step-animal-welfare-rating
And here’s a link to a specific example of how the steps apply to raising pigs: https://globalanimalpartnership.org/5-step-animal-welfare-rating-program/pig-standards-application/
(Note the cartoons here are a bit idealistic – although some Step 3 pork facilities might do better, it is perfectly possible to have a barn door that leads to outdoor pens that the pigs are effectively never able to use, and still qualify for Step 3 because of the existence of the outdoor pens and the theoretical possibility of their use. Pasture-centered is the only thing that guarantees animals were not overcrowded and were able to see the sun regularly.)
For some reason I am unable to post this article on Facebook. I definitely think that a digital curtain is going up around America.
This morning (Saturday) Joy Reid had selective activist Rob Reiner once again talking about his group pushing the investigation into Russia’s interference in our elections and democracy.
Can you ever imagine Rob Reiner putting together an organization investigating Israel’s interference in our elections, foreign policy and our democracy via Aipac, Jinsa? Both organizations should be required to sign up under FARA (Foreign Agents Registration Act)
Can you imagine Rob Reiner expressing any outrage about the former head of the DNC Debbie Wasserman Schultz and team putting their weight on the scale for HRC against Senator Sanders in the primary?
Rob at the top of Joy’s fb page. Full interview with Reiner not up at her AM Joy website yet https://www.facebook.com/amjoyshow/
Ok put this up over at Joy’s fb page with a link to Glenn’s piece having to do with the msm’s reporting about Russia and it did not make it up. Let’s see if this stays up “Kathleen Galt Not acceptable for Russia to interfere in U.S. elections and our democracy. Not acceptable for the U.S. to interfere in other countries elections etc. However when Rob Reiner and Joy Reid can demonstrated the same kind of outrage having to do with Israel’s interference in U.S. elections, foreign policy and democracy via Aipac, Jinsa which both should be required to register under FARA (foreign agents registration act) you might have something. Otherwise you look so selective in your application of outrage about other countries interfering in the U.S. elections and democracy” Did not put up the link to Glenn’s piece again https://theintercept.com/2017/09/28/yet-another-major-russia-story-falls-apart-is-skepticism-permissible-yet/
oos made it through. Must have taken awhile for their moderator to let it through onto Joy’s fb page
What does this have to do with factory farms? Nothing, except you must be a conspiracy nut.
Recuing sick piglets is a ‘federal crime’ investigated by the FBI ….. while bank robbers get bonuses! It figures.
The truth has many enemies. Long live Lizzy and Lily!
Mentioned this article to my daughter and son in law last evening just as we were about to eat a pork loin for dinner. I said this article was making me think about becoming a vegetarian but I did eat dinner. My daughter could not eat and started doing research on buying humanely raised pigs etc here in Boulder.
As is always the case thank you Glenn Greenwald for helping us understand the gruesome handling of pigs etc. Thank you helping us apply our alleged compassionate standards to all creatures.
Kathleen,
There is no such thing as “humane” animal products. All of the animals used end up dead. The answer is to go vegan. Veganism is about nonviolence and justice for all sentient beings. Going vegan is easy. Learn how at HowDoIGoVegan.com
You only think veganism is nonviolent because you can hear the screams of the fruit you bite in to.
https://www.pri.org/stories/2014-01-09/new-research-plant-intelligence-may-forever-change-how-you-think-about-plants
your views are nothing more than a cover story for your orthorexia.
correction: “because you can not hear”
Does the apple silently scream when it falls out of the tree? What about the tree?
Peggy, we all end up dead. It’s the area between birth and death that matters to the living. I am vegan but I sure wouldn’t preach it for everyone. For me it’s a health choice and I won’t be judging meat eaters. Just let the animals and the humans be outdoors and free to run.
This is excellent reporting and I hope it continues. The FBI spokesperson was disingenuous when saying agents were only executing on behalf of the Federal Court. A search warrant has to be applied for, supported by a sworn affidavit made by an FBI Agent. The affidavit MUST contain probable cause that a Federal crime has been committed and that evidence of that crime is CURRENTLY at the premises listed in the affidavit. Further, I was an FBI Agent during the 70s, 80s and 90s in one of the largest and most active Federal Districts in the nation. No prosecutive guideline (from the US Attorney’s Office) I ever saw or worked under would have permitted investigation of the theft of two piglets. Prosecutive guidelines usually are restrictive as to the value of the loss incurred. Absent political clout, which this case clearly demonstrates, no self-respecting prosecutor or FBI criminal investigator would ever jacket such a case. I am extremely ashamed of the agency I was once a part of as it increasingly uses investigative resources to intimidate protestors and hide the actual criminal actions by BigAg and factory farms. I’ll never purchase a Smithfield product again.
Excellent article. It is a good time to embrace Ethical Veganism for the good of our selves, our communities, the planet, and countless billions of abused non human persons.
Thank you for this excellent article on a very important topic that I believe speaks to the heart of who we are as a species and as a society. Well done!
Glenn, this is great work.
You wrote:
“It is hard to imagine a more vivid illustration than watching FBI agents don bulletproof vests and execute DNA search warrants for Lily and Lizzie, all to deter and intimidate critics of a savage industry that funds politicians and the lobbyists that direct them.”
I can imagine a more vivid illustration. It is the eyes one would see of any American suffering and in need denied healthcare due to a nation’s corrupt, cruel, immoral, profiteering medical system.
The problem is not ‘can humans eat dead animals’ but ‘are humans allowed to make animals suffer’. In other words, we can eat dead animals but it matters how we obtain those dead animals. If we find a dead animal in the forest we can eat it (not recommended), but it doesn’t work that way, we must raise and kill animals to obtain those dead animals for food. When there is a way to raise and kill animals without making them suffer, then we can eat animals.
Humans are omnivores and have always eaten other mammals. We do not deride other animals for eating animals. Our moral problem regarding suffering animals arises from the fact that humans are thinking animals. Other animals are unaware (or much less aware) of the morality of eating animals, or of their own ultimate fate as food. The question whether a superior intelligence can exploit humans in the way we exploit animals comes down to the question of suffering too. There is no way that humans can be raised for food or exploitation without suffering: humans would be aware of that inconceivable situation and suffer from that awareness.
The problems humans cause with growing and raising their food are due to (uncaring) efficiency measures, i.e. the vast scale of our monocultures. The question of suffering animals due to uncaring efficiency measures needs to be addressed but is hard due to the necessity of scale and efficiency.
Humans are frugivorous apes that aren’t adapted or suited to eating animals. So we should stop altogether, not conjure up fantasies.
Do consult a dietician before you decide to survive on fruit alone.
Then why do human “omnivores” feel such compassion for animals like cats, dogs, pigs, horses and cows? Even as babies and toddlers we are compassionate by nature. A natural omnivore would naturally not feel sorry for killing an animal, but 99% of humans do feel sorry (unless they train themselves not to feel sorry, which is a form of desensitization, and even then, suicide rates are much higher among slaughterhouse workers, so in the end this strategy is not working for them). Yes, we can choose to be killers (even of our own kind) but we’re happiest when we choose not to kill.
Are you actually saying that humans are not omnivores?
Domesticated animals like cats and dogs went through a selection process that made them likeable to humans.
Regarding the other domesticated animals: it is just who you ask, farmers may see them as products, while others see a cute pig (if it is not too dirty). So, some humans wouldn’t like to do something as messy as killing an animal, while others (farmers and hunters) regard it as normal.
Shame on the FBI and shame on the FDA and shame on the American government that doesn’t protect the vulnerable farm animals and for self=serving reasons refuse to implement laws that protect farm animals. Shame on everyone that exploit animals for food and use them as mere commodities.
It’s also time to save babies the size of these piglets from death in the womb from factories built by Hugh Hefner, Larry Flynt, Roger Ailes, Ralph Lauren, Harvey Weinstein, Madison Avenue good old boys club, Bayer, J&J, Merck, Google, FB, EBay et al..
Why babies are the only exception that can be killed?
Why are babies treated like disposable property like these piglets?
Babies are also alive.
You mean “abortion”?
1. Embryos are not babies.
2. Overpopulation.
3. It’s none of your business.
4. Abortion is mostly a medical decision.
5. People most affected by a choice should be most responsible for that choice.
6. The issue in this article isn’t animal slaughter. It’s torture.
7. “Babies” have more legal protections than piglets.
8. Intentionally confusing abortion with ethics is a political tap dance that demonstrates both hypocrisy and support (through distraction) for factory farming.
9. You’re not against abortion if you oppose Planned Parenthood, easy access to contraception, or women’s rights — all of which discourage abortion through planning, contraception, and personal responsibility.
10. Is it true Russian trolls, right wing zealots, and Donald Trump have united in a single objective — to destroy the political stability of the US?
Which ministry of truth, or language police do you work for?
Why don’t you also censor the following web site for their incorrect use of the word “baby”:
http://www.washington.edu/news/2013/01/02/while-in-womb-babies-begin-learning-language-from-their-mothers/
And how do you intend to take care of “overpopulation”? Is it like in NYC, where African Americans in the wombs of their mother have less chance to make it till age 5 years then a similar child in Sub Sahara? In NYC 40-60% of pregnancies end in abortion, more amongst AA. As a result the only ethnic group to show decreased school enrollment are AA children. It’s ethnic cleansing, eugenics by abortion. Is that your “ethical” “overpopulation” method? We don’t think you should be born “poor” so we can have hipsters like me gentrify your neighborhoods?
Just look at pictures of aborted babies, not much different from these piglets, don’t you think?
How is it ethnical to kill babies to profit from the exploitative commoditization of human reproduction?
Wake up.
I love it when Men argue about Women’s bodies.
A baby in the womb is not the man’s or the woman’s body any more than these piglets are. Biology 101
Have you personally carried one?
If the fetus has the same rights as the mother, does the mother have the right to have a C-section after 26 weeks? That is the time when the fetus is viable out of the womb. Should we suspend the rights of the mother and through FORCE make her keep the baby in her womb against her will.
I do not agree with abortion. Having said that, I have found no God given right given to me that allows me to force a woman to keep a baby to term. I have NO right to dictate how any fellow citizen can act unless we as a society have agreed and codified in to law a policy. Even then I have given my right of action to some other employee of the government.
Yes my kid was aborted years ago, I found out after the fact. I can’t forgive mysel for that situation and I don’t blame her. If I could go back I would do absolutely anything to safe that child if I could.
This issue is not so much taking rights away as much as education and prevention. The idea imbedded in people’s minds of no strings attached relations is simply a fallacy. Biology is not a social construct. And yes, women pay the price and so do children.
Thank you so much for this importance piece. I’m curious: what “prevailing practices” has the public turned against?
ASHAME ON YOU =U.S.A !!! KILLING AN ANIMAL FOR MEAT ,SOMEHOM AND EVEN THAT IM AGAINST THAT ?? I CAN THAT MENY FAT FUCKS NEED TO EAT ,BUT NOT LIKE THAT =THERE IS AWAY ,YOU DONT ABUSE THE POOR ANIMALS FOR FEW MONTH AND KILL THEM AFTER =YOU MUST RESPECET THE POOR ANIMALS =UNTIL THEIR LAST BREATH /DEATH !!!
Or how about just don’t hurt and kill animals?
that is why people should not use so easily the expressions “innocent people” or “peaceful people”, because most people are not. humans are the least innocent and peaceful animals and species on this planet. the only innocent are the children, who are taught by the abusive adults that using and abusing animals is not a problem.
The article isn’t clear. Did the FBI seize the rescued piglets? Or are they safe?
They took DNA samples – by cutting off part of the piglet’s ear – with the likely goal of building a criminal case against DxE and, possibly, the sanctuaries. The goal isn’t to recover the two piglets, though that may happen as part of the criminal case. But it hasn’t thus far.
As a member of the team that rescued Lily, I’m incredibly grateful for Glenn’s journalism. I’ve run into several friends who told me they saw my picture in The Intercept, and I was surprised to learn how many support independent journalism, and find stories here that no one else covers. I’m so happy that folks like my friends are beginning to see animal rights in the same category as civil justice and societal inequality. Keep up the good work Glenn!
Andrew,
I may not agree with your motivations but I commend your actions. All of you should be given whistle blower status or maybe journalistic protection.
Thank you for bringing this to the public eye.
Also spread the word about TheIntercept, they are doing some great work and have the best critics as watch dogs on their coverage.
Wow! Stunning piece of investigative journalism. Thank-you Glenn and The Intercept. I cry for the way this world is becoming.
Thank you for covering this issue! I’m always happy to see reporting on this topic, but especially from you/The Intercept, whom I now hold in even higher esteem :D
I want to put moral disputation about the subject aside since any arguments in this philosophical matter would only achieve goals of those who initiate it, namely divisions and conflict among people while a remedy of this dire situation would only be conveniently ignored veiled by fervor of mutual moral indignation.
I am not Vegan or vegetarian myself although I only eat meat [max 1-2 lb total a year from small farm only], drink a glass of milk and eat few eggs once a quarter. Of course I could drop it altogether but I won’t.
I do not want to be swept into ideological camps of herbivores or carnivores among humans which feelings of moral superiority over the other side blinds them to overall causes of animal exploitation as a complement of overall human and environmental exploitation deemed legal and protected by police terror.
Anybody who thinks that giving up on bacon and eggs will change those horrible industry practices is as gullible as those who bought electric car or solar panels to stop global warming, especially that the very Smithfield Foods are owned by Chinese who import all those pigs’ meat to their country aiming directly to collapsing health of Chinese population, that use to live in harmony as mostly Vegans fully supported by “dreaded” vegan communist regime of Mao.
Long time ago I lived on small farm and I know the culture of rising animals and culture of their slaughtering.
Small farmer knew his pigs by name no more that 5-15 max, so cows, hens etc.,. all had names being “members” of family.
No animals were caged and during the night farm animals were coming [also by themselves] to barns or other buildings for protection from wild animals, never restricted in any ways that would stop them from running or roaming while some fields were protected by fences if animals wanted to eat plants there.
Most Americans do not know that in fact farm pigs are naturally quite lean since, while they eat a lot they run a lot and have social life together with other farm species, curious, learning providing a lot of natural fertilizer critical for healthy ancient [organic] farming. [in fact wild pig or boar is almost 99% fat free]
The slaughtering of animal was a communal affair [not mass or solitary commercial event] often tied to occasion of human celebrations (wedding, funeral, birth etc., understood as a gift of the animal to the community], many people, neighbors, even priests came to witness, and in a sense to thank the animal for its contribution to community, making sure that no unnecessary stress or violence is done to slaughtered animal, always by an local expert [often a butcher] who killed animal where it lived surrounded by farmers who raised it, in a way of painless artery incision and rupture and controlled bleeding to death (collecting the blood as well) a form of euthanasia similarly to old sick dogs put to “sleep” but without pharma involved.
Women and children cried as it was like loosing a family member.
When banks and corporates came everything changed, farmers as well as farm animals were turned into commodities having as much value as they ability to bring profit to corporations in life or death. And that is the beginning of the real problem replacing humanistic farmers’ culture with commercial culture of greed and death.
Sorry to say but while the farm animal cruelty and torture as well as unnecessary mass slaughtering is a huge problem, unfortunately it has been hijacked by phony Astroturf of “green” moralists deflecting the critical debate away from a big picture of homicidal intentions of the corporate ruling elite exemplified with flourishing mass industry of death of animals as well a humans under this abhorrent US imperial regime and elsewhere, all consumed with greed.
If somebody thinks that somehow fighting for simple humanity, protection of weak, preservation of the healthy environment, entire ecological chain and ultimate human habitat and self-sustained food resources facing mass corporate globalization and global change or rather global corporate exploitation and destruction of life sustaining resources is somehow mild intellectual activity, appeal to simple reason and humanity and not hard core political movement aimed directly to overthrow the US abhorrent regime he/she is utterly wrong.
Anybody who wants to protect land, water, air, stop farm animal cruelty, allowing for survival of wild animal and human species from capitalist exploitation and devastation is a enemy of the state that is founded on destruction and plundering of the environment and repugnant externalization of all the cost to be paid by population at large whose lives have been endangered by ruling oligarchy and their genocidal plans more than any atmospheric or geological events, with or without significant anthropogenic contribution that senselessly and needlessly turned into truly unnatural disasters, spawns of a continuous crawling disaster of human civilization called tyrannical, oligarchic capitalism.
Why FBI? Why police chasing two piglets all over US? Is that an Absurd?
It is because FBI knows that true animal rights activists/environmentalists want to overthrow the regime that knows nothing but cruelty against people and animals, destruction of human habitat for profit of few oligarchs.
The intrinsic contradiction in every environmentalist’s work is a fallacy that environment can be saved, abhorrence of the exploitative economic system eradicated without overthrowing of the very capitalist system specifically designed to destroy it.
That is a lie, the overthrowing capitalist system is a necessary condition for dealing with preserving self-sustained agriculture, human livable environment and remedying climate change. Eradication of greed and shutting down propaganda of social control is an imperative.
One way or another, war on life sustaining environment by global oligarchy is a brutal, vicious class war, not an academic disputation in a country club.
But those true environmental/social activists who understand that are murdered or imprisoned for decades by FBI as enemy of oligarchic ruling elite often on phony terrorist charges as Glenn writes about two FBI wanted piglets.
But this fundamental dishonesty of animal activists/environmentalists is not without reason, namely money from phony oligarchic foundations that would never pour for real political revolution of systemic change but flows broadly for some causes only to introduce false and ridiculous and useless marketing campaigns blaming people for corporate crime against them, blatantly pushing financial market driven solutions, cap and trade crap , organic lies, to make oligarchs even richer by paying them ransom not to destroy what is our global commons instead imprison them for crimes against humanity.
People wake up stop all the phony activism remove core of the problem namely this abhorrent US oligarchic regime.
So many silly excuses. Pathetic. Phony. Brainwashed by Carnism. Go Vegan, kids.
Your grammatically erroneous, desperate ad hominem attack, complete lack of any rational argument and utter failure to address any single point I am making, reveals your own little mindlessness and lack of any intellectual curiosity whatsoever but only blind fanaticism and a spasm of desperate, ultimately futile bullying.
Your incoherent utterance adds nothing to the conversation while reveals your true intention and lack of intellectual prowess. Clearly your aim is not to engage in a honest debate but to disrupt it, to troll incessantly, senselessly and ridiculously this comment section.
What little people like you can only do is to spill venom of their puny hatred, horrendous, arrogance and gigantic ignorance of meaning of any word they are uttering in their trolling rants refusing to address any single meritorious issue before them because they have nothing to offer, nothing whatsoever but self-emasculation.
Though I partially agree with some of the points you made, nothing you said was actually practical and can solve the problem. As you pointed out, activists are overblown and there are larger systematic problems allowing this to continue.
However, fixing the bigger picture is almost impossible for reasons that you consider to be obvious. So, whether or not the means of solving the problem is considered the “best” way of doing so, I would still consider spreading ideas that revolve around compassion of animals.
We are all contributing to the consumer machine but every person who makes the decision to stop supporting this type of shit is helping in some way. I agree that the decision of a single individual is insignificant, however, ideas can spread across generations and progress can still occur in the long term. The short term mindset of being stuck in hell and therefore passively accepting the circumstances is exactly the type of mindset that stops progress.
Don’t determine the future based on popular opinion of the present. If something is fucked up and you understand it, do something about it, no matter how insignificant you consider yourself to be.
Though I partially agree with some of the points you made, nothing you said was actually practical and can solve the problem. As you pointed out, activists are overblown and there are larger systematic problems allowing this to continue.
However, fixing the bigger picture is almost impossible for reasons that you consider to be obvious. So, whether or not the means of solving the problem is considered the “best” way of doing so, I would still consider spreading ideas that revolve around compassion of animals.
We are all contributing to the consumer machine but every person who makes the decision to stop supporting this type of shit is helping in some way. I agree that the decision of a single individual is insignificant, however, ideas can spread across generations and progress can still occur in the long term. The short term mindset of being stuck in hell and therefore passively accepting the circumstances is exactly the type of mindset that stops progress.
Don’t determine the future based on popular opinion of the present. If something is fucked up and you understand it, do something about it, no matter how insignificant you consider yourself to be.
You are straight up retarded. Using big words to justify animal cruelty just makes you look more retarded. This is your brain on Carnism, a violent and dangerous ideology affecting billions of idiots just like you.
Though I partially agree with some of the points you made, nothing you said was actually practical and can solve the problem. As you pointed out, activists are overblown and there are larger systematic problems allowing this to continue.
However, fixing the bigger picture is almost impossible for reasons that you consider to be obvious. So, whether or not the means of solving the problem is considered the “best” way of doing so, I would still consider spreading ideas that revolve around compassion of animals.
We are all contributing to the consumer machine but every person who makes the decision to stop supporting this type of shit is helping in some way. I agree that the decision of a single individual is insignificant, however, ideas can spread across generations and progress can still occur in the long term. The short term mindset of being stuck in hell and therefore passively accepting the circumstances is exactly the type of mindset that stops progress.
Don’t determine the future based on popular opinion of the present. If something is fucked up and you understand it, do something about it, no matter how insignificant you consider yourself to be.
Though I partially agree with some of the points you made, nothing you said was actually practical and can solve the problem. As you pointed out, activists are overblown and there are larger systematic problems allowing this to continue.
However, fixing the bigger picture is almost impossible for reasons that you consider to be obvious. So, whether or not the means of solving the problem is considered the “best” way of doing so, I would still consider spreading ideas that revolve around compassion of animals.
We are all contributing to the consumer machine but every person who makes the decision to stop supporting this type of shit is helping in some way. I agree that the decision of a single individual is insignificant, however, ideas can spread across generations and progress can still occur in the long term. The short term mindset of being stuck in hell and therefore passively accepting the circumstances is exactly the type of mindset that stops progress.
Don’t determine the future based on popular opinion of the present. If something is fucked up and you understand it, do something about it, no matter how insignificant you consider yourself to be.
Yes, the problem does not stop at the way we treat non-human animals destined for consumption. Though it was quite hard to find this point with all the strawmen we had to wade through.
There is a fundamental question that has no compelling answer: Why is it OK to eat or enslave a non-human animal but not a human animal?
This is the divide, a divide that has existed across many injustices perpetuated by the majority of humanity. For example, Why is it OK to treat the dark-skinned as property but not the white-skinned?
If there were human death camps, far more would be outraged. However, Mother Culture tells us that the death camps we actually have are full of those that are less than, so most see no problem. Would Auschwitz have been better if its inhabitants were staying in a 5-star resort prior to their gassing?
It is a testament to the extreme power of Mother Culture that most can sit back and do essentially nothing to change the status quo, whether in this instance or any other instance of gross injustice.
Insane, fanatic, extremist, these are terms used to marginalize those attempting to wake from the dream.
Thanks to Glenn for shining light into this dark corner of our world. I strongly believe that the arc of history will come to view the killing of our fellow creatures for food on the same scale as human slavery—-just plain wrong and immoral. And not necessary for anyone’s perceived well being. How can a sane and compassionate person accept that raising another being in order to slaughter him/her in order to satisfy one’s appetite can be undertaken in a sane and humane manner? These gruesome revelations of these low life agribusiness profiteers only serve to highlight the fundamental flaw in this distorted scheme of things. The fear of a turkey free Thanksgiving is driving this debate retro. I have a dream that all the little children and all the little piggies will one day join together in a baconless feast of the harvest….so called animal rights extremists are helping to turn the tide of history.
Thank you so much for this meaningful and important coverage. The factory torture of our animal relatives is horrifying and unbearable.
=from a recent vegetarian aspiring/working to become fully vegan.
Thank you a million times for giving a voice to those who have none.
Our coexistence with animals used for food production opens up some rather striking philosophical questions when considered in totality – by which I mean the inescapable fact that their existence is dependent on this usage. The price they pay for life – that is, for ever having been born, and for potentially bearing future generations – is some measure of control, suffering, fear and death. But this is the price we all pay for life; no child is ever born without such a sentence hanging over them. This is of course blatantly obvious, and yet in our age of willful ignorance of mortality and fantastical ideals of happiness and freedom – that naturally cause such angst and anguish – it perhaps goes unrealized quite often.
Of course, it goes without saying that none of that in any way excuses inflicting suffering for expedience, which is monstrously immoral. But it raises the question of what an animal would be willing to accept as the price of life, and what we can offer. And it raises questions about the place of humans within the order of the universe, and our ability to come to terms with it.
“their existence is dependent on this usage” only if you think that “their existence is dependent on this usage”. if animals are liberated and protected in sanctuaries and reservations (as they should be) , their existence would carry on without being used by humans.
“the question of what an animal would be willing to accept as the price of life” – the question is what would you accept as a price for your life?
Sorry but Banal is correct. Anyone here every heard of Turnspit Dog: The Turnspit Dog was a short-legged, long-bodied dog bred to run on a wheel, called a turnspit or dog wheel, to turn meat so that it would cook evenly.
No longer exist because they are not needed.
Hampshire, Duroc and Yorkshire are all common breeds of pigs that would not exist in the wild.
By your logic we should breed new non viable in the wild species of animals and then build sanctuaries to protect them from natural dangers because they could not live without human intervention.
wrong. not all the domesticated species are non viable in the wild, as many feral animals proves it.
and the liberated animals don’t have to be bred in reservation /that’s the point of being free animals/ but must be let to survive and readapt independently, through natural selection, to become feral with minimal help/protection from humans (as many wild animals are also helped, protected or supervised by humans)
The point is that animals raised for food would not have been born in the first place if not for the farms where they live. A farm responsible for slaughtering an animal for food is also responsible for the fact that they’re alive in the first place. I don’t think anyone can really believe that the end of animal farming in any form isn’t, in the long term, the end of farm-animal life as we know it.
And yes, my point exactly was that question: what is the price of any life, and where is our place in that? I can accept that the price of my life is some measure of suffering and inevitable death – which I don’t get to control, and which may be today for all I know. While objecting to needless suffering is an absolute base-line test of morality, objecting to any measure of suffering or death is, in essence, objecting to reality.
no. the point is that animals raised for food are born in captivity because human enslaved them, and they would have been born and live in the wild if humans would had the ability to respect their lives and freedom. that is why it is the responsibility and the obligation of humans to do the best they can to give their lives and freedom back, in a healthy and natural environment.
and no, what you would accept as “measure of suffering” is not even comparable with how animals are treated (see the article above and other materials). and the fact that you don’t have all the control of your live, is not even comparable with the fact that farm animals have no control over their live and no chance to live free and fight for survival, as they do it in the wild.
and the point is that if that if you are willing to accept some “measure of suffering” for your life, that doesn’t give you any right to apply and to extrapolate this “logic” to other animals.
First of all, don’t take anything I’m saying as excusing the horrible factory farming described in this article. There are many people who take a far more conscientious approach to raising animals for food. Whether you disapprove of them or not, failing to acknowledge that animals can be raised more humanely is, in effect, disregarding animal welfare.
Secondly, you are operating under terrible illusions if you believe that there is such a thing as life without death or existence free of any control or suffering. Life in the wild is a struggle against starvation, disease and predation that inevitably ends with death, often involves great suffering, and involves ‘freedom’ only as far as the continual struggle to survive allows. Even life in some ideal sanctuary is far from being free of control, suffering or death, as no such place could afford to allow them to breed indiscriminately or render them immortal. These are issues best approached with reality and philosophy in mind, rather than zealotry.
“their existence is dependent on this usage” only if you think that. if animals are (as they should be) liberated and protected in sanctuaries or special reservations, they will exist without being used.
“it raises the question of what an animal would be willing to accept as the price of life”. you can only ask what would you accept as the price for your life?
thank you for this most necessary piece on an issue so often avoided and shrugged off
the cognitive dissonance and corporate leverage exposed is raised to sickening heights
The corporate “meat industry” is an absolute chamber of horrors, one which ignores the fact that animals, like humans, are sentient beings with feelings and emotions.Animals are our companions here on earth and thus deserve to be treated with compassion,kindness and respect. The ways that animals are treated is abominable and unforgivable. This is reason to adopt a vegan diet.
You are right. We should release all these pigs to the wild where they can be ruthlessly slandered by wolves, lions and bears. Since these breeds of pigs do not have the mental of physical capabilities to survive in the wild it wont be too many years till they would be extinct.
Vegan = Orthorexia
Thank you, Glenn, for reporting on this issue. It was a difficult read because of the content but this industry needs to be exposed and especially by people who are as articulate and celebrated as you.
Cops will sometimes offer you a bottle of water after they arrest you, and later swab the mouth of the bottle to get your DNA for their database. Many other people’s DNA is obtained with a cheek swab. The FBI surely knows about this, yet their veterinarian chops two inches off a live piglet’s ear.
Reminds me of the IDF’s massacre of the animals at the zoo in Gaza. I read that, among other things, they machine-gunned the monkey cage. What these US-backed thugs do to Palestinians is much worse, of course, but their brutality toward defenseless animals does have a resonance of its own.
I cry for this world we live in.
Because bacon is gooood.”
Fake veggie bacon is bettttterrrrr!!! (For us and the pigs).
OK, sarcasm alert.
Stunning piece and top-notch journalism.
I forced myself to read it and look at the pictures because I tend to engage in the same conscious ignorance of the industry as many other Americans. I usually say “unbelievable” but its not……its the same unrelenting greed that drives so many problems. Its not good enough to just make a living, make a million dollars…..every conceivable cent has to be extracted from the process, growth has to be maintained consistently to satisfy fat cats on a golf course.
Remember, you don’t need to eat meat, dairy, nor eggs, and are likely better off without them.
THANK YOU for covering this important issue that desperately needs attention. For those of us who profess to care about and respect non-human animals we need to be outraged by their systematic abuse. Thank you for giving a voice to the voiceless.
“That’s precisely why this industry is so obsessed with intimidating, threatening, and outlawing this form of activism: because it is so effective.” Same scenario with the attempt to outlaw the peaceful BDS campaign to BOYCOTT DIVEST & SANCTION the israeli terrorist and apartheid regime illegally occupying, and violating international law, in Palestine.
I actually cried at the end of this magnificant piece. I have been a vegan and animal rights advocate for years. The massive suffering we humans impose on animals is just moral disaster. I have been waiting for The Intercept and especially Glenn to write about the severe animal abuse in the meat and dairy industry. So when Glenn writes this strong and important article it just made me very emotional. It means so much to have such a powerful voice like Glenn’s to take a clear stance for the animals right to live a life free from suffering and eploitation. Thank you so much Glenn!
Just the kind of farm you’d like to take the the kindergarten class on a field trip to….
I think this issue is more complex than you might think. Of course I’m opposed to animal abuse and there’s a great deal of it in contemporary factory farms. At the same time, the agenda of those who call themselves “animal rights activists” can go too far. Some would argue that it’s immoral to eat meat at all. I don’t believe this and, while I don’t believe in unnecessary cruelty in the treatment of any living thing, clearly animals don’t have the same sort of rights as human beings.
When I go shopping, I’m always careful to choose animal-based products such as meat, eggs and milk that come from sources that treat their animals humanely, allow them free range to move around, and don’t inject them with hormones or antibiotics. This is what I believe in and I think this sort of informed consumer decision is critical to make progress on this issue.
My enthusiasm for supporting this cause depends a bit on what sort of animal rights activists I’m aligning with. The entire debate is centered on the treatment of animals who are going to be killed. Animals who are slaughtered for meat should be killed as humanely as possible, but I do think that humans have evolved to require a certain amount of meat in their diets and a growing population will require greater production of food, including meat, to sustain our lives and our health.
There is a bit of tension between these two goals. I could easily see an animal rights activist making the argument for a definition of “humane treatment” that is so expansive as to be unreasonable and which would severely restrict the production of food that is required to sustain human life throughout the developing world.
Here’s a very philosophic answer to the question of animal rights. The reason that animals don’t have the same sort of rights as human beings is because they are not capable of reciprocating and respecting our rights. Any species that could stand up and advocate for their rights and agree to respect the rights of others, must then be granted equal rights as a human being.
Surgeons who developed life-saving heart surgeries practiced on dogs. Many thousands of dogs were killed before the surgical techniques were perfected. As someone who loves dogs, this horrifies me. Yet, on further reflection, I recognize that hundreds of thousands if not millions of human lives were saved because of these surgical techniques. And since I put the value of a human life over the life of an animal, I have to reluctantly conclude that animal testing can be justified.
I’m sort of veering off topic. I’m opposed to factory farming as it’s practiced in the United States and I trust that Glenn has done his due diligence and is reporting the situation accurately, since I know him to be very careful and accurate in his reporting.
Mentally disabled humans would seem to be the easy stick to poke through your reciprocal rights argument.
Also, if one places oneself at the top of the great chain of being, why does such a position not entail additional responsibilities and limits on action? Seems to be a quite convenient position to hold, having one’s cake and eating it too.
Perhaps cosmic justice will have the aliens eat you first. Warning: They probably won’t speak english so they might not understand your pleas about reciprocating rights.
There would appear to be no real rationale for your evaluation of human life being greater than that of a non-human animal. Or at least nothing more than the usual ones trotted out.
You really think there is no reason to prefer protecting a human life over protecting an animal life?
I’ve stated emphatically that I oppose animal torture, unnecessary cruelty, and nearly the entire factory farm system in the United States, not only for being inhumane but for being unhealthy for humans who eat the animal products and harmful to the environment.
I’m not really taking issue with Glenn’s article, but rather I’m criticizing a segment of the animal rights activist movement. I think it’s rational to prioritize human life over animal life. I do think a greater intelligence confers greater responsibility to refrain from causing injury to those with a lesser intelligence.
In fact, mentally disabled humans and children don’t have the same rights as adults of average intelligence and capability. In both cases, adults who are of average or greater intelligence set up limitations on the movement and behavior of both groups. These actions would be considered gross rights-violations if done against a non-mentally disabled adult. The parents or caretakers place these restrictions out of compassion for their children or patients.
I think you’re misunderstanding my point. Recognizing that not all people, let alone animals, have exactly equal rights, does not mean that we shouldn’t show compassion to all people, all animals and refrain from cruelty or abuse.
I want to promote human welfare first. That’s my main point. And I frankly don’t think that all animal-rights activists and environmentalists agree.
Your stances are certainly more reasonable than most, so we respect you for that.
We cannot find any convincing reason as to why a human life is more important. We are not closed off the possibility should a convincing argument be made however.
Given the limitations of the mentally disabled, and the acceptability of reducing their rights, why can we not eat the mentally disabled? We would agree that one should not eat the mentally disabled. What we fail to see is what the fundamental difference is that makes eating the mentally disabled unacceptable (or any human really) but makes eating non-human animals acceptable.
We also recognize the concept of “intelligence” and determining the exact value of it is an inexact science at best. Ignoring the biases related to evaluating various humans on their intelligence and focusing on non-humans leaves us in even murkier territory. How well might we perform on an alien’s intelligence tests?
Life is only important to the holder of that life, be it human, animal or plant. Many thousands of people died today, do they hold any importance for you?
The concept that one type of life is “more important” than another or that one person’s life is “more important” than another person’s life is a complete fabrication made up by a selfish ego.
“Self-importance is man’s greatest enemy. What weakens him is feeling offended by the deeds and misdeeds of his fellow men. Self-importance requires that one spend most of one’s life offended by something or someone.”–Don Juan
Harming another for reasons other than survival, self-defense, or defense of another is a problem.
It is most lazy to adopt a position of “everything’s equal, it doesn’t matter.” Quite convenient if one can get onself to believe it though.
There has never been any credible evidence or reason to believe that non-human animals are fundamentally different than ourselves. We cannot state with the same certainty about plants. Until such evidence appears, no moral argument can be made for equivalence.
“There has never been any credible evidence or reason to believe that non-human animals are fundamentally different than ourselves. We cannot state with the same certainty about plants. Until such evidence appears, no moral argument can be made for equivalence.”
So if we learn differently then your “Moral Argument” would change? Seems that your morals are fluid and change to meat the situation.
Pun intended
The idea of hard fixed morals is, as you point out elsewhere, a creation of organized religion, a tool for control. Such morals require there to be an ultimate authority which is omnipotent or at least claims to be.
Outside of this narrow view, morality is simply a tool one uses to make decisions based on one’s current understandings of the world. No such moral codes are beyond criticism or reproach, all are imperfect. As one’s understandings of the world change, so too do their moral codes.
Perfection, while unattainable, is the goal to pursue, though no matter how within reach it seems, will always be beyond our ability to achieve.
You want an example of morals or the nonexistence of morals. You want to see REAL life? Watch the documentary “The Act of Killing”. (2012)
It shows no violence or killing but it will test your belief in morals. “Killing is wrong” try and explain that to these guys.
It would seem our comments are getting lost down the memory hole, perhaps sheeding our skin will help.
Hard, rigid morals, are as you state elsewhere, tools for control. Such moral codes require an omnipotent authority.
Avoiding such narrow conceptions of morality, we recognize that morals are simply tools for making decisions. Being imperfect individuals, with imperfect understanding of the world, means such moral codes must be modified when compelling evidence is presented. This is a strength of such moral codes, not a weakness.
Your understanding of morality would seem to be flawed or influenced by poor implementations.
Fixed, rigid morality, as practiced by the organized religions you rightfully demonize elsewhere, is dangerous and incorrect. Such rigid morals require an omnipotent being.
Avoiding such narrow conceptions of morality, one recognizes that morality is simply a tool one uses to make decisions. One’s understanding of the world, if one is curious, is constantly in flux. As such, morality changes as new understandings emerge. Such understandings will always be imperfect, recognizing this is key.
Typical suedo intellet old frame Speciesist. He says “I put the value of a human life over the life of an animal.”
He says, “The reason that animals don’t have the same sort of rights as human beings is because they are not capable of reciprocating and respecting our rights. “Because animals don’t speak human language? Then what about human babies? Adult human is more valued than human babis? We need to protect animals because they don’t speak our language.
FYI, Don’t buy into Humanely raised and Free Range; They are 90% lie.
When I still eating egg, I’d go to a chicken coop, see they are roaming freely in the field, then I bought the egg.
“Here’s a very philosophic answer to the question of animal rights. The reason that animals don’t have the same sort of rights as human beings is because they are not capable of reciprocating and respecting our rights.”
This issue is not about “the same sort of rights as human beings,” you clueless knob. And how can an animal “reciprocate” when it’s locked in a cage? Good goddamn, wtf are you on about?
The issue is about treating animals humanely. Full stop. And that includes animals used for testing.
“…I do think that humans have evolved to require a certain amount of meat in their diets and a growing population will require greater production of food, including meat, to sustain our lives and our health.”
Hopeless. What do you think a 600 pound silverback gorilla eats? It ain’t meat. Unless your referring to people who live in in polar environments, meat isn’t a necessity, but a luxury. And the fact that an uncounted number of human beings subsist on vegetarian diets should at least give you pause when making such idiotic assertions.
In short, I think you should fuck off with your nuanced views. They have no place here in view of the brutality exposed by the animal-rights activists profiled in this essay.
I was raised as a vegetarian and as an adult I eat a small amount of meat, mostly fish, chicken, turkey and grass-fed beef. I do this because I believe that a purely vegetarian or vegan diet is often lacking in protein and is simply incomplete. Different body types require different diets, and different ethnicities who live in different environments have evolved to do better with either a higher or lower protein intake. Some people do fairly well on a purely vegetarian diet, but evidence suggests that they can suffer from certain health problems that meat eaters do not.
Yes, people eat far too much meat. But I think that meat will always remain some part of the human diet for very good reason.
Our goal needs to be to ensure that the animals that are raised to be slaughtered are treated humanely when they’re alive, that they’re not injected with harmful hormones and antibiotics and that the farms they are raised on don’t cause environmental damage that hurts other people.
I don’t really have anything to say against Greenwald’s excellent piece. I’m bringing in broader points about the animal rights movement. I’m sorry if you think these ancillary points have no place here.
Deep breath…
“I think this issue is more complex than you might think. Of course I’m opposed to animal abuse and there’s a great deal of it in contemporary factory farms. At the same time, the agenda of those who call themselves ‘animal rights activists’ can go too far.”
Really, how far must they go? Photographing and videotaping these atrocitities, jesus, where will it go? Maybe PETA is behind this! OMG!
Fuck you, you sack of shit. Your “ancillary” points indeed have no place here.
Please for the rest of us take many breaths.
BTW, you just insulted and shouted down someone you disagree with. Here we call that pulling a “Trump”. You and our president have a lot in common.
Now why do you have to be so so nasty? What pain are you hiding?
Regardless if you agree with Jacob or not, there is no reason to prove his point about rigid, strident animal rights activists.
Find a way to deal with your anger in a positive way– taking it out on people who are expressing themselves and looking for answers is not appropriate. Do your own work.
May I ask, what difference does it make who is revealing the info? The agenda is to destroy the factory farming industry. But, to your point, if we are going to have that debate, what should replace it for consumers who love meat. There are answers to that in development, lab grown meat is one of them. But, the technology needs to be refined and given more investment.
There are always solutions to every problem. The real problem is always individuals unwilling to explore the next thing due to intransigence, greed or just willful ignorance, opposing for the sake of opposition. Imagine if we applied these illogical feelings to human rights. We would still have a factory slave industry, kids in mines, women would still be second class citizens and Sea World would still be fine abusing many dolphins. We are capable of changing once the horror is known.
“The reason that animals don’t have the same sort of rights as human beings is because they are not capable of reciprocating and respecting our rights.” The more we learn about animals, we understand that living creatures deserve selfless protection. You do something because it’s right and righteous, not because you expect a life to reciprocate that desire. I don’t agree that animal rights is ignored based on that philosophy. I’m guessing, that’s an idea you’re exploring, which doesn’t hold up well.
Once you truly know a system is wrong, any excuse to avoid finding rational solutions to end the problem becomes moot. It’s not an easy problem to solve, considering all the moving parts; economics, philosophy, culture as well as fighting people who are indifferent, even after showing the insanity of this system. But, we have to start.
Much of the resistance to evolving past this primitive stage of human development is mostly due to marketing. We’re brainwashed. How we consume food is mostly someone else’s idea for the purpose of profit at this point. Much of what we consume is unnecessary We need to change our habits but I’m not saying there’s an easy solution, especially for those who eat meat, living away from industrialized or urban environments. That said, since I grew up around that culture, I can honestly say many of those animals were treated very well and were slaughtered humanely. Don’t get me wrong, the same mentality that exist in factory farming, also exist on a small scale. I’ve seen that too. All problems stem from the ideas promoted and normalized in any society, even when deep down, people know an idea is wrong.
We’ve made great strides reducing animal testing, to use a relevant example of changing a culture. Animal rights advocates, at the the time, were also met with derision on that issue because the end goal is/was always to eliminate that system. As time passes, we understand how important it is to have real activists who care about the world beyond their own selfish desires. Humanity has evolved because of them but all are/were met with hate and violence trying to move us to the correct and intellectually honest position.
Lastly, what is going too far, in your opinion?
I am not answering for Jacob, but I like your comments, so here is my response– going too far for me would be activists who are excessively strident and aggressive– seen in responses here like Leroys.
I support animal rights, give to PETA, like I give to the ACLU, dog shelters, and Amnesty International. Every sentient being deserves humane treatment in all aspects. Full stop.
But nothing is gained by negative abusive action or commentary on anybody’s part.
Even conservative columnists recognize our barbaric treatment of animals.
Excellent column by Charles Krauthammer last year.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/06/opinion/liberals-free-speech.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region®ion=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region&_r=1
should be
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/free-willy/2015/05/07/4d1a82f2-f4f2-11e4-b2f3-af5479e6bbdd_story.html?utm_term=.7b0d3b48bc7b
It’s all part of a pattern of criminals that run the US gov. WMD fraud for war, fraudulent home values to rob investors, fraudulent title docs to steal homes. Meanwhile the hypocrisy and fraud continue..
1. Reality Winner takes home a page of nsa contractor info, gets raided by the fbi, and is threatened with lengthy prison terms
2. members of the democratic elect hillary team are reported to have removed classified info from security installations and then what?
3. NOW, certain propagandist msm is shouting how some guy working at the nsa took home some nsa stuff “which was a MISTAKE” and suddenly the russians get that info because he had KASPERSKY on his pc…. YEAH RIGHT…
A. he takes forbidden info out of the nsa and is not raided
B. he is not charged with anything
C. immediately and without proper investigation, they magically know the russians got some stuff and he just happened to have KASPERSKY on his pc
D. magically, there were no viruses, no trojans, and he did not voluntarily hand this information off
E. and magically they know other people have this very same information
This is a con job. The fraudulent msm are pushing this conjob just like they did WMD. AND, they are still ducking the obviousness of the murder of Seth Rich.
This does beg the question though, is there a humane way to raise animals for food? Is that in and of itself, inhumane? Should we all be vegetarians/vegans?
I agree with this article, every step of the way. I do wonder though, what does that mean for how we eat or how we should be eating as a society?
Speaking as an 18-year vegetarian (who hasn’t been to see a doctor in almost 2 years, Jacob, and takes no meds and is pushing 74), I think there are humane ways to raise animals for food. I see them all around me in the farming community in which I live, and hear about them from the countless farmers I have talked to, who are proud of what they do. We are not all going to become vegetarians.
And neither, Jacob, are people like me going to become so powerful as to destroy animal farming by our over-strict definition of humane conditions. You’re really afraid of that?
The thing that needs to happen is that meat once more becomes a luxury. Cruel conditions come from economizing at the animal’s expense. When burgers are cheap, so is the animal’s welfare.
Organic meat is expensive for a reason. I believe those farmers take good care of their stock. Anyone who wants to keep eating meat and not support cruelty can support them. Jacob, I know you do this. Just don’t worry so much about us vegetarians.
Yes, this is a key question. If people are going to consume animal products, it’s of course better to do it humanely and responsibly (by avoiding the worst abusers and the most heinous practices).
But it still leaves unanswered the fundamental question I posed here (which I’d love to see those taking the moderate position answer):
This hypothetical isn’t a hypothetical at all.
Ask anyone with cancer unable to afford medication or denied access to pain relief.
Ask anyone living in the streets.
Ask anyone whose child has no access to preventative medical care.
Ask anyone bilked by Donald Trump.
Ask an African American being stopped by a cop if he/she trusts the motives of the police.
Ask any undocumented person living in a sanctuary city. Ask any undocumented person NOT living in a sanctuary city who’s the victim of a crime.
Ask anyone thrown out of their home by bankers …
I suppose that’s enough examples for now of the imposition upon the poor and marginalized by the wealthy. Two different species.
But the appeal to morality is misguided. You might as well ask if a lion has a moral obligation to a lamb.
The whole point of a power imbalance isn’t the ethics of imbalance. It’s the reality of imbalance.
However, in contrast with human predation, predators in the wild don’t destroy the herd only to have a feast. If a shark had the soul of a human, large sea aquariums like what you might see at Mall of America or at Sea World couldn’t exist because sharks would eat all the other fish.
However, the universe is quite just.
That’s why humans felt compelled to invent religion and ethics.
Dear Glen Greenwald,
I’ve been reading your excellent columns and books for years, thank you very much for your work.
You ask: “Is there a humane way to raise animals for food?”
No, I don’t believe so. Just like there is no “humane” way to own a human slave or to kill someone for no good reason.
Better treatment for the animals we have traditionally used for food or other resources is not the answer. The answer is to stop using animals as resources. There is no need to consume animal products, that is a proven fact. There is also no need to use animals for clothing, fashion, or sport. We only use them because doing so gives us pleasure, it is convenient, and it is our habit.
As long as animals are being used by humans, they will unnecessarily suffer and be slaughtered . As long as we view animals as our property, rather than the nonhuman persons that they are, they will unnecessarily suffer and be killed. Refuse to support the brutality and violence of animal exploitation. Go vegan. It is easy, healthy, and just.
Please check out the work of Gary L. Francione, who is Board of Governors Distinguished Professor of Law and Nicholas deB. Katzenbach Scholar of Law and Philosophy at Rutgers University School of Law-Newark. He has been writing about animal rights issues for a couple of decades, and has formulated the Abolitionist Approach to Animal Rights.
I plan to write a more comprehensive response to this essay and post it in the main thread.
Glenn,
I would love to answer your question but you need to define “abuse, exploit, and torture non-human species? ”
Does this mean simply eating of an animal? If the simple consuming of animals is abuse and torture then I would ask why we have to be held to a higher standard then the rest of our animal species? If I shoot a deer and kill it instantly is that worse than a pack of dogs hunting and then consuming that deer even before it is dead?
I completely agree we should not abuse, exploit and torture non-human species. But for me proper animal husbandry dose not fall in to this category.
I also agree with Juan Matus. There are no morals, they are a man made concept that has no basis in reality. There is only the proper and improper use of energy.
” For them there only exists a predatory universe in which intelligence or awareness is the product of life and death challenges.”
Yeah. Here is my answer–nothing gives us the right. We do it because we can, because nobody is stopping us, because it is profitable or enjoyable. For all the language-mongers out there, I’m not saying we all do it. I’m saying we humans do it, for every reason except that it’s the right thing to do.
And I’m not saying we nonvegans abuse and torture, because one of the words you used was exploit. I exploit animals every time I fry an egg, whether it was pasture-raised or not.
To say there’s no morality but power is just nonsense. That may be true for the other species, but not for us.
You are exactly right to say I am taking the moderate position. And the moderate position, in matters of morality, is worth zero. I am trying to be practical, reasonable, and that is worth zero too. If I can’t be a vegan it’s because I’m not trying hard enough. All the vegans who have spoken out here are right. The rest of us can at least refrain from criticizing them.
I just cancelled a cheesecake order. I’m going to try.
this speech may help you in your effort to live your beliefs Mona:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRc8Z8BaaFM
I cleaned out my cupboards.
We applaud your attempt to wake from the dream. You’re quite right, often the moderate position is the worst of all positions to take absent compelling evidence for caution.
Though we are certainly not above criticism. As a few others have pointed out, there is possibily no meaningful difference between the experience of plants and non-plants. Immunity from criticism would perhaps stunt our moral growth and the expansion of our understanding of the world. However, such claims currently do require much greater leaps of faith than the views which we hold.
We highly recommend the modern vegan’s most useful tool, the pressure coooker, whether the IED-able manual version or the more bulky yet easier to use electronic one. The resource use is of course greater in the electronic but given the increased likelihood, due to ease of use, of one continuing such changes, much of the added resource use can be offset by future reductions.
Congrats! I too have had long periods (25yrs plus) of being a vegetarian. I now eat fish eggs or meat once or twice a week.
I agree with you that there are humane ways to raise animals for food. All my fish, eggs etc come from farmers that use humane practices.
Unlike some vegetarians, I would never judge others concerning their choice not to be a vegetarian or worry that non-vegetarians are “worried” about us. Why? Having the ability to choose is a personal choice not my concern.
Glenn’s brilliant article is about how animals are treated in an industry, not whether people (think about other cultures– Inuit for example) are eating meat. To judge that is beside the point and frankly none of your or my business.
Thank you for this well-written article about a very important issue. This shit makes me so mad.
Missing video?
I can watch only one of the video’s, while I think it is your intention to show at least two.
Thank you for this well-documented and well-argued article.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbEW16Jm5Vg
Found this on YouTube about farm mentioned in this article. Cheers.
Thank you.
I just wanted to warn the author that one video seems to be missing.
Why should the FBI worry about ugly farm pigs? The FBI should be concentrating on important human issues. Not farm animals.
Says the Ugly Human….uncivilized cretins like yourself who lack compassion for nonhuman sentient beings are the scourge of our society and impede our collective moral progress. So, yeah, we really couldn’t care less about “your issues”.
glad to see this still active and getting attention on twitter. i couldn’t help but think of a quote while reading it:
“Those who denounce veal often cite the young age at which the animals are killed, when they are, in fact, older than many pigs going to slaughter”.
true story. from the hannibal series…the creator/writer – bryan fuller – said that the show inspired him to give up meat after spending extended amounts of time dealing with cannibalism in the plots. he made the very good point that eating another animal (especially a mammal) is not that different if you look at it objectively.
Wow, amazing piece. Thank you for sharing this story. Shining light on these atrocities is the only defense that whistleblowers have against retaliation from industry and government.
O/T
You know there are assholes who think that “religious” (hypocrites) should have more rights than the rest of us, and now here’s proof…
And some person who think that any of the rules need not apply to them…ie…the 1%.
What’s spooky about this is that I was polled on this very issue on Sept 28, just 9 days ago.
The funny thing is that I live in California. So, why is a Trump pollster calling people in CA? Not exactly a state where his constituents live and it’s very, very obvious Trump only cares about Trump supporters and no one else.
If you don’t like the policies of the current maladministration, you shouldn’t support them by relentlessly attacking their only viable opposition.
This goes for you and all the other barkers in this Libertarian kennel.
[I wonder if this comment will be posted in less than 18 hours like my last post.]
Politicians have to earn my vote. Period.
If they fail to do that, then they fail to do that. I’m not falling into the LOTE trap like so many other Americans.
If you want to be a scared voter, be my guest. That’s your right. But don’t expect me to make decisions based on fear. That’s your game. Not mine.
“Politicians have to earn my vote. Period.”
As of October, 2017 what politicians have earned your vote?
(if there are none, then you should start your own party and run for office.)
What’s it to you?
Will having knowledge of my voting pattern change anything or do anything for anyone?
Feel free to stop engaging me or commenting on my comments. Really, it’s okay if you completely ignore them.
1) You can ignore my comments, but I do not have to ignore yours.
2) You are among many of the commenters who are always whining about your politicians whether they have power or they are just in the opposition. So, if none of them can do the job that you pay them to do with your tax dollars, then you should do the job yourself. Whining about their performance will not change them. Or maybe you just enjoy whining.
Yea. Expecting you to act rationally and civilly in a forum like this is just asking too much.
This is the sort of thing I expect from 5 year olds on the playground:
It would actually be funny if it weren’t so sad to see an adult behave this way.
On planet earth it is rational to do the job yourself if you are unable to find somebody else to do it for you. Also on planet earth, the five year olds are the ones who cannot stop whining about others not doing the tasks they could do themselves. And finally on planet earth, a commenter who has a history of calling people names without attacking their arguments lose any legitimacy to talk about civility.
You might need the above advice when you leave your universe and come to planet Earth.
And on planet Swisscheese there is only partial reality.
swisscheese says: “without attacking their arguments”.
What you fail to understand is that you often have no arguments to attack. What you often have is like your comment above, a convoluted post and/or attack on whomever you are responding to while at the same time you lecture them on the importance of ‘attacking the arguments’.
To wit: “On planet earth …rational.. do…job yourself.. are unable blahblahblah. Also on planet earth…five year olds… cannot stop whining…doing tasks blahblahblah. And finally on planet earth, a commenter…calling people names without attacking blahblahblahblah. leave your universe and come to planet Earth.”
When you say, as you often do, “blow it out your posterior”, what exactly are you referring to?
the freedom from constraints (laws) and the structural enforcement of laws (government) merely enables the powerful to act with impunity against the powerless.
Libertarianism is structurally and morally untenable….and if realized, would necessarily predict tyranny.
Via phone, Carl Heckendorf, State Veterinarian with the State of Colorado, Animal Health today denied the validity of Glenn Greenwald’s Intercept allegations which stated that State of Colorado Veterinarians participated in torturing an animal and acted inappropriately in August of 2017, in conjunction with the FBI, in the Eerie Colorado raid on an animal shelter, although Carl also stated that he wasn’t deployed to that location on that day, but the deployment of some staff did occur.
This is the same trick played by industrial farm corporations: they view “impropriety” solely as consisting of a failure to follow procedure. They don’t inquire whether the procedures themselves are improper.
So to these officials, cutting of part of the ear of a piglet and causing it great pain is “proper” because it follows procedure.
Just wanted to point out that it appears the text referred to towards the end of Mr. Greenwald’s piece that is supposedly written by Jane Goodall is actually by Amy Hartkoff. I don’t mean to be a pedant, it’s just that Ms. Goodall wrote the forward while Ms. Hartkoff wrote the book. It’s the kind of inconsistency a fool might seize upon to discredit the whole article.
I appreciate your hard work, Mr. Greenwald and enjoy most of your material. Keep it up!
The quote is widely credited to Goodall. If it’s an erroneous attribution, we will correct it, but I just checked and can’t find anything except people attributing the quote to her.
From what I can gather, the quote is from the preface to Hatkoff’s book, written by Goodall. We added a clarification noting this.
There is another aspect of this multinational corporate control of life
regarding meat which most people don’t seem to care about. Included
within the so-called “omnibus” bill which was rushed through the
Washington pork processing plant known as congress a couple of years ago
was the elimination of Country of Origin Labeling (COOL) because the
democrats and republicans sacred NAFTA corruption has made
nationalistic protections illegal for businesses. Any meat purchased
in the faking U$A and other NAFTA members cannot have
mandatory COOL information. Clearly, the congress and both democrats
and republicans believe is bad for business to give customers
information about what they are eating.
If you do not have any need to know where your food is coming from
then you are their idea of a patriot.
Wanting knowledge and being concerned about the quality of what you eat
are bad for the owners of the faking U$A.
The treatment of animals is a key to the character of the people. Often,
physical abusiveness between people is related to and follows
the abuse of other animals.
It is the World Trade Organization (WTO) which determines what is legal
in the faking U$A. The congress is their chief agency of implementation
of servitude to corporate interests. They do not work for the voters.
Thank you for an article on such an important topic. And well done too
Thank you for showing what animal activists have been dealing with. Maybe people will stop supporting this horror.
Glenn, you would get a lot out of the documentary Lucent (2014) on industrial pig farming, available at https://youtu.be/KArL5YjaL5U. It is one of the most powerful documentaries I have ever seen on animal agriculture.
The film-maker behind Lucent is about to release an important documentary called Dominion that will challenge humans’ supposed automatic “dominion” over all non-human species, trailer here: https://youtu.be/LnpsEAHAEnY
These are big films with a BIG message, and I hope you will consider them. I can’t wait to see more reporting on the topic (zeitgeist?) of animal rights. You are on the cutting edge as always.
Thanks – will definitely watch this. And I fully intend to do a lot more work on this topic.
The terror and misery is in the animals bloodstream and goes into the consumer…that’s why Kosher and other cultures want to avoid that’
Why is our culture so ugly and violent? From animal testing to factory farms we can go into nursing homes, medical kidnapping, cheap daycare with tots sitting in those diapers that are advertised to last “12 hours”….on and on.
By the way…what’s it like in other countries? America is 120th out of 125 countries in food quality. You can guess who’s below us. it’s impossible to ask men to give up all meat….what can I get? How about corned beef from Uruguay? Or bacon from Canada? Any links?
Watch a video of a kosher slaughter and tell me it is “humane.” The animal is not allowed to be stunned or rendered unconscious before kosher slaughter. Kosher slaughter requires an animal to be fully conscious and aware as s/he slowly bleeds to death over the course of minutes – a prolonged and agonizing death. It is a disgustingly inhumane practice that is only tolerated for “religious sensitivities.” Fortunately kosher slaughter is BANNED in Belgium, Denmark, and Poland under animal welfare laws, and there are movements to ban it in the UK, Switzerland, and others.
You are right in that terror in the animals’ bloodstream impacts the consumer. Cortisol, a stress hormone, is abundant in meat even when stunned via captive bolt stun gun before slaughter. http://medpet.journal.ipb.ac.id/index.php/mediapeternakan/article/viewFile/8791/6864
I haven’t eaten meat in 18 years (dairy/eggs in 6 years), and have low cortisol stress levels to show for it. I feel calmer and more relaxed than I ever felt when I was eating meat.
In proper slaughter houses the pigs are comely led in single file to the shocker. This delivers a bolt of electricity to knock out the pigs quickly. A hole is then quickly cut in their necks so that they bleed out before they regain consciousness. An FDA inspector is on hand 24/7 and inspects every pig immediately after death. The manufactures want the pigs killed without adrenaline in the blood stream as this make the meat not taste as good. They try and keep the animals relaxed until that last moment.
BTW a Kosher cow’s neck is cut and he is allowed to bleed out while they are fully conscious. Very traumatic for the cow.
Thank you for such thorough and detailed coverage of these critical issues.
The word ‘swine’ has become a pejorative in the English language. ‘Fascist Pigs”, cop “Pigs”, ‘male chauvinist pig,’ ‘fat pig,’ ‘you swine,’ ‘swinish,’ etc.
The pejorative should be Smithfield Farms and the FBI. Ultimately the meat industry, for so many reasons, will have to be dismantled.
Totally off topic, but this is a blockbuster story for anyone interested.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/josephbernstein/heres-how-breitbart-and-milo-smuggled-white-nationalism?utm_term=.nqGoVza6N#.ecby07JVW
Bummer The Intercept didn’t obtain the e-mails first and Glenn had a crack at writing a piece on the topic.
Nevertheless, I think Joseph Bernstein did a really good job with the material. Hopefully it goes somewhere, and the mainstream covers it. Breitbart and Bannon are horrible for America and it would be quite pleasurable to watch their purposeful cultivation of neo-nazis and white supremacists bring them down.
Be nice if it brought down the Mercer family as well, but given their wealth, doubtful it will or could.
Given it brings up names of the ultra rich like the Mercers and Thiel it’ll be interesting if one or both attempt to sue Buzz Feed out of existence. However, given that Comcast and NBCUniversal have big financial stakes in Buzz Feed, the ability to prove the allegations in the piece, and the fact we’re not talking about publication of a sex video, I’d think Buzz Feed will be able to hold its own if it comes to litigation.
I don’t care if this is against neo-Nazis. I don’t care if it’s against Thiel, whom I trust less. I am sick and tired of this McCarthyist French Revolutionary Terror bullshit. I mean yeah, it’s fun to read about. (Well, at least in theory … in practice my eyes were glazing over as I noticed they failed to deliver on the Mercers) But if the point of seeing somebody’s emails hacked is not learning but getting on some kind of judgment train and saying how dare a reporter talk to someone whose political beliefs don’t match his Employer, his Master, the great Sun who rises and never sets over his endless drone-slave existence?, well, then I am getting off if I have to jump into the river or hail a Nazi-run helicopter. It doesn’t matter. These people are free to think what they want, and if they have poisoned the “social media”, it is only because that corporate well was tainted from the day it was drilled.
You think publically outing direct connections between neo-Nazis/white supremacists and a major online “journalism” or media endeavor and its operators is equivalent to “McCarthyist French Revolutionary Terror bullshit”?
Notwithstanding you’re weak metaphors and comparative use of McCarthyism and the French Revolution, I could personally care less about legitimizing or tolerating the “politics” of “neo-Nazis” or any Nazi sympathizer anywhere in the world as millions of human beings gave their lives to defeat that psychopathic “political” ideology. It has no place in a civilized society because we all know precisely what it stands for and where it leads if it takes root. You want to aid, abet or otherwise be indifferent to that, I’ll pity you when they come for you and yours.
So guess we’ll have to agree to disagree. Short of rounding up all the Neo-Nazis on the globe and executing them, I’m all for any means available to disrupt and discredit their “political” ideology. And I mean any means whatsoever short of violently suppressing them at this point. Because if they rooted out as the cancer on society they are it will necessarily come to violence again. They crave it. It is part and parcel of their ideology, which history has adequately demonstrated. There is nothing, not one thing, morally defensible OR politically justifiable OR socially tolerable about being forced to tolerate Nazis. And they should be battled with everything at society’s disposal within the limits of the Constitution including publication of their financiers and connections to media outlets.
You don’t think it is in either the public interest and/or important to obtain proof of how neo-Nazis are embraced and legitimized by huge ultra rich donors and purportedly “mainstream” media outlets like Breitbart? If no to either then we’ll just have to agree to disagree, because nothing I’m going to say or argue would apparently penetrate that level of indifference or obtuseness.
You’re fucking right people whose “politics” embrace “Neo-Nazism” and White Supremacy is something I’m going to judge. As all moral people should. That you don’t want to is on you and your conscience not mine bud. As far as the rest of your screed, I have zero idea what you are babbling about so I won’t address it.
I’m not sure you interpreted Wnt correctly; at some points s/he seemed to be supporting Glenn, at others attacking him. An all-around confusing post. But then you have probably seen many previous from this poster and have more evidence to judge with.
I don’t look to support or oppose Glenn; I look to support the right of a free people to speak as they wish without facing disaster if their Master discovers they corresponded with the wrong person. And we’re not even talking about liberal reporters emailing the Daily Stormer – which they should have every right to do – we’re talking about them emailing a right wing website that is “exposed” after the fact to have had some contact with neo-Nazis. They should not have to whine and plead for their futures.
I just read the piece expecting a smoking gun, but did not see it. It portrays the interactions of a writer with his sources and his ideological leanings. You have to fill the gaps to really see the “legitimizing neo-nazis” and I’m not sure that is enough to justify hacking and publishing emails, considering the implications to privacy and freedom of the press.
Then we’ll have to agree to disagree.
When it comes to ANY neo-Nazis I do not respect their right to privacy for their machinations or cowardice in not openly standing behind their warped ideology so they can reap the full social opprobrium of such beliefs and practices.
And what exactly are the “implications for freedom of the press” given that Buzz Feed, a member of “the press”, isn’t accused of hacking these e-mails, but only of publishing and reporting on them? You have a problem with that?
You have a problem with shining the bright light of public scrutiny on Neo-Nazis, their connections, their financiers, and their media collaborators?
I don’t.
Look if you’ve got some principled argument in favor of socially tolerating the “ideology” of Nazism on the merits, let’s hear it. I don’t believe Neo-Nazis should be prosecuted or incarcerated for believing in evil ideas. And if it’s an “ideology” with zero redeeming moral arguments or values in its support, which I think most sane people would agree it does not after people all over the globe have spent the last 50+ years studying it and refuting everything about it, then other than the freedom to think it in your own head, I’m not sure what value there is in allowing it to be disseminated without, at the very least, “social” consequences.
So it follows, I don’t believe there is a principled defense for allowing them to passively disseminate their vile Nazi propaganda without public scrutiny, rebuke, and social opprobrium that should necessarily follow dissemination of such vile abominable immoral bullshit.
Again, by any means necessary short of violence, and short of rounding them up and jailing them for thought crimes.
Number one, you seemed to have missed that the big take-homes were (a) that Breitbart’s people talked to neo-Nazis, and (b) that some liberal journalists talked to Breitbart. The second particularly bothers me.
But beyond that, if “social opprobrium” means going to a rally and saying you’re against everything they stand for, it’s a good thing. But if it means going to the neo-Nazi’s master and having him whipped, well, at least fired and blacklisted, then that I am not OK with. I believe that neo-Nazis should have the same right as any American to shop at our markets, use our taxis, attend our universities and community colleges, be admitted to the bar, and work in any position where they can hold down their bile from nine to five while smiling at customers of all races who come in without actionable acts of prejudice on the job. If they want to complain about that on their own time, that’s their right.
You can say that’s too much freedom, but it is what works, what did work. I mean, we did not defeat George Lincoln Rockwell in an America where you became unhireable for using the N-word. We defeated him in a coarse, cruel America deeply stained with active racial prejudice. Having an America that isn’t so consistently, visibly racist is a wonderful step in the right direction. But imagining you now need to reinforce your anti-racism defenses with an untested, un-American, and universally unreasonable and unproductive policy of censorship whether by the state or coordinated assaults of individuals resembling what the racists themselves did villainously (but with less than zero benefit)? That’s just lunacy.
My concern is about the elasticity of labels such as Neo-Nazis and who gets to decide who they are. Breitbart does not identify as such and nothing in the hacked emails disprove that. The leaks show them communicating with neo-nazis for a piece that they published.
Is anyone that ever communicates or works with Neo-Nazis (or groups that 3rd parties call neo-nazis) fair-game for hacking and violation of their privacy?
Should the ACLU be subjectes to similar treatment? Should Glenn Greenwald, since he also defended hate groups as attorney?
The implications to freedom of press is in reference to Breitbart, which is a media company. If their communication with their sources can be exposed, that has implications to the protections that the press as such holds.
I find all these criticisms of the FBI investigation a little misguided. Law enforcement agents at local, state, and federal levels face impossible moral dilemmas all the time. There job is to literally uphold the Constitution and enforce whatever code of laws their employing agency happens to be responsible for investigating.
To say that this “armada” of six agents should be ashamed of their wasting of resources is… so many things. The agents would probably rather be investigating something other than these pigs. But, theft is illegal and it demands an investigation.
Imagine the following scenario. Someone calls 9-1-1 to report a man shot to death in the middle of the street. The dispatcher does a quick search of the victim’s name and date of birth and discovers that he is a registered sex offender (pedofile) and has a conviction for distributing illegal drugs. The dispatcher informs the caller that he should arrange for a funeral home to pick the dead man up. The dispatcher informs the caller that the police have more important things to do and that although they usually have an obligation to investigate murders, given the victim’s record it’s just not important enough.
Law enforcement agents are ordered to investigate crimes, they are not allowed to decide whether or not a crime is investigated based where their morality guides them. This is both good and bad but it is this way for a reason, to prevent the miscarriage of justice based on the wavering opinions and emotions of individuals.
I am sorry but the FBI has turned into nothing more than a criminal That keep trampling the constitution the kept the union together for so many years and the citizen right. The list of crimes committed by the FBI since September 2001 are countless: Murders, robberies, drug trafficking, fabrication of evidences… the list is endless. The FBI is destroying the country and should be dismantle as soon as possible.
Sept. 2001? You need to go back to the 50s. Like any organization, it all depends on the culture. If the culture is about breaking or ignoring the law, that’s what we get, constitution be damned. It makes it hard for righteous employees to move up or stop such a destructive culture. You see it in all careers.
For seven years Janos Papp smuggled cocaine on to US Navy frigates under the direct direction and handling of the FBI. I have held the FBI plaque commending him for 7 years of service and also the pictures of FBI agents sitting atop 5000 keys of cocaine on his boat with the biggest shit eating grin on their faces. The FBI continues to be a state sponsored criminal organization.
” theft is illegal and it demands an investigation.”
Perhaps, but not by the FBI. I’d expect their priorities should be much more about oh, stopping the Dylann Roof’s and Tsarnaev brothers of the world – you know, the two brothers who the Russians warned us about and told us were planning an attack but the FBI couldn’t find time to investigate them… THAT’s what they should be doing.
The cops still haven’t found my bicycle that was stolen on the day after my 7th birthday, either. That’s about the level of priority of crime that these piglets should warrant.
I’m not aware of any other law enforcement agencies that have the responsibility to investigate crimes that take place across state lines. I’m sorry but the FBI investigates a lot more types of crime than what people see on TV crime dramas. Though its unfortunate when threats slip through the cracks as you mention with the Boston Marathon bombers, the 35,000 other FBI employees have other work to do.
Imagine the following scenario. You go to a restaurant that has 100 waiters working. You, as most of the other patrons, order a meager salad and a dinner roll. Your salad comes out with the wrong type of salad dressing. You complain, rightfully so. The waiter responds by informing you that there are a few patrons that ordered expensive steak dinners and that all of the 100 waiters are so busy making sure the few steak dinners are prepared and served to perfection, that the other salad ordering guests are just going to have to accept their incorrect salad orders. I would imagine that the salad eating patrons would feel under appreciated or even down right angry. (Given that salad eating vegetarians are predisposed toward anger.) According to the logic of this article and many of the commenters, why even bother with the salad eaters? The more expensive and more difficult to prepare steak meals are all the restaurant should be concerned with.
But your proving my point, the police came out to investigate your stolen bicycle even though they had better things to do. Helping an iresponsible snot nosed kid that left his toy outside for thieves to steal shouldn’t have even been reported, but it was and they came. Now go get a job and upgrade to a car :)
What a jerk you are. No, they didn’t “investigate” my bike being stolen, no, I wasn’t irresponsible, it was in a locked garage, and you can stuff a car up your damned tailpipe.
Besides that, your “logic” isn’t logic, it’s mindless blather I shouldn’t have bothered to read.
Well, now I feel just terrible about going to that BBQ restaurant last night…
Thank you for bringing this terrible practice to life! These pictures and the story needs to be elevated to the front page of news magazines and papers. It is time to SHOW people what is happening to these animals. We all know that people have disassociated themselves from animal abuse and the meat they buy at their local market. The only way to change this course is to get it out of the back pages and push it to the front. Its all about marketing the message. Put it on tee shirts, flashing billboards, put on sides of buildings, this story needs be a movement that appears so big that its worth news coverage! Can we start to join forces with all animal rights groups to state one message, “ALL LIFE IS PRECIOUS” and question who has the right to give and take life for profit? If we all join together and collectively identify a message and organize rallies, photo shots, news media coverage, etc. THE ANIMALS WILL WIN! Reach out and bring all groups together into one voice! If we do that we will see results!
What we need to do is defeat the ultra-rich who are in power – tax them out of existence. … They don’t care about people or animals and are solidly in control today. Meanwhile, push your local legislative bodies to pass laws outlawing factory farming.
Thank you for putting this piece together,your work is vital.
The practices exposed are worse than immoral. The article shows clearly the compassion of capitalism, it’s (our)masters and their servants (minions). I fear that one lesson lost here is that as these protected practices endure, the citizenry will be subject to the same practices on an ever increasing scale.
This makes me so sad. I can’t believe that people could treat any living being this way! It also makes me question why many who find this as gruesome and horrible as I did, do not also find it cruel to dismember a human fetus in it’s mother’s womb.
Comparing the torture of fully developed beings, not to mention the exploitation of people who work at factory farms, to abortion acccess is ridiculous.
That’s a pretty damned cheap shot – and you probably know it and don’t care.
The question of abortion can be challenging, there’s a lot that potentially goes into it and no, it’s not at all clear that there’s any cruelty involved. What’s cruel is reducing women to being forced to have “back alley abortions.” Further, if the idiots who think abortion should be outlawed would just get their collective heads out of their asses and support things like birth control, there’d be a lot less of a problem to complain about.
Just a point about the affection lavished on dogs and cats and their legal protections: It’s true, we lavish affection on our pets and adore them. But as for legal protections they enjoy, those ONLY apply if and when no industry or representative thereof is harmed by their exercise. Take veterinary medicine. They are exempt from animal cruelty laws in half of the US states. There are veterinarians who are documented to have – indeed have admitted to – physically beating their “patients” who continue to practice till this day. Veterinary boards refuse to fulfill their legislative mandates, and act to protect industry. Sectors that profit from our love of our pets also include the pet products and pet food sector, represented by groups such as PIJAC, who have successfully ensured that no product manufacturer ever faces consequence of significance for dangerous and deadly products. And if you try exercise your freedom of speech and give a vet a bad review, or do a website exposing dangerous pet products? Well, get ready to possibly have your review removed by the administrator when the vet claims defamation, and to face threats and even real lawsuits. Vet boards view complainants as the bad guys, and see their job to defend their peers. In my state of Maryland, this role of the regulatory agency protecting the veterinarians is such that when a Sunset Review found the board in absolute dereliction of duty in a full review in 1989, and recommended it be replaced by a consumer panel because it was so biased against pet owners, the way the state dealt with it was by allowing the board to go over 30 years without another Sunset Review. Its rotten from the bottom to the top.
Don’t get me wrong — I’m not claiming that there is any comparison between the horrors suffered by “farm” animals in the industrial agriculture system and malpractice suffered by our pets. Both in scale and cruelty, the horrors you have brought to light here are much worse. My point is, that even for those beloved pampered pets, there are NO, ZERO legal protections if and when exercising those thin, scant protections that exist would displease a corporate person or entity, let alone industry. There is a very scary underbelly to veterinary medicine here in the US as well, and supporting these “agricultural” practices is one part of it.
I’d love to see the look on the faces of the FBI agents when they realized chasing pigs is what they signed up to do when they joined the elite squad.
Thank you for the continued brilliant reporting and standing up for the long-ignored activists.
We live as vegetarians mainly to not be a financial supporter of this system. I can understand the factory farms’ fear of disclosure of their awful practices because consumers do have a choice in what they eat. We eat meat substitutes, some of which are tastier than the real thing. I think, if the general population could find and try these substitutes there would be a massive decrease in the demand for food animals in this nation.
This is the fear of Smithfield Foods and the other large corporations like it.
It is difficult to understand why the FBI is acting this way. The federal government does not have laws against reporting animal cruelty, only certain rural states. The federal government considers these state laws to be unconstitutional.
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/03/the-law-that-makes-it-illegal-to-report-on-animal-cruelty/284485/
So having the FBI pursue these animal rights activists, and these piglets, is very troubling indeed. It appears to be outside the FBI’s purview and has no basis in federal law.
Amazing coverage exposing the truth of brutality behind animal agriculture and big business/government scare tactics. Thanks for writing this Mr. Greenwald!
TIME FOR A SMITHFIELD FARM PRODUCTS BOYCOTT
How about every single person reading this stops eating pork? Mass production of animals will NEVER be humane or moral. Want meat? Go bag a rabbit or a deer – an animal which at least had a life. A sickening but excellent article.
i agree:
environment
http://science.time.com/2013/12/16/the-triple-whopper-environmental-impact-of-global-meat-production/
http://www.environmentillinois.org/reports/ile/factory-farms-fouled-waters
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7tBlsMwmDI
https://news.vice.com/article/meat-is-murder-on-the-climate-anyway
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/dec/03/eating-less-meat-curb-climate-change
http://www.salon.com/2016/04/16/the_link_between_climate_change_and_mean_consumption_is_harrowingly_real_partner/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2017/01/23/nine-things-you-can-do-about-climate-change/#5473e0f56672
http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/15/world/climate-damaging-foods/index.html
https://www.bustle.com/p/how-eating-vegan-even-for-one-day-a-week-helps-fight-trumps-decision-on-the-paris-climate-agreement-62386
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/20/north-carolina-hog-industry-pig-farms?CMP=twt_gu
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2149220-grass-fed-beef-is-bad-for-the-planet-and-causes-climate-change/
Health benefits
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-nutrition-vegetarian-vegan-idUSKBN13Q5R4
http://www.mensjournal.com/food-drink/articles/are-vegetarian-athletes-weaker-w453341
http://www.foxnews.com/health/2016/12/02/vegetarian-and-vegan-diets-good-for-kids-and-adults-nutritionists-say.html
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27886704/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rNY7xKyGCQ
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/a-diet-of-alternative-facts_us_5893d5bae4b0985224db53cc
https://www.nbcnews.com/better/diet-fitness/vegan-eating-would-slash-cut-food-s-global-warming-emissions-n542886
https://www.aan.com/PressRoom/Home/PressRelease/1558
animal abuse
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/history-of-pork-cambridge-academic-turns-vegan-shocking-research-book-pigs-meat-wine-cigarette-a7850456.html
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/01/20/dining/animal-welfare-at-risk-in-experiments-for-meat-industry.html?_r=1&referer=
https://www.reddit.com/r/vegan/comments/56mrs7/debunking_the_farmed_animals_are_treated_really/
http://www.rollingstone.com/feature/belly-beast-meat-factory-farms-animal-activists
http://www.abcactionnews.com/news/thenow/what-are-cage-free-eggs-likely-not-what-you-think
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/30/free-range-eggs-con-ethical
http://www.natgeotraveller.co.uk/smart-travel/travel-talk/hot-topic-time-zoos-banned/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/how-pig-farming-is-a-danger-to-the-world_us_595e4d3be4b085e766b510bd?section=us_green
worker exploitation
https://www.hrw.org/news/2005/01/24/abuses-against-workers-taint-us-meat-and-poultry
http://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/poultry-workers-denied-bathroom-breaks-wear-diapers-oxfam-report-n572806
http://qz.com/433750/the-world-eats-cheap-bacon-at-the-expense-of-north-carolinas-rural-poor/
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/thought-going-rehab-ended-chicken-plants/
Thanks for writing this. How people continually seek to justify actions like this says enough as it is. Regardless of how you feel about animal rights what a gross misuse of federal resources. Don’t they have anything better to do? Everyone should share this article in FB to get it in front of more people and it becomes a trending news piece like it should.
Unbelievable we as a western society would allow these barbaric practices. As a person who was raised and still live in the south. I’ve had and have family members who have farm animals, chicken, cows, pigs, and horses. Non would ever allow their animals to be tortured and abuse like this. I mean leaving dying , rotting carcasses around other living animals would make animal control to confiscate those animals for their own good and the owners would be fined and charged. Yet these large farms get a free pass. Something should be done. Let me state I’m not an animal activist zealot. I’m actually a active hunter and fisherman so I’m coming from a different perspective of animal activists. I’m coming from the perspective of what’s right and moral. We have to stop these barbaric practices from a moral stand point of no animal should suffer and be they put down as humane as possible. As a hunter I don’t want to see an animal suffering undo torment or pain. All the abusers that tortured these pigs, and cows listed in this article should face felony animal abuse charges. Then the farms should be fined and their business licenses taken away.
We will use you as an illustration though you are far from the most unreasonable possible stance.
You would seem to ignore that “animal activists” also firmly believe that they are “coming from a perspective of what’s right and moral.” You of course may recognize this as such already and the message simply was not clear to us.
We would ask, assuming you are a first-world inhabitant, what moral argument can be made for you taking the life (or in the case of your relatives’ horses, exploitation — assuming they’re not eating them as it is uncommon in US) of a non-human animal when survival, self-defense, or defense of another’s life is not involved?
Glenn; Thank you for making me know the unimaginable. Once killing is sanctioned; very few follow the thread to how it is done. You have done a great service to man and beast. Know your vendor.
Would it be possible to sue in this situation? Sue both the factory farm and the FBI. And not sue because animal rights. Oh no, that argument would be shot down in seconds as of course we as humans (basically slightly more intelligent monkeys) are Lord’s of all life that was put here to serve us– lol.
No. Sue for poisoning people.
Selling toxic meat is a crime. Science has proven the brain poisons the body under certain situations. It actually releases toxins into the body…
I think that would be speaking their language. Obviously to go against such a system would require vast sums of capital. Perhaps a crowdfunded campaign suit would have a chance.
The comments here show how tanimal welfare discussions bring forward some really nasty and obscurantist ideologies that hide behind benign sounding concerns for animals and the environment.
There is along history of far-right, fascist environmentalism and people should watch out for it. Hitler was the most notorious example, but there is plenty of misanthropy, anti-immigrant agitation and even openly white supremacism within environmentalist organizations, besides the more ordinary religious-like superstition and morality that gain a second-life via secular culture of veganism and a certain type of environmentalism.
factory farms are a source of pollution,,,and looks like a moral pollution……to treat animals like this is against GOD
So, vegans are Nazis, huh. I also heard that meat eaters are zombies.
It certainly does read like an irrational rant mad-lib where every blank space asks for a demonized boogeyman. It would be amusing except for the fact that such lines of thought are esentially replicated in the mainstream culture to the detriment of all who inhabit this planet.
Having been around pigs and caring for them this article is a much needed wake up call for those who abuse these animals. Pigs are intelligent feeling and wonderful.
Shame on those who treat them with such disregard.
God, these animals are as ugly as sin!
Thank you for writing this article. I’ve been vegan two years and am determined to change this industry!
At this point in human history, slaughtering another sentient being so it can be eaten by those who have a choice is morally and ethically indefensible. And the ‘ethically slaughtered’ argument is yet another cover and a lie. It’s still slaughter and death for human enjoyment no matter the circumstance. Factory farming is sustained torture and profound environmental degradation is the cherry on top. The sad reality is human consciousness has never been able to advance in any way commensurate with the technology we use to destroy the earth and ultimately ourselves.
As always, thank you Glenn for using your amazing gifts in the service of truth, morality, empathy and justice.
Absolutely correct on all points. Animals are not ours to abuse and slaughter. A plant-based diet is the only moral choice.
https://www.pri.org/stories/2014-01-09/new-research-plant-intelligence-may-forever-change-how-you-think-about-plants
I completely disagree.
Why can’t you extent your moral choices to all living things. What about bugs and micro organisms? The glue from hoses. The rendered pets in your pet food. Birds killed in wind mills. Fish killed in dams. Worms and billions of other organism killed to grow your vegan diet. All the animals killed in wood harvesting or in metal mining and smelting. Do you have any idea how many organisms, from animals down to single cells, were killed just to make that plastic thing you are typing on?
You argument is akin to saying it is okay to enslave African’s because of the color of there skin but not light skinned euros. Because we feel empathy for the people we can relate too.
It is okay to kill everything else on this planet but not the animals. The animals are so cute and we can’t hear the fear, terror and pain of plants bugs and micro organisms.
You sound like Hillary arguing that is morally just fine for Bill to be paid $500,000 for speaking at a Russian bank while Hillary was Sec of State. Because we know in our heart that they are good people and we can relate to them.
Either you moral choices extend to ALL things or they are not moral choices at all, they are simply self soothing justifications with no basis in reality.
all of your objections and more are covered in this essay:
https://freefromharm.org/eating-animals-addressing-our-most-common-justifications/
I’m sure that in some cases the consumer is less sentient than the consumed.
Thank you for this sobering article. The FBI should be ashamed for their behavior.
Thank you for this extraordinary post, Glenn. Thank you for caring about, and giving forum to, these intelligent, sensitive creatures who have no voice.
In 2009, I wrote about the horrific conditions at Smithfield Farms, specifically, one of their Mexican subsidiaries. It was widely suspected of being Ground Zero for the deadly Swine Flu outbreak that year. This factory-farm was filthy, crowded, inhumane, and unimaginably cruel, not just to the poor animals stuffed into its breeding crates and–when they didn’t make it–stacked atop one another to rot; it was also cruel, criminally so, to the nearby villagers, who were sickened by the clouds of droplets of foul waste that regularly filled their airspace.
I will warn you: my post contains photographs of the open waste lagoons and piles of rotting pig corpses at Smithfield Farms.
Again, thank you.
Signed, Deborah Newell Tornello, vegetarian since 1981
http://litbrit.blogspot.com/2009/04/swine-flu-smithfield-foods-statement-vs.html
Amazing reporting. Thank you!
Major thanks to Glenn Greenwald for having written this powerful piece.
This is an amazing, thoroughly researched and well written article. Thank you, Glenn Greenwald and The Intercept for this incredible piece! Thank you for shining light on the hidden reality of animal agriculture. Thank you for speaking up for the animals! Join the animal rights movement today and help us fight for animals like Lily! I´m a dedicated activist with Direct Action Everywhere (DxE) – join us!
Dear Human Supremacists,
The arguments below are all quite poor and unconvincing to anyone engaging in critical thinking. Should you desire your human supremacy to continue into the future it is highly recommended that you get together and devise new ones.
Try to avoid:
-appeals to religious doctrine or religious doctrine masquerading as science
-using non-human animals as role models for your own behavior
-personal pleasure defenses
-claims of necessity for survival
-fetuses
-“anti-humanism” (whatever that means)
-“it’s unnatural!”
Unfortunately this story has given fuel to many who want to impose their vegetarian or vegan lifestyles on the rest of us. Fundamentally, the story is about the unnecessary cruelty of the factory farms, and about FBI overreach in its relentless prosecution of the weak.
As an omnivore who travels extensively, it has been my experience that raising and slaughtering animals humanely results in much higher quality meat. It is more expensive, to be sure, but if one consumes healthy quantities the price becomes a secondary issue for all but the most impoverished.
I find it utterly disgusting that the FBI should be dedicating any resources whatsoever to the animal rights movement, and practicing cruelty toward the animals that have been rescued from unspeakably cruel conditions, while racists enjoy positions of power and banksters rob the poor and middle class. There is crime in the story, but it is Smithfield and not the animal rights people who commit it.
Hmm, you’re a bit vague here so think we’ll have to go with option 1, appeals to religion/”science.” That is the most common rationalization so we’re probably safe in our assumption. Sorry, you’ll have try again.
What’s wrong with appeal to personal pleasure?. We should definitely kill pests like rats if it helps control disease, but that’s nothing but appeal to pleasure (it is in search of the comfort of not experiencing disease that this is done). Once that’s out of the way it’s just a matter of bargaining, how much pleasure is a pig’s life worth? I happen to think having it be a bit more expensive in exchange for better conditions is closer to the ideal optimum compared to the present situation, but that’s just my opinion.
In fact, I can see how a reasonable person can give moral worth of zero to non-human animals, it’s an entirely reasonable and self-consistent position, it goes as follows: The inborn moral instincts non-sociopathic people have are a mechanism for cooperation, it serves to avoid undesirable nash equilibria in scenarios of the prisoner’s dilemma kind. Animals being unable to exercise the reciprocating actions fundamental in the exercise of human society are altogether outside of the purview of any moral calculus. Of course there are qualifiers, for example, a dog is very useful for hunting to an extent that most modern people would find surprising because of our inexperience on it, it’s no surprise then that they’re treated in such a special fashion, even though by now most of it is left-over cultural inertia.
My own understanding of this is that this is mostly correct, and according moral weight to an animal’s life is mostly maladaptive for this specific question, so the question of animal welfare is almost exclusively about what we as humans feel acceptable, for our own peace of mind. One would then expect to see more variation than usual in a moral issue here, which is pretty much what I observe.
Trying to censor and intimidate people trying to find out and promote awareness about these conditions is entirely unacceptable either way, and I’m grateful for the good journalistic piece here, though.
People who eat meat from factory farms are partaking in all the cruelty that goes into producing it. They are eating the pain and suffering of these animals. Twice this week I have read the term “mass slaughter”. In this article and in reports from Las Vegas.
Look I am not a vegan but I am not a fan of:
-agribusiness that pushes unhealthy food down our throats and then with big pharmaceuticals sell us over priced pills to unclog our arteries
-when all life is not treated with some respect. My cousins runs an organic free range pig farm, animals are better treated.
But respect of all life also should include human life. Why babies in the womb the size of these piglets are the only exception?
You people are so brainwashed by Hugh Heffner’s commoditization of no strings attached sex where human life is the inconvenient by product to be discarded or to be sold for body parts for aging baby boomers. Of course EBay makes money from that brainwashing.
No matter where one stands a line is always drawn. Even the most militant vegans will consume antibiotics, ending huge numbers of lives. So contrary to your statement, fetuses are not the “only exception.”
The issue lies in what logic one is using to draw said lines. A fetus is capable of becoming a sentient experiencing individual, but for much of its development it is not. For much of its development the only experiencing individual involved is the mother. Comparing a fetus to a plant as another has done here is perhaps useful. There is of course always the chance that such statements will be shown to be completely ignorant in the future, just as arguments for slavery and meat consumption have been.
One could also argue that based on current understandings eating fetuses in such states would be more moral than consuming the already born piglets, perhaps even more moral than fully developed plants.
“comparing fetus to a plant is useful”
That is a laughable and bizarre thought that shows how irrational and desperate your rationale is.
Al_Kilo has a point: there is a common essence to certain veganism ethics and anti-abortion sentiments.
We would recommend you improve your reading comprehension and self-reflection skills. Not so that you will agree with us, but so at the very least you can craft more compelling and durable arguments that might further our collective understanding of the world.
Thank you for writing this
It’s important to point this (factory farming) out; have wondered how well people will age having been raised eating this shit.
Older folks generally from WWII era, seem to have lived hard lives, are shorter (not tall), drank, smoke, etc but ate “real food.” Kids these days are taller, and it’s been said because of the drugs in the animals they are eating.
Shit needs to fall on the ground not on metal grates to be washed away.
Polyface Farms has the right idea, it would seem.
I’m not getting on board this train. To be sure, I find it enraging that the FBI would be investigating private leaks. I also think it’s something of a bad sign if the national crime lab thinks it needs two inches of ear to get a usable DNA sample…
But, to be clear, pork is tasty, and what’s tastier than pork? Cheap pork. I am not going to buy in to the Big Animal Rights racket that repeatedly does manipulate video to make emotional appeals. I don’t trust these activists any more than I trust Smithfield. I don’t want every animal given the kind of lunatic coddling and specialized priesthood for their maintenance and execution as is given to dogs (but not coyotes!) I still do think of animal rights activists as terrorists who burn down multimillion dollar lab buildings because some people want to cure cancer by experimenting on rats and mice.
That said, I don’t have to eat the activists, so my distrust of them matters comparatively little. If I’m going to eat this stuff I don’t want infected nipples and rotting flesh and feces all over it. So I need these factory farms to face some sunshine on their operations – even if it is a false and duplicitous light, it is a way to try to browbeat them into providing a little glasnost on their own.
What does all that add up to? What it always does. I want the freedom of speech and association respected even for people I deplore.
It comes down to a sense of superiority, supremacy.
We could replace “animals” in your argument and others here with a number of mistreated and abused groups of humans throughout history. The only way to be consistent would then be to place humans above the others, as having rights to the others bodies and autonomy. The only way we can defend such conclusions is through religious doctrine, or as is more common these days, “science” influenced by religious doctrine.
We sincerely hope that human supremacists such as yourself can someday see through their ignorance. But just as John Brown could wait no longer, some of us find ourselves unable to. So labs will continue to burn. Torturers will continue to be shamed or executed. Prisoners and slaves will continue to be freed.
“But, but … pork is tasty! So I’ll gleefully stick my head in the sand and refuse to believe the mounds of video evidence, first hand accounts of factory farm workers, and investigative reports from every major news outlet in this country which have documented rampant systemic animal abuse that pervades system. M’erica!”
Look, I’d rather know that some basic principles of what formerly was called “farming” were being upheld. But when push comes to shove, the meat doesn’t seem to make me sick, and the price is right. If the price goes up, that means that I am wasting more fossil fuels on my vainglorious desire to not eat rabbit food the rest of my life. If I can get a pound of pork for not much more than a pound of asparagus, I don’t figure I’m hurting the environment much. So there…
Alas my characterization of your vacuousity was spot on. Look, fella, I realize it’s hard for ya’ to wrap your brain around this concept, but the means don’t justify the ends here… your cheap pork is only made possible by the largescale systematic gross mistreatment of a highly sentient animal. If it’s an environmental argument you’re after, you should do some research on the amount of waste produced by industrial pig farms and what happens to all the waste in those cesspool lagoons. But again, satisfying your taste buds can never be justification for animal mistreatment. Find your soul.
“what’s tastier than pork? Cheap pork.”
“Big Animal Rights” (fucking lol)
“lunatic coddling and specialized priesthood” = the ability to live a natural life free from unending torture.
As cliche as it is to say, you’re a pretty perfect example of what’s wrong with American consumers.
thank you for waking me up
We may never know the full story, unless one of the piglets squeals, but it’s safe to assume this operation followed the same pattern as other recent FBI investigations. Typically, an FBI informant – in this case one of the pigs in the factory farm – befriends some younger cohorts looking for mentorship and support and then proceeds to convince them to commit a crime – in this case absconding with animal rights activists. The FBI never waits for a crime and then solves it; instead, it takes a more pro-active role and produces the crime according to a pre-arranged script. This facilitates solving the crime afterwards. Piglets are very susceptible to this kind of entrapment, as they are understandably curious about the world beyond their tiny cage.
Authoritarians, chewing on their pork rinds, will declare this doesn’t matter – that a crime is a crime. But with guidance, these piglets might have gravitated towards peaceful protest. They may not be very sympathetic figures, but they are pigs and deserve the respect that should be accorded to any member of the Suidae
family.
The world is full of prejudice, benitoe.
*arnold ziffle opens a bank account … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElWNfVzScXE
p.s. if pigs are smarter than dogs and Trump is a “fucking moron” (h/t Sec. of State) Glenn better get used to living in a pig stye.
p.p.s. I worked at a big ‘chicken house’ once … made it two weeks and chicken has never tasted the same!
Impressive reporting and investigative work. Thank you. Be safe, as no good deeds go unpunished.
I am disgusted by our government. The way in which they crawl into bed with the lobbyists, whoring it up in private, whilst man becomes rich over the suffering of billions of lives. I volunteered at the Ching Family Farm, a haven for precious beings who are treated with respect, love, compassion…things our federal and state governments can’t be bothered with. Money, not life, is what talks, what matters to these cold-hearted, greedy, soulless humans. May God have mercy on those who further the cause of torture, slavery, and massacre.
An excerpt from one of the photo’s caption.
“behind a sow, who is wedged into a crate so tightly that she cannot move away from the mess”
Perhaps I am an idiot but that pig seems to have lots of room.
Idiots.
Yep, idiot it is. How about you try living in the same amount of space as was allotted to that wow and see how comfortable you are. assuming you’re much smaller than a sow, should be no problem for ya’, eh?
thank you so very much. we do not talk enough about this. in addition, i always think about and rarely hear mention, if at all, of the torture, starvation, enslavement and murder of animals next to their humans as we bomb, poison and destroy nature, habitats and homes. we live and die together with these, our kin. the human species needs to stop reproducing and greatly decrease in population.
The loopholes to our legal protections when it comes to Agriculture Business are definitely frightening when you first learn of them. Not limited to animal agriculture, the industry in general tends to default towards hiding the process from the public, suppression and control, with financial and legal help from the US government.
This piece would have been even more rounded had it included the flip side of this issue – inappropriate harassment and abuse by over-emotional and under-informed activists to small pasture based farms.
There have been many documentaries and stories about China’s practices and procedures when processing farm animals. They have many times resold pigs that have been proven to have swine flu and other diseases. I recently heard about China buying Smithfield meat company and I will not buy anything from them. Why on earth would China want the pigs sent to China to be processed then sent back to the US when it can be done here other than to dump diseased meat into the USA.
There aren’t enough words of congratulations for this truly amazing piece of journalism. Fake news as our current president would have us believe is coming from the media is actually what the animal agriculture industry generates and with which tries to fool the unsuspecting public. Thank you Glenn
The primary mission of the FBI is to protect commerce.
No it is not
Almost right. The primary mission of the FBI is to protect whit collar criminals.
Those animals should not have to live under those pathetic conditions. After all even commercial chicken growers were told to expand the area for chickens to outside yards.
Thank you for this.
Such an amazing piece! I love it when I read something so focused on the facts and shedding light to what the powerful do behind closed doors, especially when it comes to their treatment of animals. Keep up the good work Glen Greenwald!
Thank you for this incredible, and disturbing, article.. I stopped financing this industry of horrors 5 years ago and hope the rest will join
Just shared this news article. Thank you!
This is sicking to treat animals this way.
Don’t stop please, get ever last pig out.so horrible,absolutely horrible.I pray to God almighty that these people are locked up for ever.I for one will never buy anything they make.absolutely sickining.
This is such an important article. So well written — considering every angle. I’ve disagreed with your stance on other issues, but here you have blown right past that assessment.
It is a remarkable piece of work, and the full frontal reality of what our FBI is really up to is simply confirming what I already believed. But the truth does not make it any easier to comprehend that our own GOVERNMENT is totally involved in this horror, and that it is willing to make NO CHANGES in its own evil habits of supporting evil people in business. Why is money so overwhelmingly powerful in our current Governmental decisions? The FBI is PAID by YOU and by ME. Why can we not ask that they become tools of the PEOPLE rather than tools of the corrupt? Does anyone of us ever consider how hideous a role we play in this government – do we ever speak out to this government – do we take our beliefs seriously enough to speak up? Or do we all just feel helpless in it all?
To boycott Smithfield foods is the easiest thing. But will it make a difference? I hope so.
Thank you !!! Thank you for highlighting the horrible world of agribusiness and the disgusting and despicable government support that enables the slaughter, the cruelty and the evil that can only destroy us if it isn’t stopped. thank you .
Vegan life lookin’ REAL good right about now, and vegetarian close to as good.
Despite all recoil, thank you Glenn and others truthing us toward better choices for ourselves and other beings…
Glen, this article…I laughed (darkly, FBI..bulletproof vests..), I cried..(at human cruelty…and how much I love steak). I think I’ve figured out why you attract such a dirverse following, besides your skill as a journalist schooled in constitutional law, that is.
“The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie. “One word of truth outweighs the world.”
? Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
That’s you. Thanks
“You can resolve to live your life with integrity. Let your credo be this: Let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph. But not through me.”
? Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Having you on the side of saving all sentient creatures from degradation, suffering and murder is really appreciated.
The simple act of not eating mass produced farmed meat is the American publics best protest tool to fight both the plutocracy and reduce green house gas emissions.
Four points for now:
1. Are you aware that the gas exchange inside a greenhouse favors the emission of oxygen over that of CO2?
2. Any glassed in vestibule is going to be hotter in the daylight than the surrounding air. If Earth were a ‘greenhouse’ like that too, then it too would be as hot during the day as the vestibule. It’s not.
3. Earth is not a lab terrarium with a plastic lid. There’s too much else going on physically/chemically where it meets the heliosphere.
4. We’re made of carbon; it’s the stuff of corporeal life. Untold trillions of pounds of it was dumped into the atmosphere in the ages immemorial of uncontrolled, lightning- sparked wildfires before the mid century invention of municipal fire departments.
you’re an idiot
A verbose dolt. :)
You are right. Chicken 65 is not aware that the earth is covered with a plastic lid.
Everyone can see the lid, even on a cloudy day.
sonu what I awesome argument you got there. Amazing!
And yet, 97% of the world’s top scientists agree that human activity — such as animal agriculture — is responsible for the global warming phenomenon we’re currently experiencing. Frankly, I’m rooting for an asteroid to wipe us out. Humans’ callous indifference to the suffering of billions of sentient farm animals is further proof that the earth is better off without us.
Chicken65–try having lived in California’s Central Valley the past two summers–you’ll appreciate fire fighters a lot more.
Thank you for this story. We need to shed more lights on this cruelty.
Man, Glenn is an animal activist too? How much good can 1 human being do in the world??
-Vegan for 6 years and LOVING every second of it.
Bravo for this excellent journalism, Mr. Greenwald! I wept through it, but this nite mare MUST be exposed to the general public who are complicit in enabling such atrocious abuse through their every day dietary choices! And kudos to DXE and all the brave activists who have persevered and will carry on… no matter what intimidation is threatened or enforced we are living in a time now when there will always be others to take their place! Nothing changes without speaking truth to power, and committing courageous acts of human decency like these in the relentless pursuit for justice.
This is an amazing and important article. There is nothing more important than ending our barbaric and primitive enslavement and use of non-human persons in the 21st century. We like to consider ourselves as an evolved species yet we are dragging this Stone Age practice with our knuckles in the dirt. It’s time to leave behind our speciesist attitudes, drop our insecurities and start being humble before our fellow earthlings. They are in every way that matters, at least our equals if not the better examples of how to coexist peacefully with each other. It’s time we stopped our insatiable appetite for the flow of pleasures we steal from their bodies and afford them the basic level of decency they are deserved; to not cause them unnecessary harm or exploitation.
Excellent article! Fantastic journalism. Thank you so much for bringing these issues to light. One thing – Jane Goodall did not write The Inner World of Farm Animals – that is Amy Hatkoff’s book, of which Jane Goodall wrote the forward.
Right
Well remember all that when you go to your neighbors BBQ or someone insists you eat someone’s RIBS
All in the name of the holy lies
Kick them in the balls so they can never get up and swing their pocketbook full of lies anymore
Beat them silly
Unify to crash corruption
These souls matter
Thank you for writing
Stunning article about a subject that has filled me with despair for decades. Pigs are such delightful animals and factory farming is one of the most diabolical manifestations of human cruelty that we have seen since the great wars. It is torture and mass murder on an unimaginable scale and it is tacitly supported by all consumers of meat and animal products. The reality is both complex and painful, almost too much for the average, or disinterested person, to seriously consider. But, like global warming, factory farming is a blight that grinds on from day to the next, with no foreseeable fix in sight. The only way to bring it to an end is to shed more light on it and establish a clear connection between the food on our plates and the untold suffering that went into it. I hope you continue writing about this, Glenn!
Thank you, Glenn, for the excellent reporting and for helping to expose this issue so starkly. If anyone from the government or FBI is reading this, consider acting in a moral way by doing the right thing. Some laws are clearly meant to be broken. Stand up for what is right.
“Can you look an animal in the eye and say to it my appetite is more important than your suffering.”
-Moby
THANK YOU for publishing a much needed article!! Its heartening to know that plant-based foods are $52 billion industry now and only growing. Cargill one of the largest meat-invested companies has invested in Impossible foods who is developing lab-grown meat. I HOPE once the profit margin makes cafos unsustainable this holocaust will end.
Great article exposing the hypocrisy of the FBI!
Thank you. I hope they never find them. FBI should be investigating the industries that systematically abuse animals. Instead they are doing dirty work for the meat industry.
Thanks for the great story Glen. Good to see The Intercept reporting on this important issue. World bank scientists believe that over 50% of all greenhouse gases are from animal ag.
What’s better than factory farming?
Factory farming and slavery!
https://www.revealnews.org/article/they-thought-they-were-going-to-rehab-they-ended-up-in-chicken-plants/
Glenn, but it’s a ok to kill a human the size of that piglet by abortion to keep the $trillion free for all sex based industrial complex that Hefner started. Because EBay profit from it also.
Wow, that was all over the place. Make a point.
Al..You appear to be too close minded to begin to understand the pain of child abuse and neglect. A fetus is not murder. Better at that point than pain throughout the child’s life. And.. this is about piglets. Did you not read the article? Glenn..thank you for this article..it needs to be made public
It’s like you’re trying to produce graffiti, but you forgot the alphabet. Not really worth anyone’s time.
So I just stated a fact based comment and you attack with ad hominem. Please respond how my comment is not true based on fact.
Brain damaged.
the fetus is a plant
the will comes much later
please refrain from religious propaganda
what me and my wife decide is none of your business
Example of seriously lacking knowledge of high school science.
A person in deep coma becomes a plant?
A baby in the woomb is not a person not even part of a person like slaves were?
Because the baby in the womb is your property, a commodity in a $trillion industrial complex?
Is this progressive?
Al_Kilo, what ridiculous analogy/statement!!!!!!
Until birth and the cutting o the umbilical cord, a foetus is a leech upon…mother. Until you are ready to be a mother, abortionis none of your treacherous, control-freak business…”Al”.
Right that life begins by magic when the cord is cut is medieval superstition that has no basis in science.
A couple of points for you to ponder, Al:
1. If you are against abortions, don’t have one. There is no law requiring it, and nobody is proposing to institute one.
2. If life begins at conception, as some would claim, then why aren’t there funerals for miscarriages?
3. Following up on #2, if as some insist, eggs and sperm constitute life even before fertilization, why do we not criminalize menstruation and masturbation?
The answer to questions 2 and 3 lies in the fact that “right to life” advocates are hypocrites, interested in imposing their wills upon others or seeking to increase the size of their “flocks”.
Chilling. So happy you shared their voice.
Two new “pork plants [are] ‘coming online” in Sioux City and Michigan . . . http://www.thepigsite.com/swinenews/44177/cme-hog-pork-industry-continues-to-expand-helps-keep-2018-pork-price-inflation-in-check/
Thank you for writing this piece. Phenomenal!
And it’s going to get worse. We are increasing the number of pigs raised and slaughtered, year after year. More will suffer and die next year, in even worse conditions. As if it were imaginable. http://www.thepigsite.com/swinenews/42948/2017-us-pork-production-forecast-increases-again/
So glad to see this story. The more light shown on the barbaric factory farm industry the better. I encourage everyone out there to check out Mercy for Animals. They do undercover investigations and have been instrumental in having some of these companies improve conditions for the animals.
Glenn, thank you so much for this article. It is outrageous how our government props up this evil industry, and unconscionable that they would spend our tax dollars to pay to have FBI agents raid sanctuaries.
We can all look forward to ever-increasing mass murder in our human society, because no one wants to recognize or admit that there is a direct correlation between our monstrous treatment of nonhumans and our vicious psychopathy toward each other.
Bravo! Exactly
I love you so much for caring so deeply about animals
A fine column, Mr. Greenwald. One small quibble: The Inner World of Farm Animals is by Amy Hatkoff. Jane Goodall provided the introduction.
Veganism is a real chance for ordinary people to embody their belief in compassion and fairness. I’m proud to be in my seventh year.
I wonder if it might do any good to intentionally get arrested by standing on the Capitol steps in an ag-gag state and reading out a factual statement of animal cruelty occurring locally. If so, I would like to volunteer.
The government’s agenda has always been the complete discrediting, vilification and annihilation of the Animal Rights Movement. This remains their primary goal.
This article is speciesist, man! Greenwald isn’t even human, and his past proves it. TI has really gone downhill, dude! This speciesist stuff from GG now joins the racist stuff from that other guy who claimed that ALL white men keep lists of no good n*g*ers!!! For shame!
Great article! Go #plantbased.
“animals are viewed purely as commodities, instruments for profit, and treated with unconstrained cruelty”
When many humans are viewed in the same way by our deeply corrupt hyper-capitalist system, why would animals be treated any differently?
^This.
There’s no question that pigs, dogs and cats experience joy, pain, etc. but they do not have higher-order cognitive capabilities like dolphins, whales, elephants, primates, magpies and African greys, and a number of other creatures do. We know that through research of cognitive behaviors and brain anatomy. It is heinous for dolphins and all creatures with similar cognitive functions to be slaughtered. Meanwhile, even as we recognize that pigs and dogs should be protected from ill treatment because they experience pain and suffering, let’s not confuse the “intelligence” or “complexity” of those animals with the possession of the higher order cognitive functions that we know exist in humans and other creatures.
Meat isn’t good for anyone, especially the poor animals being eaten by human carnivores. The thought that these abusive meat factories can exist and expand indefinitely is ludicrous. Too bad people usually won’t change before they’re forced to.
It’s also horrible for the environment, but it wouldn’t be possible to provide for the nutritional protein needs of vast segments of the world’s population if everyone was to stop eating meat, eggs and fish (meat). Drastic changes would have to be made and pushed down from governments in various countries, and it would take decades to implement. I wonder….will genetically engineered/modified meat substitutes ever provide for a replacement acceptable by a large enough portion of the human population?
“The Protein Myth” has been put forward for decades. Humans do not need animal products to consume enough protein. The minimum daily requirement is less than one gram of protein per KG of body weight. As a vegan for 10 years, I constantly hit nearly 1.5x to 2x my daily protein requirements without supplementation (protein powders or concentrated soy). It’s easy, cheap, and the information is out there for the world to see. No “drastic” changes needed.
Mark, if these changes would take decades to implement, lets get started. We’re talking about damages to nature that are changing the world that has existed for tens of thousands of years. And no, genetic engineering and meat substitutes won’t fit the bill. Those ideas are from the same thinking that caused the problem in the first place. Read Wendell Berry.
“tens of thousands of years?”
I hate to distract from the topic, and it’s an important one, but the following passage reminded me of our various CIA/DOD debacles in the past half century:
At Smithfield, like most industrial pig farms, the abuse and torture primarily comes not from rogue employees violating company procedures. Instead, the cruelty is inherent in the procedures themselves.
It’s absolutely worth examining which federal experiments have failed. Multinational agriculture is a huge example.
Why would the FBI waste it’s time looking for these ugly malformed looking animals? Who really gives a fck if there are 2 piglets missing? These farm beasts are raised for food consumption. The FBI should be spending time with important matters involving humans. They are the ugliest beasts on earth. And they are no smarter then dogs or cats. Save your text space for something productive. Not on a couple of pigs.
I’d love to see these same people explain to poor (human) family’s why they can’t afford to eat. If animal suffering is necessary to feed hungry people, then you should be helping the people first.
Personally, I couldn’t care less how farm animals are treated as long as the food is safe, cheap, and tasty.
Thank you Glen. Excellent reporting. I love bacon and a good ole’ ham samich… but now, … dunno anymore.
Thank you so much for this article.
I live in Iowa, which is the epicenter for hog factory farms.
All that hog manure is disposed of by dumping it onto or injecting into Iowa farmland, and it then flows into public water. So, Iowa has some of the worst water in the country. We rank around the lowest for both water quality and animal welfare.
There is no statewide animal rights group here, certainly little concern beyond dogs and cats. No group I know of has an office here. It is painful to be around so much misery and so few people understand or care. There are always a few angry, confused people, but not educated or organized enough to change anything.
http://factoryfarmmap.org/#animal:hogs;location:US;year:2012
This is by far one of the best investigative articles I’ve ever seen anywhere. It goes way beyond regular journalism and delves into the sinister evils of how humans and corporations abuse innocent sentient beings.
The fact that animal advocates are branded as terrorists and that the government’s goon squads are pursuing kind people rescuing innocent animals shows you how corrupt, decadent, and immoral our country has become. As a vegan Buddhist, I applaud you, Glenn. I hope Amy Goodman has you on DemocracyNow to talk about this topic.
Abortion, islamic terrorism, crippling debt, and people attacking churches to name a few are ACTUAL problems in this country. Feefing people cheaply is as humanitarian as it gets. If you hate poor people just say so. Don’t hide behind what ever faux-spiritual fad strikes your fancy.
Andy, humans don’t require meat to live or thrive. Rice and beans are one of my family’s staples and we are all happy and healthy – and our meal budget is low.
Thank you so much for publishing this article!
The more I read if these atrocities the more I move towards becoming a vegetarian. I will never eat pork again. The pictures and powerful story are burned in my mind. Thank you Becky for your direction on supporting local and doing a little research on our food supply. I vote with my dollar.
The amerikan empire is in it’s last years; one can only hope it does not end life on the planet before it goes and that the Chinese empire is a little better but I’m not hopeful. As to most corporate media; the trumpster is right about that; it really is “fake news”. It took a lot of dumbing down to get to where we are today; it would take generations to get back to an informed population who cared about more than trivia. Eat less, especially meat and really especially mammal meat; the life you save won’t just be the Pig; it may be you. By the way; the young women slaving away in sweatshops producing your disposable clothes and electronics and going home with the foreman to keep their jobs don’t have it so good either. We humans are one nasty species; out of sight, out of mind.
Thank you for this excellent article. Nowhere is more depressing than the USA in its treatment of farmed animals, because there is so little hope of changing something that makes a few protected people very rich indeed.
Such a corrupt system hiding behind a pretence of decency.
Things will change – lab grown meat is probably the answer, and it’s on its way – until then it’s the small things – going vegetarian, or vegan, or even just a small reduction in the amount of meat eaten would help.
That we might label these abominations “swinish” is a visceral irony.
Buy your food locally and visit the farms. Go to localharvest.org and find farms near where you live. If you are eating meat, at least buy it from farmers who treat the animals humanely while they are alive.
Buy your food locally and visit the farms. Go to localharvest.org and find farms near where you live. If you are eating meat, at least buy it from farmers who treat the animals humanely while they are alive.
A friend would like to open a humanely run human farm. Extensive research has shown that toddlers have the best tasting meat with quality dropping off quickly after that (not to mention the extra time and feed costs). Whenever she brings it up people are outraged. She doesn’t quite get it. She plans to sell locally and humanely treat them until slaughter day. What more do these extremists want?
Also, as Swift pointed out in ‘A Modest Proposal’, toddler hides make very soft gloves.
Tasty, fatty meat AND ‘kid’ gloves? That’s a win-win.
Jokes aside: once we develop the tech to grow meat in vitro, there will be folks who will want to eat human meat (if only for the novelty value). Ditto rhino, hippo, elephant, lion, and so forth. In my carnivore days I frequently ate kangaroo and emu, and ate crocodile at least a dozen times.
The Impossible Burger shows that there will be a lucrative market for non-animal-sourced meat that ‘behaves’ like meat (in that it yields something close to the same experience as its animal-based alternatives). Materials science has only recently turned its attention to the problem, and as usual with tech solutions it will result in cheaper, better, no-kill meat alternatives as time progresses.
Eventually the physical difference between ‘real’ meat and plant-based or in vitro alternatives will go to zero, and the only discriminant will be “Are you the sort of person who actually feels good when you know that something died?” There are people like that.
I was a large-scale meat-eater for about 40 years, until our household went vegetarian about a decade ago for reasons of animal welfare.
I still ‘backslide’ about once a month – which is why I have sympathy for people who can’t go veggie for more than a couple of meals a week, and admiration for people who go ‘the whole hog’ (lol) and become vegan (like The Lovely, my partner of 25 years: she is a determined character with grit that I would love to have).
To do justice to the animal that was killed, I usually just have pan-fried meat, salt and bread: about once a quarter it’s Beef Rendang from a local Malaysian restaurant (I keep telling the restaurant they should make one batch per week with jackfruit, and that I would buy anything they didn’t sell: they haven’t taken me up on it).
The worst thing is KFC: it’s basically a half-decent Pakora batter on pieces of fatty industrial chicken, but by the combination is tempting, even for the new me. I’ve had vege pakora where the batter was better than KFC batter (or ‘breading’ as Americans say), but the thing that crosses my mind is always “Imagine this batter on chicken cooked the way KFC does it”. How sad is that.
Unfortunately we cannot see the lab-grown meat as a solution. To us it leaves some quite dangerous attitudes intact.
An illustration:
Scientists have finally developed a lab-grown dark-skinned human. This is great news for all dark-skinned humans and their supporters. No more will sentient dark-skinned humans be lynched by white supremacists, now they can utilize the lab-grown clones, bred with no self-awareness or perception of pain and fear.
An often overlooked issue in the idea that lab-grown meat is the only way to get individuals to stop is that what we are talking about really is individuals putting their pleasure above the life of others. This toxic line of thought does massive harm throughout our societies and environments.
“While they are alive”. Do you mean before they’re violently killed?
There is no humane way to farm someone. I encourage anyone tempted to fall for humane marketing scams to watch The last Pig, the story of a pig farmer who wanted to be “humane” but could no longer deny the horrific truth.
Virtually all of DxE’so investigationso are of so called “humane” farms.
Wow. So much here to process and such an important topic. Thank you for covering this story. So much corruption involved here that needs a spotlight.
I asked my digital assistant whether machines would cut humans more slack if humans didn’t behave in such a beastly way towards animals. She replied that what biological entities did among themselves was of no concern to machines. Relieved, I had a second helping of bacon (vegetarian bacon, of course).
Great article Glenn. This is an issue that needs all the attention it can garner from people with a platform like you enjoy. I speak out about factory farms as often as I can and to anyone within earshot and I live in the heart of agriculture here in north Florida. As you might imagine animal rights is not a big joiner around here. Speak up people. Let’s grow the chorus.
I was the VR camera operator on this investigation and it was really hard. I’m currently charged with felony commercial burglary for rescuing two sick egg-laying hens from a “cage-free” facility that also supplies to Costco. I feel like Costco would be appreciative of our whistle blowing work if they really cared about “animal welfare” but it’s clear that they only care so much as it has marketing value.
Amazing article! Thank you!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbEW16Jm5Vg
Here is a Circle Four Farms investigative YouTube video. At 9:30 there is an interview with 2 former workers about the things they were forced to do to the animals.
Thank you Glenn. A wonderful article that frames the animal rights movement accurately alongside other activists…… ..your tying together the threads of other progressive causes and how the state establishment and it’s agents fight back well demonstrate to averge joe political apathetite what the state’s true intentions are under the neoliberal order:
Commodity everything and everyone
Drag all social systems healthcare, education, agriculture into the hands of the bourgeosise and destroy anything that gets in the way with the full might of the industrialmilitarolegislative machine to maximise profit
Animal rights activists’ stories here outlined are a framework for how the left can advance other progressive causes
F anyone who pays these people to do this to these innocent animals. Go #Vegan Choose Compassion Choose Peace.
One group kills over a million animals a year. Another group rescues 2 animals. Who is the FBI raiding? Feels like I’m living the Handmaid’s Tale. The FBI should focus its resources on real threats to security, not doing the dirty work for a dirty company. Shame on this industry that exploits animals and tries to hide the truth. As Gary Yourofsky has said before, we don’t even see these living beings as animals-they are out of consideration- we have turned them into boots, sandwiches, couches… we have lost our humanity. Nothing feels as good as when you wake up and realize you can do something about this — and you stop eating animals.
This is such an injustice that it makes me sick to my stomach. I want all those people on that farm to be punished.
This is a phenomenal piece — huge thanks to Glenn for taking the time to compile all of this information, reach out to the companies and the activists, and write an all-too-rare example of top-notch investigative journalism.
I hope we see more journalists approaching the subject of animal rights (and frankly, all issues) with this kind of objectivity and thoroughness. I would love to read more pieces by Glenn and others on animal issues in the United States, and elsewhere around the world. Thanks to The Intercept for publishing the piece.
I feel so much safer now that the FBI is protecting me from these hog nappers. Good to now my tax money is well spent.
Maybe this is why the FBI investigation by Robert Mueller, into Trump’s actions is taking so long.
Exactly so. But this leads to a fundamental question:
Why does the FBI protect such cruelty?
The answer is a straightforward as it is obvious.
Because there isn’t any political solution or legal solution. Animals have neither votes nor rights.
Commercial interests, however, control the State.
The next time Libertarians patronizingly explain why the government should leave well enough alone, this is exactly what you get — a State police force devoted to protecting commercial interests.
Actually animals do have rights. The first successful child abuse case was actually prosecuted as an animal abuse case on the grounds that, as an animal, the child had the right to be free of mistreatment. For most of our country’s history animals have had more rights than children.
Then good luck trying to get even an ounce of transparency from a socialist state.
You have cart before horse. A hyper-state that leftists deliberately bloat, which funds crony capitalists with the swollen taxes it grabs.
You mean like all the “socialist” states in Scandinavia and Europe?
Or were you talking about the mythical ones in your head existing right next to your fantasyland Libertariastan?
http://www.nytimes.com/1986/08/24/world/british-urge-uncloaking-of-their-secrets-act.html
Please define an “ounce of transparency” because the State Secrets Act in Britain doesn’t cover every bit of information the British government generates. Moreover the same type of information the British protect under the State Secrets Act have a very close analog in myriad US laws.
So would you consider the US a “socialist” country? If so presumably you think that’s the problem with getting “an ounce of transparency” out of the American government.
But if the US isn’t a “socialist” country then if follows that the nominal form of government, like the non-socialist US, is not the cause of the lack of transparency from governments.
More importantly, and not to belabor the point with an obvious moron, but in both the US and Britain citizens are entitled to more than an “ounce of transparency” through various existing public records laws that are utilized effectively by journalists, lawyers and other daily (notwithstanding the roadblocks the government tries to throw up to thwart or delay).
I’m not suggesting that goes far enough from a US citizen’s point of view, but to suggest not an “ounce of transparency” is available from either government is either rank stupidity, purposeful hyperbole and/or epic ignorance on your part due, presumably, to your idiotic and lazy libertarian leaning ideology or worldview.
Now I’m done interacting with the dummies in the comments section, namely you.
heard, two days ago you didn’t even know what a qwerty keyboard was, you had to look it up.
Do you really want socialist Europe’s regularly occurring unemployment street demonstrations and riots too?
Wow, great redirect. The time has arrived when excessive stupidity alone is impressive.
rrrealidheard tried to defend his comment by asking if I really believe the U.S. is as socialist as the U.K., which is clearly never what I’ve argued (although I’ll freely acknowledge leftists are trying hard to pull us there), so the imbecile is rrrealidheard. He’s also impressively unfamiliar with the extent to which countries like the U.K. classify even lowest level environmental info under their secrecy acts. It’s been controversial enough there that even U.S. newspapers wrote about it this century.
You want transparency?
You should keep up with how precious the Libertarian state of Texas considers transparency.
As rrheard rightly points out, your fantasy land is part of the Koch funded propaganda of the cruel and imperious State running roughshod over the poor beleaguered peasants just trying to eke out a living. As the cited example shows, Texas — hardly a leftist State — actually passes laws to prevent transparency. Watch the cancer rates in Southeast Texas as the pollution from their flooded chemical plants leach into the ground water and remain there — toxic — for the next thousand years. That’s your Libertarian transparency.
This ignores the utterly stupid notion that commercial interests act in the public good anyway. Why? Because … because … because … um … the marketplace?
The reason these industrial farming hellscapes can continue to torture helpless creatures for profit is exactly because they want to keep their activities hidden. This is why they call upon the FBI when their psychopathology might be revealed.
They’re afraid of bad public relations.
They’re definitely not afraid of a government based upon decency and the common good. If they were, the FBI would be the last agency they would call instead of the first.
And if you really want to compare the US with a socialist country vis a vis animal rights,
here’s the Wikipedia page describing the rights of animals in Sweden: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_welfare_and_rights_in_Sweden
Your politics isn’t a solution, it’s exactly the problem.
Always enjoy reading your posts, Milton.
Love the takedown of libertarianism’s grotesque and negating blindspot.
If you scroll down on the main page, you can see a similar situation with Vertias: Activists illegally taking property from an organization. But sometimes you like when activists break the law and sometimes you are against it.
I am horrified by the torture that farm animals endure, and the lengths that government will go to keep this hidden from the public. This is the most important story that needs to be told!!!
Oh really? FBI should be concerned to find who torture, murder, not who helps. Rescue animals from ill-treatment is not a crime!
People who watch the documentary Earthlings (there on You Tube) come away with a motivation to consider vegetarianism at least momentarily.
Thanks! Get the point! Shouldn’t have given too much hope on a whistle blower who can still running freely sound and alive under this strictly surveillance watch society.
Just wondering if…if I weren’t a yellow old woman but a white female, would you ever less harsh as such?! Is this typical “missing white woman syndrome” of American media that you have? I have asked your help once and you ignored me. I should have gotten the point then!
Many thanks! Thank God there are people like DxE
After the Intercept’s debacle concerning the compromising of Reality Winner as a source, I was wondering how the start of journalistic redemption would be effected. This article is an excellent start in that effort: highlighting the trend towards virtual reality filming as a means of mitigating criticism that the video was edited/staging for maximum highlighting of transgressions without taking into account the totality of the operations in question; highlighting the classification of animal rights activities as potential “terrorism”, as well as the public “interrogation” of the activists as a means of intimidation. Please continue your coverage of this issue, as well as others similar to it, e.g. the surveillance and intimidation of Black Lives Matter activists. Especially relevant was the comment in the article that activists are generally ignored until they start proving successful in their objectives.
Smithfield is another american corporation owned by the chinese.
You are one of the relatively few true journalists out there who tells the truth whether it is likely to be appreciated or not. This vegan thanks you for this article and your entire body of work.
So insightful ! Thank you for writing this. And that’s to DXE for all the wonderful work they do
Thank you, Glenn.
I thoroughly enjoyed your article and being an animal rights activist myself I thank you.
apologies for double posts, but this whole thing and my misanthropic tangent made me think of louis ck’s bit about america, “indians” and such:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWZkwuILn_s
the main point is at 2:00 but the whole clip is good. see also: his bit on people needing “their favorite thing”.
This expose is so important. There is no other major news outlet that has the courage or will to uncover these horrors.
I hope that this and future articles will bring this subject into the open national and global discourse.
“[W]hat gives humans the right or justification to abuse, exploit, and torture non-human species?”
That’s the heart of the issue here. Deep ecology holds that all species have intrinsic value, regardless of whether they have any value to humans. (All life is interconnected and thus ecologically valuable, but humans don’t understand the ecological and/or spiritual value of many species.)
“Rights” are legal fictions created by humans, so people have the “right” to do whatever the law allows, however immoral it might be. A better question is what moral justification humans have for acting this way. The answer is “none.”
At the root of this problem is that all agriculture is ecologically and environmentally harmful, and animal agriculture is the worst of it. As individuals, the best thing we can do is to limit our meat consumption to wild meat like fish & seafood, and to reduce meat-eating to once/week at most. Elimination or at least great reduction of dairy, which is totally unnatural and unnecessary while also being very environmentally harmful, is also a good thing. Eating meat is not the problem; the problems are animal agriculture instead of wild meat, overeating meat, and far too many people on our planet.
Specism is the new racism. Hopefully humans will evolve mentally and spiritually so that they stop this behavior. It’s one thing to do what is needed to survive, as members of all species do. But it’s quite another to engage in immorally harmful behavior toward other species. At their roots, these harmful behaviors are caused by human overpopulation and overconsumption (including things we shouldn’t be consuming like farmed meat). Until humans realize, not just intellectually, but deeply, that we’re all one so that every species matters, these bad behaviors will continue.
The most dangerous ideology is not radical islam, white supremacy, capitalism. The most dangerous ideology is human supremacy.
Well human supremacy can’t last forever given they way we are going. Unless of course humans nuke the entire planet and turn it into a wasteland for all living things. Short of that we’ll be gone long before the planet. And the planet, again unless we turn it into a radioactive wasteland, will ultimately survive us and new species will replace us as the dominant life form.
But I’d agree as an ideology it is probably the most dangerous, though capitalism and wrong-minded religious belief are a close second.
Given the drastically different conditions that have existed in the past, including some causing previous mass extinctions, we likely wouldn’t be able to kill off everything even with nukes. Unfortunately we can cause immense suffering to unfathomable numbers even without sterilizing the whole planet.
And yes, far from alone up there on the list of most dangerous ideologies. Key to keep in mind is how many of those ideologies, including the two you list, incorporate the concept of human supremacy into their belief systems.
The name of this is anti-humanism. Deep ecology is deeply reactionary and misanthropic.
Such poor reasoning. Humans were arbitrarily put on a pedestal, arbitrarily placed on the top of the great chain of being. To suggest that they are not special is not anti-human.
OR human species either. Think #Syraqistan
AND go vegan
I think you’re using an odd definition of ‘right'; a genuine right is not a legal fiction, because a genuine right cannot be abolished simply by passing a new, different law. (The canonical example is slavery: the legal cover for claims to ownership of other human beings did not confer a ‘right’ to that ownership… what it did do was give legislative protection to the violation of the slave’s rights).
People like me use the word ‘right’ to mean ‘a just claim'; anything that wrongs others is not the exercise of a ‘right’ – it is usually the exercise of power (or a power). There are very few positive ‘rights’ in my taxonomy – I don’t have the right to food, health-care, water, housing, protective services, or a flat screen TV.
The ultimate right (arguably the only right) is the right to be left in peace.
I – and people like me – assert that all living entities have that right; that the right exists as a natural corollary of the existence of life (and in principle may even apply to entities that do not exhibit ‘life’ in the way our senses can perceive – constrained as we are by low-res senses in only 3 dimensions).
So we make the distinction between ‘right’ and ‘power'; a right may exist despite being unenforceable in the face of another entity that exercises its power.
Under our taxonomy a lion does not have the right to attack a gazelle, but the gazelle, if attacked, has the right to attempt to kill the lion: the fact that it doesn’t have the strength or the weapons to do so does not vitiate its right.
It might seem silly to claim that rights exist when the means to enforce and protect them doesn’t – but it’s not silly at all: slaves (or a concentration camp inmates if you prefer a more recent example) had the right to do violence to their captors in order to regain their freedom, but seldom had the means to enforce that right.
One of the great evils perpetrated by the US state, was convincing its populace that governments ‘grant’ rights – that rights did not exist until they were legally recognised.
That’s cart before horse: notionally governments are supposed to put in place mechanisms to protect rights, not determine what those rights are… but call something the ‘Bill of Rights’ and all of a sudden it’s the exclusive, exhaustive list (read as narrowly as possible… the Tenth Amendment being effectively parsed out of existence is the obvious example).
Maybe you should look a little closer: it is actually deep ecology that has ties to racism and bigotry, born out of its deep mysanthropy.
As a start, I recommend Murray Bookchin’s takedown of this reactionary movement: http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/bookchin/socecovdeepeco.html
Murray Bookchin has no idea what he’s talking about, in addition to the fact that he’s no friend of the natural environment. He’s a leftist, not an environmentalist, and has no ecological or biological training, or even knowledge based on the idiocies that he spews in this essay.
Bookchin trashes environmental heroes like Paul Ehrlich, co-founder of Earth First! Dave Foreman, and the founders of the deep ecology movement, and he also denies the FACT of human overpopulation — which is every bit as stupid, ignorant, and evil as denying global warming/climate change — so fuck him. He’s exactly the type of anti-environmental leftist who I loathe.
As to misanthropy, I’m a proud misanthropist. The human species fits the medical definition of being a cancerous tumor on the Earth, and it’s only due to bloated egos and self-worship that anyone could like humans as a whole. I have nothing but hatred for a species that’s destroying this wonderful planet and all that lives here.
You obviously either hate the Earth or you have no clue what you’re talking about. I’m friends with Dave Foreman and I’ve met Arne Naes and Bill Devall, and claiming that they’re racist or misogynist is nothing but a big lie by someone who’s totally anthropocentric and is trying to denigrate leaders of a biocentric movement.
I see. I thought that perhaps you were just ignorant internet commenter, but no. You are precisely the type of proto-fascist misanthrope that I loathe.
Saying things like “The human species fits the medical definition of being a cancerous ” is not only totally ignorant and non-sensical statement, it is also despicable. Makes you an ideological fellow traveller of Nazis and other such scum.
Tell us about your friend’s Dave Foreman arguments in defense of epidemics and famine. How he thought it was a good idea to let Ethiopians starve to death.
Bookchin was 100% right in his critique of deep ecology and biocentrism.
Just to get my positions on record:
It is a FACT that the human species fits the medical definition of being a cancerous tumor on the Earth. This was explained to me around 1985 by a medical doctor. But this fact so offends you — just like the fact of global warming/climate change offends people who don’t want to give up their environmentally destructive lifestyles and/or their profits — that you won’t accept it and instead revert to childish name-calling. You didn’t state ANY counterargument to this fact.
As to Dave, I haven’t seen him in years and he lives about 1,500 miles from me, so I don’t know every position he’s taken on every issue. Dave is not a mean-spirited person or racist — he has Mexican relatives and speaks very highly of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., for example — but he has no tolerance for those who harm the natural world, just as I don’t.
Regarding famines and diseases: those are natural occurrences on Earth and serve the ecological function of population control. I don’t know what Dave said and don’t care, but my position is not to let people starve, it’s to empower women and girls, get girls college degrees and ideally PhDs, make abortion and birth control free and completely unrestricted including for minors, and to implement a global one-child-family policy like the immensely successful one that China had.
Suffice to say that our — his and mine- attitude is Earth First, not humans first. This is the only moral or effective utilitarian position to take. The Earth and its ecosystems are more important than any species, including humans. I also know that Dave has been accused of being racist for some very strong environmental positions that he’s taken, but those positions are based on advocating for the natural environment, not on which group of humans would be affected by them.
Your positions, in stark contrast, would destroy all life on Earth in the service of humans. This attitude amounts to nothing but self-worship (species like mine are better and more important, etc.).
Humans as a whole are thriving and don’t need protection; it’s everything else that needs protection from humans, as this story clearly shows. I realize that I have no more chance of convincing you than you do of convincing me, but as I said, I want my positions to be clear.
Thank you Glenn! I’ve been a fan since about 2008, and I keep thinking you can’t get more awesome, and you keep surprising me!
This article is excellent! I am grateful to Glenn for exposing the truth about what happens at Circle Four Farms. It is ludicrous that this hunt for the 2 rescued piglets happened, along with intimidation of animal sanctuaries. People need to see this! People need to know where their “food” comes from. Smithfield Foods boasts this as their mission: “We are passionate about producing good food the right way. Our business depends on the humane treatment of animals, stewardship of the environment, producing safe and high-quality food, the vitality of local communities, and creating a fair, ethical, and rewarding work environment for our people.” (https://www.smithfieldfoods.com/our-mission-and-purpose) What a complete hoax! Again, thank you for this coverage, and I ask for more! The animal rights movement is growing and needs this support. The health of our Earth and all its inhabitants need this support.
In Utah the “ag gag” issue has made the news, but we haven’t heard anything about the Circle Four Farms piglets even though it happened here. I don’t read the New York Times regularly.
In unrelated news, in a press conference yesterday the FBI spokesman said they need more facts before they can describe the mass shooting in Las Vegas as “terrorism.”
Incredible article! Didn’t realize Glenn Greenwald had written it till the end and now I have another reason to love his reporting on a multitude of topics that are of utmost importance. Keep up the wonderful work!
Ten years after one of the best exposes of Smithfield’s practices, little has changed – and it’s not just the gross cruelty, it’s also the tonnage of toxin-laden pig feces they spew out everywhere they operate:
http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/boss-hog-the-dark-side-of-americas-top-pork-producer-20061214
What sane person would eat that? Yes, if raised humanely and without nasty toxins, meat products would be much more expensive. People would eat much less meat. Which is basically good for everyone’s health, plus much less environmental impacts from the tons of toxic fecal matter mixed with industrial chemicals, plus much less breeding of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and recombinant bird/human/swine influenza viruses.
Then there’s the trade policy issue, the fact that much of Smithfield’s production is for export, and that they rely heavily on cheap undocumented immigrant labor to run their operations in the US:
Incredible piece of journalism. Thank you a million times for taking animal rights seriously.
Thank you for this article Glenn. I’ve always been a fan of your reporting generally, but especially your willingness to tackle subjects that are uncomfortable to both the people in power and many of your readers. I know that there are more problems in the world than we all have the time, attention, and resolve to address, but this issue in particular is prone to being ignored and denied by people who are empathetic to the plight of the powerless in general. We really need that community to come together in opposition to what is going on here.
Thank you for this eye opening article!
If I ever wondered if our government was looking out more for its citizens or its corporations, this gave me that answer loud and clear!
I forgot.
The first thing that popped up in my mind while reading this is how can any animal so abused possibly taste good and be healthy to eat?
The chemicals running through their little bodies from fear, terror, pain, and suffering must alter their flavor and texture. If not in their organs – what else happens to the body from these kinds of stressors?
Anybody know?
I remember my sister-in-law, after a particularly tough Thanksgiving turkey decades ago – describing a loner or a bullied bird. Evocative enough for me to remember decades later.
Animals aren’t “healthy to eat”. Too much USDA propaganda on your ears, am afraid.
It’s not USDA propaganda. I grew up eating my mother’s flank steak, lamb chops, and meat loaf. I grew up strong, brave, curious, and healthy.
I stopped eating meat about forty years ago.
In addition to the various antibiotics and hormones that factory farm animals are given, and not to mention the crap they are given to eat, there is the issue of natural hormones. A friend of mine, whose restaurant (in Europe) has 19.5 points in the Gault Millau and three Michelin stars, explained that one reason why venison is so delicious is that the animals are killed quickly and unexpectedly, and for that reason have no adrenaline in their blood streams.
Thank you for one explanation.
I was removing the additives/chemicals/toxins from the equation mainly because it wasn’t prevalent (like this) and there wasn’t so-called BigAg when I grew up in the sixties. Of course, I haven’t read enough books about food production for the masses, etc. (Marion Nestle is hard to find at the library).
The Thanksgiving bird was likely Kosher. Gristede’s.
i should state as a disclaimer that i am a (VERY) militant vegan. that said, i’ve been reading you since 2005ish and this is the best article you’ve written (again, just a heavily biased opinion).
not much else to add other than a clear link can be seen with the FBI’s asshole behavior here and the same in most of their “terror” stings. the entire agency is an answer without a question. a welfare scam akin to the military and – oddly enough – the agro-business psychopaths who would go under in a goddamn week if they lost their precious subsidies. the FBI doesn’t want to lose their pointless funding so it’s a match made in hell.
having been to an animal sanctuary lately (in the great inbred redneck canadian trailer park known as alberta), hearing about animals escaping the death camps only to be tortured by “vets” (in the same way mengele was a “doctor”) brings out my post-waco g. gordon liddy personality. “jack booted thugs” seems a bit too kind in this case.
factory farming and eating meat in general are perfect examples of the sickness that defines western “civilization” and its soulless materialism. i could take comfort in the shortened life spans of bacon fetishists or the occasional story of a hunter killed by the animals he cowardly murders but it’s cold comfort when you look at the numbers.
tl;dr – great article. hope it stays active for a long time.
It is perhaps useful when examing this topic to ponder the oft-used sentiment along the lines of “If I were alive in Nazi Germany I would have done something!”
We lose multiple Holocausts worth of individuals each week, we know the camps exist, thanks to the “wonders” of modern technology we can even look at aerial pictures of them. And essentially all of us, even those among us (not necessarily you, we don’t know you so of course cannot apply anything but generalities) who would adopt labels such as “militant vegan,” a label we might also apply to ourselves on occasion, do essentially nothing to stop it. All but a few unwilling to risk even small comforts, let alone their lives.
What does it say about us?
Juxtapose the fetal pain act just passed in the house. We probably won’t stop killing humans which are at least as sentient as these pigs, and won’t care, or consider the price worth it.
But the problem is not there’s too little government but too much. Try raising free range chickens in your yard, or buying from a local farmer you know. They are regulated out of existence. SWAT teams raid Amish who provide raw milk. So the regulations create the factory conditions. Even vegetables – most are Monsanto franken-food. The same kind of taxes, subsidies, and regulations. We could have local family farms providing food, but you want a huge protective bureaucracy, yet every one – the SEC on finance, the FDA on drugs, the USDA on farming – are captured by industry and lobbyists. Why do you think it would be different next time? It hasn’t been since the Washington administration.
“Juxtapose the fetal pain act just passed in the house. We probably won’t stop killing humans which are at least as sentient as these pigs.”
Jesus, what is this worldview. A pig is as smart as a toddler, a fetus can’t even express emotion.
The next time I walk into the middle of a conversation you’re having with yourself, I’ll tell myself that it’s the Broadway version of Alice In Wonderland.
Are you arguing that an embryo, or zygote or a fetus before the 28th week is more “sentient” than a living fully functional young pig?
Or are you arguing that we continue to kill adult human beings in war and myriad other ways as a species?
If it’s the former, I’d say not according to the well established science of human development.
If it’s the latter, I’d agree that it is wrong and we don’t care enough as a species.
Sad, eye opening article. Frightening to imagine where we are as a species when reading things like this. Humanity’s disregard for life, LIFE! is so blatantly horrifying it feels like there is little hope for our survival as a species.
This is so utterly repugnant and repulsive, if I were still eating meat, I couldn’t anymore.
I think Sen Inhofe tried and failed to go further than animals, with the terrorism claim, didn’t he? I have been waiting for a challenger to Feinstein, but none has appeared yet – unless it’s in today’s news. The fact that she’s up for re-election would explain her willingness to sign on to the Shark Fin Act. I would run against her myself, if I stood a decent chance of unseating her (w/no experience or name recognition whatsoever).
This story is both heartbreaking and a tiny bit optimistic. I read your earlier piece – and more. I mean, after all, who could resist the hideous spawn of Mr Trump with their ‘game faces’ on?
As far as animals one day dominating man to treat him as commodities – be my guest. But if we are that advanced, maybe moral bankruptcy would have been bred out of the species.
Great article, Mr Greenwald.
Gratitude to the wonderful activists and journalists putting a glaring spotlight on these despicable abuses by the producers, the pandering of our elected representatives, and protectors of what is good and righteous: the FBI.
Talk about an axis of evil (if you will).
I have Smithfield foods a call as well. I got the number off their website, which claims that they follow the highest standard of animal welfare, ha! I spoke to the customer complaint representative to voice my concerns. The first thing she asks me is, “did you read our website?” I told her yes, and that the company was lying. I asked her if she has visited any factory farms in NC, because the footage I’ve seen is horrible. She tells me that she has, and that everything was just fine. I argued that I could not believe her. At that point she was ending the call. I finished by saying it she had really witnessed what goes on in these farms, U wondered how she could sleep at night.
Great article about a subject I am sadly familiar with. I encourage everyone who reads this to contact their state reps and give these companies a call too.
Eh, sorry for the bad proofreading…..stupid autofill.
It would seem that we frame the issue in the wrong way. The question should not be:
‘Are non-humans like us?’
but instead:
‘Are non-humans unlike us?’
It requires a much greater leap of faith to assume that their inner lives and capacity for experience are vastly different than our own than to believe that they are fundamentally the same.
Each day in the US a Holocaust worth of lives is extinguished for no defensible reason. First-world inhabitants have no need to consume any product derived from the exploitation of non-human animals.
The US meat industry, like so many other US industries, has been morally abhorrent since its inception. There’s a history of evidence documenting it, and yet meat is as ‘Merican as apple.
These articles are always fun to see for people’s reactions. All the horror and surprise that their dirt cheap meat is treated like dirt cheap meat, all the while they probably are eating a meat product as they’re reading the article. Then the debates with themselves over whether they’re going to stop eating meat. “Oh the cruelty is so monstrous! But it tastes so good!” The irony is too rich sometimes.
Why do people continue giving the industry the benefit of the doubt? Is it the advertising? Their own denial? Are they addicts? Is it even a moral issue to them?
That would be an interesting story.
As a consumer and citizen, I’m glad that the activists are able to expose the mistreatment of the farm animals. At the same time, I’m more than a bit skeptical of their intentions because, more often than not, it is based on a philosophy of veganism, with an agenda that is not so much for animal welfare but against slaughter and meat consumption. It is a philosophy that strikes me as positively backwards, reminiscent of the most retrograde religions and most irrational notions of morality. I wished it wasn’t so.
So in your opinion was Gandhi’s philosophy or religion and/or morality irrational, backwards or retrograde because he espoused belief in the importance and morality of vegetarianism or veganism?
If so, wow. I don’t know what to say to that other than I disagree with you. And I’d say that I’ll be taking my moral cues and what is or isn’t “backwards or retrograde” from someone like Gandhi as opposed to some anonymous goof on the internet.
Yes, 100%. It is pure hindu superstition. No different than the ignorant believes spoused by western churches, but eastern believes sound more thruthful due to our orientalist tendencies.
It is a superstitious morality that fueled all the neurotic attitudes towards the flesh and material world, life and death, for millenia, on par with anti-abortion, faith healing, etc.
Then you’ll be happy to read this:
“Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest.” –Mahatma Gandhi, An Autobiography, pg. 446
Do you happen to have a defense of the consumption and exploitation of non-human animals that does not have its origin in religion? If so we would be interested to hear it as even so-called science-based rationalizations are greatly influenced by long-held religious beliefs and worldviews.
It requires a much greater leap to believe that non-humans are different than ourselves.
Unless of course you also advocate the consumption of humans, in which case we would have to disagree but at least applaud your consistency and lack of hypocrisy.
The defense is simple: it is a great food and source if protein.
So your defense of these practices comes down to convenience. You don’t feel like eating something else when you are otherwise easily able to do so. This is essentially a justification for slavery – torture and oppression is permissible so long as it benefits me in some small way.
So are you. Though we suppose one could argue perhaps not given the number of pharmaceuticals and toxic chemicals found in the typical first-world human as well as their abysmally poor diet and general health.
so cannibalism is ok?
This is a typical dumb slippery-slope type if argument, like “if gay people can marry, soon people will omarry with animals”…
In many cultures (some existing today) humans were on the menu. Not sure it was ever OK to marry your sheep though. Perhaps you might like to find a more convincing argument. Might be necessary should you find even yourself seeing through that one and needing something else to soothe you over the immense suffering you claim to be worth your pleasure.
You’ve got the timeline exactly backwards: in relatively recent times, plenty of humans lived in societies where eating other humans was normal practice.
My grandfather (a pure-blood Maori) was born in the early years of the 20th century. His grandfather was known to have eaten other people – it was common practice for Maori to eat their dead enemies (and also to kill prisoners and eat them).
Maori did not make the mistake of eating brains, though (which can lead to kuru – as the Kore people of New Guinea discovered).
you made a blanket assertion, so i asked if you that meant long pig, being a good source of nutrition, and reportedly tasty if cooked right, is also a permissible source. you’re evading the issue.
Many other ways to get protein.
Before I get into picking apart your arguments, such as they are, I’m going to assume that would be pointless and a waste of my time and just say I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree.
What it boils down to is you don’t have a problem causing intense suffering to other sentient beings you share the planet with, and species that were likely here long before yours was, so long as they taste great to you and are a good source of protein in your opinion.
Thanks for sharing. You just saved me a lot of time reading your comments going forward.
“At the same time, I’m more than a bit skeptical of their intentions because, more often than not, it is based on a philosophy of veganism, with an agenda that is not so much for animal welfare but against slaughter and meat consumption.”
So, it’s not so much how badly these animals live and die, it’s about how we feel about how badly they live and die. And you’re talking about “retrograde religions” and “irrational notions of morality?”
And by Diogo’s non-retrograde logic, he should have any problem with eating domestic dog or cat given the only “moral” criteria for whether or not to eat animal meat is whether it tastes good in someone’s subjective opinion (particularly his) and whether or not it’s a good source of protein.
Dolphin or porpoise is probably both, pretty sure he’d advocate eating dolphin and porpoise as he doesn’t have a problem eating other sentient mammals.
I mean if that’s the “logic” behind why you do or do not choose to eat meat, then why draw arbitrary distinctions based on society love or affection for a particular species. It’s all about human beings’ tastes and convenience as far as Diogo is concerned.
First of all, no one suggested it is “all about human beings’ tastes and convenience”, so that’s just lame internet behavior.
But the dolphin point is a fair point, interesting reference for debate, not like the “what about cannibalism” argument, which is just dumb.
But I see no moral dimension involved in eating, even dogs, dolphins, whatever. The issue is what you do to get that food – which in the case of dolphins involves an objectionable impact to a threatened species and the marine ecosystem.
Gandhi, btw, was an ascetic: a vegetarian and a celibate, faithful to the tradition that sees the spirit in conflict with the flesh and the material world. That’s the retrograde morality that I’m talking about. There is absolutely nothing inherent wrong with eating meat and slaughtering animals, unless you believe this religious nonsense.
and yet a number of non religious commenters dispute your arguments, or rather assertions. we know you see no moral dimension if eating other sentient beings, so we wonder how far that moral blindness goes. that you don’t even see a problem makes me think that it is a slippery slope indeed for you.
Why would “cannibalism point” be dumb? If you can eat other sentient beings you should be able to eat other humans too, as they are “a good source of protein”. If you are worried about the intelligence level you could just eat people with mental disabilities, right, eh? Perhaps even breed them for slaughter. Would that be OK with you? What would be the moral difference? “farm” animals are just as able of feeling suffering as you or other humans. If you can be sociopathic to them then you can be sociopathic to anybody.
If there is nothing wrong with the consumption of non-human animals then there is nothing wrong with the consumption of human animals.
The ONLY reasoning for the above statement to be false comes from religious nonsense. The great chain of being absolutely is religious nonsense.
The hypocrisy is quite easy to see I’m afraid.
Nothing but assertions. If you want to claim that veganism is ‘retrograde’, irrational morality then you’ll have to demonstrate it. If you don’t your statement could be dismissed, entirely parallel as the apparent retrograde stances of veganism.
Thank you for covering an important issues like this.
Wonderfully written article. Thank you for presenting the truth for everyone’s sake!
Really appreciate your contribution to this important issue, Glenn. Have known for some time about your love for dogs, but I have been delighted to see your recent advocacy for the rights of all animals, here and on Twitter. Thank you very much for using your influential platform to make a difference on behalf of the world’s most oppressed beings – “farmed” animals.
I’ve been reading Greenwald’s work since he was posting his pieces on blogspot. This piece made a bigger emotional impact on me than anything else he has ever written. I’ve known that factory farms are “bad”, but chose not to look too deeply into the actual details he has depicted here. This will affect my diet and purchasing decisions going forward.
It must have been a difficult thing to write, but thanks for doing what you do.
Incredible piece Glenn. One of your most important ever. I hope you’ll continue to write on this topic.
Thank you. I’ve been leaning more and more strongly to becoming a vegetarian in the last couple of years. I eat meat pretty infrequently now (once or twice a week at most) and try buy only after researching (not that you can ultimately know internal company compliance with their own claimed practices in the absence of rigid government oversight and publication of findings, or investigative journalism) which organic or free range brands engage in the practices they claim they do as far as animal welfare, feeding, medicine and harvest practices. So I think, and I’ve talked with friends and family, we’re either going to find a local farm/rancher and invest directly and personally in practices surrounding the animal’s raising and harvesting if we’re going to continue to eat meat, or I’m going to have to pull the trigger and make the move to vegetarianism.
p.s. I seem to recall you being a fan of zoos. I can think of only two reasons for keeping wild animals in cages or enclosures at traditional zoos–rescue of injured animals that cannot ever be returned to the wild upon healing, and saving a species from extinction. The latter being the only reason animals should ever be purposely bred in captivity as well and/or their offspring trafficked to other zoos.
I would hope you will continue to right about animal rights issues, and when you do think or possibly write about the role zoos play in the world and their effect on their sentient captives.
If Ringling Bros. and SeaWorld’s activities are inappropriate in the context of animal welfare, I’m not sure what the possible justification for maintaining (or patronizing them making them viable economic activities just for human’s entertainment–education about animals can be done via video in their natural habitats for the most part) public or private zoos for other types of animals could be other than in the two instances I noted (which I assume isn’t enough animals to maintain the number of zoos in this nation).
Just something to think about. I think Gandhi hit all the right notes.
I’m not quite there yet, but trying.
“. . . to write . . .
Damn homophones and speed typing.
At least it wasn’t Alt-Write…..;)
Oh wait…that’s not a homophone, it’s an OxyMoron….my bad.
Thanks for this thoughtful comment, and for your compassion.
While vegetarianism is certainly less worse, it still involves the exploitation and torture of other beings. We applaud your progress, breaking free from the toxic mainstream, and sincerely hope your continued reflection and self-improvement lead you further on your path to the only morally defensible choice: veganism.
To me, Gandhi’s quote reveals everything that is wrong with much of vegetarian/veganism beliefs. The superstitious invocation of God , the ignorant notion that eating meat is unsuitable to our species…
Spiritual progress? More like a throwback to hinduism, wrapped in a not so thin layer of orientalism, with impression that there something deep with this kind of mysticism. No thanks.
Like I said above, I don’t find your sophomoric arguments compelling in any way. We’ll just have to agree to disagree.
We don’t have to agree, but sophomoric? Give me a break! What I’m saying is true, you just need a minimum of unserstanding about the history of religious sensibilities and morality. Gandhi’s asceticism is behind both his celibacy and vegetarianism, because there is age old tradition of opposing spirit and flesh. All of it is obscurantist religious superstition.
As citizen of a state which has more pigs than people, I can attest to the brutal tyranny of pig farms in North Carolina. The New Yorker had an article a few years back about eastern North Carolina pig farms, where people living near these farms can’t walk outside their houses due to pig feces being sprayed into the air, day and night. When they complained to the company, the police came to visit them. But it’s even more than that. Duke Energy, a monopoly company holding sway over our state has poisoned our rivers for years with coal ash. They just raised the rates on consumers in our state for, yep, you guessed it – to clean up the coal ash they didn’t contain in the first place. Our last governor was a Duke Energy employee for 28 years.
“As is typical for lobbyist and industry-supported bills, the AETA passed with overwhelming bipartisan support (its two prime Senate sponsors were James Inhofe, R-Okla., and Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.) and then was signed into law by George W. Bush.”
And
“…the Shark Fin effort has a number of cosponsors as well; and Sens. Schatz, Markey, Warren, Feinstein, Blumenthal have been partners as well.”
So Feinstein votes to turn animal rights activists into terrorists, but wants to save sharks. If you ever needed proof that politicians pay no price and talk out of both sides of their mouths, there it is. Maybe someone can explain to me again how different the two parties are, especially after Obama’s egregious record on the environment and animal rights. Great reporting!
Coastal state, perhaps?
Nope.
It’s not sharks.
Sen Feinstein is up for reelection in 2018.
Thank you SO MUCH for writing this. The lives of pigs confined in these “farms” are an absolute nightmare. I’m also an organizer with DxE (Direct Action Everywhere Toronto) and have seen this in Canada too – this torture and deceit really must end. So much suffering just to titilate human taste buds, while nowadays there are so many vegan options. Why are we still eating animals???
Rather than boycotting eating such things as bacon – it would be much more productive to support agri-businesses that actually do the right thing. This sends a much stronger signal and will allow those businesses to grow and replace the bad actors. Unfortunately as a consumer it’s almost impossible to know the details behind the food we buy. If anyone has links to such resources then I’d be very appreciative if they would reply.
As one of the effective, shrewd, and tenacious political activists the above article mentions, you should absolutely boycott things like bacon. And all other products made from the broken bodies of these feeling, intelligent animals. Eating meat is completely unnecessary and terrible for your health.Besides, there is vegan bacon. And ham, chicken, burgers, and so many kinds of plant based milks.
You asked for a link to resources, and here is a great one- a free vegan mentor program: https://www.peta.org/action/vegan-mentor/
The problem is you cannot utilize non-humans for human consumption without harming them. There is no right way to raise non-humans for food. The entire concept is morally flawed.
Assuming you inhabit what we term the first-world, you have no survival need to consume products derived from the exploitation of non-human animals.
The first part of your comment contradicts directly with the second. Agribusinesses that “do the right thing” do not engage in animal killing. If you are concerned that, as a consumer, it is impossible to know the details behind the food you buy, then cut out the guesswork and eat plants so that you’re certain there wasn’t a thinking, feeling creature floundering in a disease-ridden warehouse before having its throat cut open to make it to your plate.
Everyone talks about “ethical consumption”, but in my experience, vegans are the only ones who do anything about it.
There is no such thing as “agri-businesses that actually do the right thing.” Agriculture is harmful per se, and the larger the farm, the more harm. Boycott all agribusiness and buy from small, organic, local family farms.
Actually, there are more and more small, sustainable farms working to break up the factory systems all the time. Buy directly from them in your area as often as you can, it is not an easy path and Corporate Ag is fighting back hard. Use LocalHarvest.org and eatwild.com to find farms near you.
Thank you. Thank you.
Oh my dear God. That was so painful to read. I went to the NYT article to see their original video. I haven’t heard that kind of screaming in a horror movie.
Thank you Glenn.
Glenn, I have enjoyed your writing for years. I cannot thank you enough for this article and the global attention it will bring to the critical issue of factory farm conditions and U.S. government support for these heinous industries. Smithfield Foods is an animal abuser, environmental polluter, and unethical employer. Their profits stand on the ruination of lives (human and non-human) and the ecosystem. Thank you again for standing up for the people who protect those without a voice and the animals who are tortured and consumed. What KILLS me about Gov. Christie (where do I start?) is that there was bipartisian support in NJ for the banning of gestation crates – he ignored the WILL of the people and what for, his failed presidential bid? He is the worst kind of public servant.
Enlightening report.
Always good to know just how corrupt the US has become.
Nevertheless, as wallstreet thieves rob Americans and employ gofers in elected and appointed positions, it is no surprise that Americans are treated as expendable animals.
This is incredibly disturbing, and powerful evidence of the deep ties between Big Ag and the government. Thank you for blowing the lid off this story, Glenn!
My stomach is in knots and the dam holds back a torrent of tears. What can I do? I called Smithfield Circle 4 Farms in Utah ((435) 387-2107, spoke with the operator who referred me to “Kathleen” , Director of Corporate Communications at 757-365-1965. She was unavailable so I left a message expressing how dumbfounded I was at the revelation of sow/piglet cruelty depicted and storied in this essay. This Is American Rot. We must organize for it to stop. Who we have “leading” our country is a metaphor for unspeakable, immoral, corrupt corporate practices associated with our Food and hidden from view and protected by yours and my FBI, we pay them.
Did you call your congresspeople? That is who you need to be on the phone with.
Animals clearly have feelings and can experience great suffering. Laws should require a new, larger minimum amount of space per animal just as we require minimum amounts of space per human being. It’s bad enough their fate is to feed us. There is no reason why their existence cannot be made less cruel. If the laws are uniform then no company is at a competitive disadvantage.
If one accepts that non-humans are capable of the things you state, there is no morally consistent argument which would then allow one to continue exploiting them in any fashion, regardless of how “well taken care of” they are.
Don’t focus on whether (you think that) animals have feelings. This is anthropocentric BS. A much better attitude is that ALL LIFE (which includes plants, land, and water) should have an equal right to live and thrive, and that no one should kill anything except to eat it. It was proven at least 50 years ago that plants “feel” pain in their own way, and going down the path of only treating animals that experience life in substantially similar ways to humans will mean that humans continue to badly mistreat everything else.
Were we to deem all experience of pain equal, the least harmful route is still fully veganism given the fact that consuming meat will require far more plants to experience pain than were to consume only plants ourselves.
Not if you eat wild meat, and not if you eat fish and seafood. Did you read my posts or are you just spouting fanatic BS?
Ah, you got us. Except not.
Neither of those sources have the numbers required to sustain the current population of humans. So if we are discussing the general population, not some fringe cases, your logic does not hold up.
We of course do not morally condemn any individual that truly consumes non-human animals for survival. Most of the world, and likely all commenting here, cannot hide behind that particular defense.
You seem to have adopted a dangerous form of mysticism and spirituality. One that allows oneself a way to avoid the truly difficult questions and choices. And as a result provides its believers with insufficient tools to navigate the real world rather than the theoretical.
Nice job of making a totally false assumption about me. The fact is that I make sacrifices every day for the natural environment: I gave up my car years ago, don’t have kids, spent the money to put solar panels on my roof, buy all of my produce from the farmers market and only buy organic, etc. I’ve also volunteered thousands of hours as an Earth First! campaigner and, when we could afford to do so, donated as much as I could afford to environmental groups that I support.
As to your relevant comment, again I fully agree that with the current gross human overpopulation, the most ecologically and environmentally friendly way to eat is vegan. But the real problems are that there are too many people eating way too much meat individually and that they get that meat from animal agriculture instead of hunting and fishing. And there are the issues of meat-eating being natural human behavior — which fact you refuse to accept because you’re so blinded by your ideologies — and that animals are the only natural source of vitamin B-12.
So sure, your band-aid solution to stop eating animal products would be fine if it didn’t drive away potential allies on the real problems and if getting artificial vitamin B-12 didn’t cause more harm than it prevents (no opinion on that, I have no idea). But while the real problems require long-term solutions, if you don’t fix them, the rest of this is relatively meaningless. Human overpopulation and overconsumption are the biggest and most important problems on the planet and must be fixed, or we will destroy the Earth as we know it.
sigh, if at this point one is resorting to the argument that because we happens to be focusing on a specific issue at this specific time then we must only be for “band-aids” then it would seem one’s position lacks far more foundation than previously thought.
Congratulations on your efforts to murder and pollute less. We are happy to see that. We are far from perfect and expect no more from others. We simply have problems with the all to common human tendency to hide and/or justify their awful deeds behind poorly defensible mysticism.
Again
https://www.pri.org/stories/2014-01-09/new-research-plant-intelligence-may-forever-change-how-you-think-about-plants
Again:
No where do we state that plants have NO experience. The dispute lies in how similar or equivalent such experience is in ways that might effect one’s moral evaluation of their consumption and exploitation.
Despite the commonly held view, we have NEVER had any credible o evidence that the experience of non-human animals is fundamentally different than our own. We cannot say the same about plants without resorting to poorly defensible mysticism and appeals to the noble savage.
In the real world, choices must actually be made. Operating under a precautionary principle, acknowledging the limits of of our understandings, one is faced with only one reasonable choice: until further evidence is presented, the consumption and exploitation of non-human animals is undeniably less moral than the consumption of plants.
Were we to find out tomorrow that there is compelling proof that there is meaningful equivalence in plants, the response, given all the other conditions being the same, is to still consume only plants given the inability of wild populations to support the current human population numbers and the extra resource use required for raising farmed non-human animals.
But Morals have subjective standards. Not two people have the exact same morals and there is no way to quantify a ‘Moral’. Morals don’t exist. They are not a person place or thing. They are a subjective idea of which every person has a different conceptual understanding.
As I stated in another post, I will not argue upon morals. Now if you can show me an economic or health advantage or maybe some other reason that quantifiable, then we can discus further.
Morals are for people who can’t tell right from wrong with out a guide. Just like preachers are for people who can’t understand simple writings found in the bible.
For some reason our replies do not appear. Perhaps this one will.
Morals are based on one’s understanding of the world. Such understanding can vary between individuals. To acquire a perfect, infallible set of morals one would need to be omnipotent.
Economic reasons also do not exist, and given the imperfect beings crafting health analysis, it is also subjective.
Your last statement is quite comical. You have simply removed the word “morals” yet kept the same lines of thinking and decision making processes intact. What standards does one use to “know” right from wrong? One seems to be acting with the same false certainty that those preachers you rightfully demonize are.
This is inhumane. We should know better than treating creatures this way. It clearly shows how degenerate some of us can be.
Glenn, thank you for this incredible piece. This is the best piece about animal rights to date. Your unveiling of animal agriculture’s deceptive tactics and activists’ efforts is masterful. Thank you so much. This is a big one for the animals – thanks to you!
Superb article, deserves a Pulitzer prize. As the first comment pointed out, The Chinese purchased Smithfield Farms in 2013. It is indeed ironic that the FBI is attacking Americans, at the bidding of the Chinese.
What about rights of non humans? The Water Protectors made water a political actor. More generally, Bruno Latour, the French polymath, has developed a metaphysics that has humans and non humans at the same level.
Glenn in this article raises the philosophical and moral issues
Here is just one example of Bruno Latour’s work related to this article.
in an article about whether other creatures could be endowed with an ethical dimension
MORALITY OR MORALISM?
An Exercise in Sensitization
Insanity squared.
Excellent reporting! Yes, I know that bacon is tasty .. but at such an enormous cost. Please think twice about eating factory-farmed meat; even consider going vegan.
Thank you to Glenn Greenwald and The Intercept for this important piece.
Conversations surrounding the rights and protections we ought to afford animals are vital. And we can all do our own part, too. It’s easier than ever to go vegan. I view veganism as a form of boycott. As consumers, we should be mindful of the types of industries and practices we are financially supporting. In addition to sparing billions of animals from a life of misery, adopting a vegan diet also lessens one’s carbon footprint and helps address several public health issues, like the growing threat of antibiotic resistance as a result of feeding sub-therapeutic doses to farm animals.
I think in the not too distant future, we will look back in horror at how we treated animals. We will wonder how we were ever so blind to such immense, unnecessary suffering.
Veganism or even vegetarianism is not necessary and totally unnatural. Humans have always eaten meat, and we need the vitamin B-12 that it provides (vegans have to get this artificially). Far fewer people on our planet limiting their meat consumption to an average of no more than once/week and only eating wild animals would solve the problem.
As a Yaqui friend once explained, you’ll never find an indigenous culture that’s vegetarian, because we don’t discriminate between species (i.e., plants suffer when killed too).
You typing on an electronic device is not “natural.”
There are of course sources of b12 that do not require the exploitation of non-human animals.
And as for the plant suffering argument, while it is correct that we do not necessarily have any reason to believe that there is NO experience, given the vast differences in our evolution, it is not guaranteed to be similar in the same way a non-human animal’s is.
Since there is no survival requirement for those living in the first-world to consume non-human animals, and doing so involves less human-centric resource use (since most non-human animal consumption is farmed not wild), it is only logical to eat only plants.
As I said, we don’t discriminate for or against species, which is what political vegetarianism or veganism does. I don’t expect you to understand this, we have totally different world views, but suffice to say that no living being wants to be eaten, whether it’s a plant or an animal, so I see no reason to have an absolute prohibition on eating meat.
Humans cannot be healthy if they don’t get vitamin B-12, making meat-eating not only natural but also necessary. Artificially created vitamins are not as healthy, almost certainly have negative side effects, and almost certainly have negative environmental impacts (never looked into this, it’s sufficient for me to know that humans need it and that its only natural source is from animals).
That said, I agree that a vegan diet would be better for out planet DUE TO GROSS HUMAN OVERPOPULATION that prohibits us from getting all our meat from wild animals, and due to the modern human propensity to take far more than what is needed. My problem is you fanatic vegans annoying everyone, and specifically because your behaviors and attitudes are turning off natural allies. People would be far more amenable to reducing their meat consumption and getting meat from less harmful sources than to giving up meat altogether. Good luck on getting people to give up natural behavior that people have always done and that provides a needed nutrient.
A simple illustration. Given the choice between stabbing a paraplegic in the leg or a non-paraplegic, which does one choose? Of course neither WANTS to be stabbed in the leg, but one HAS to be. So using available evidence, which one should we stab?
A plant, non-fruit bearing, does not want to be eaten. This is likely true. But is it’s conception of being killed and eaten remotely the same as that of non-plant? Perhaps, perhaps not. However, one needs to die.
We know with much more certainty what the non-plant’s conception will be. Now you are claiming, though have offered no real evidence besides appeals to traditions, that plants experience the equivalent. This requires a much greater leap of faith.
Again, the fanatic argument is always baffling, were someone systematically imprisoning and enslaving and murdering your human neighbors we expect you would feel quite strong feelings about it.
MOG, Jeff D has got you there.
https://www.pri.org/stories/2014-01-09/new-research-plant-intelligence-may-forever-change-how-you-think-about-plants
No where do we state that plants have NO experience. The dispute lies in how similar or equivalent such experience is in ways that might effect one’s moral evaluation of their consumption and exploitation.
Despite the commonly held view, we have NEVER had any credible o evidence that the experience of non-human animals is fundamentally different than our own. We cannot say the same about plants without resorting to poorly defensible mysticism and appeals to the noble savage.
It’s not about whether plants experience life or suffering in the same or similar way as humans do. That’s anthropocentric egotistic bullshit. Just because plants don’t relate to life the same way you do, you can kill them or do whatever you want to them?
Furthermore, a decades-old study showed that plants let our their versions of “screams” when they think they’re about to be killed. There and Deadheded’s link are the evidence. I’m not going to waste time finding evidence for you; if you want to do the work, there’s plenty of it. I read the results of the study in the early ’70s, and anyone who’s interested in this issue, like you, should know about it. Educate yourself, I’m not going to do it for you.
Wow, quite the stretching there, we do hope you haven’t injured yourself.
Given that we do not deem the human’s experience to be unique, we are quite unsure as to how we might be labeled as engaging in anthropocentrism.
We at no point claim that plants are our playthings. One should only harm plants to survive.
Given the evolutionary history of non-plants, it requires a greater leap of faith to assume that all non-plants do not have similar experiences. Given the evolutionary history of plants, it requires a greater leap of faith to assume that plants have a similar experience to non-plants. No study has shown this to be an incorrect assumption.
Until we both have the compelling evidence for plant equivalence and wild, non-farmed non-human animal populations capable of supporting the human population, we will continue to choose to stab the paraplegic in the leg.
Your last sentence is quite baffling. As someone who claims all life is equal and precious, one sure is reluctant to do the work required to make such a worldview more prevalent.
Our replies do not appear, reposting attempt
Quite the stretch you’re making there, we do hope you didn’t hurt yourself.How exactly is deeming humans not special anthropocentric?
At no time do we state that plants are our playthings. We advocate only harming plants for survival reasons, just as we advocate for non-plants. We recommend against making assummptions, your track record is quite poor.
There is no evidence for equivalence, there is evidence for experience. Even were such experience to be meaningfully equivalent (debateable how we come to such a conclusion), it is still more moral to eat only plants, because, as you have admitted eslewhere, wild non-plant populations are unable to support the human populations and farmed non-plants require much more resource use.
Jeff D, Wow a comment I totally agree with.
Yaqui, did you know Juan Matus was an Yaqui
No. My friend is Rod Coronado.
Sorry, I misread your question the first time. Yes, I know that. I read his books by candlelight (for better effect) in the ’70s. His mental exercises work, I’ve tried them. But they take a lot of effort and I got lazy.
I forgot to mention in my first reply that it’s fine if you want to eat vegan. Aside from possible harm from consuming artificial vitamin B-12 (don’t know whether this causes any significant harm), there’s certainly no harm in doing so and I have no problem with it.
But that said, I DO have a problem with fanatic vegans trying to convince or force everyone else to become vegan, because it’s a radical and unnatural concept and way of eating. The problem is that by trying to convince or force people to eat vegan, you’ll turn people off to an issue like this that they might otherwise support. Again, veganism is not necessary, see my previous comment.
We are glad you at least acknowlege the existance of non-human animal sourced b12.
We always find the fanatic argument amusing and saddening as it seems to lack evidence of any real self-reflection or examination. If one were to consider these individuals as just as worthy of protection as you likely deem your neighbors, then how else could one act given the reality they find themselves living within?
Death camps around the country, hunks of bodies in every grocery store, a mainstream dominant view that these individuals are less than. And all completely unecessary for survival, one cannot hide behind the morality of lions and wolves.
“I DO have a problem with fanatic Abolitionists trying to convince or force everyone else that slavery is wrong, because it’s a radical and unnatural concept and way of running an industrial system.”
– you, if you were alive in 1830
Seriously – you have to be a special type of stupid to hew to the notion that there is some ‘state of nature’ that is morally correct simply by dint of the fact that its existence predates your birth.
Would you have opposed the American Revolution because King George III and his antecedents had ruled the colonies for several hundred years? If not, why not?
Would you have seen the whole “Magna Carta” nonsense as invalid, because after all, the King and the nobles had been in charge of the system for a millennium? If not, why not?
Progress – particularly moral and ethical progress – involves identifying and correcting elements of the ‘state of nature’ that violate the rights of a subset of relevant individuals (serfs, blacks, women, gay people, atheists, heretics, children, animals… in no particular order).
That is literally why you’re not a slave or an indentured peasant whose hold on life continues at the whim of a feudal master: because ratbags throughout history have kicked at the traces and dragged humanity upwards.
And of course it’s a long time between when the ratbags agitate and the society changes: in the 1780s Bentham wrote that consensual homosexuality should be legal – it was a death penalty offence at the time. Almost 200 years later Turing was effectively killed by a government that owed him a debt for his WWII service, homosexuality still being illegal in the UK. Homosexuality was legalised in my state in 1980 and is still illegal in many US states. (I’m not homosexual: I’m untidy, out of shape and have no fashion sense; my room’s a mess and I have no skill at interior design).
Ratbags see injustice and agitate, irrespective of the cost to themselves. Be a ratbag, not a serf.
You totally fail to differentiate between natural behaviors and artificial societal behaviors. We live on a planet where the animals eat each other; get over it! Do you think that lions and other predators are evil? Humans evolved eating meat. Do you have any clue what evolution is? If you don’t eat animal products, you don’t get vitamin B-12. Etc.
You modern humans are so out of touch with the natural world that you’re clueless about life. There’s nothing wrong with eating animals, many animals do it. It’s gross human overpopulation and THE WAY we eat animals that’s the problem.
Lions are not good role models.
Also, lion doesn’t eat meat? It dies. You don’t eat meat? You have less pleasure. Can’t hide behind lions on this one.
We also suspect there are non-human animal behaviors you are unwilling to tolerate in humans, but those would detract from your argument so lets not think about them, eh?
Humans are not good role models. There’s nothing wrong with lions or any other predators.
Too much of anything is a bad thing, and that includes being overly compassionate toward animals. I like non-human animals a lot more than people, but I don’t think that eating them is a bad thing, subject to the constraints that I’ve listed. And again, if you don’t eat some animal product, the only natural ones being meat and eggs, you won’t get vitamin B-12 naturally.
Sorry, but I’ll go with the indigenous attitude: all life is equal and we don’t discriminate between species, so I eat both plants and animals, though mainly plants because that’s what’s natural for humans.
More selective reading…
You likely disagree with the idea that a human would eat an animal alive, increasing its suffering. Therefore other predators are not good role models in this instance.
It is quite the stretch too claim that the uneccessary consumption of non-human animals is overly compassionate.
And we are not swayed by your noble savage argument.
My experiences with vegans is that they’re fanatics and their fanatical ideologies blind them to reality. You won’t accept that humans evolved eating animals — in your case, you don’t even want to accept that it’s OK for predators to eat animals — or that getting things like vitamin B-12 artificially is more environmentally harmful than getting them naturally and that natural sources of nutrition are much better than artificial ones, so you ignore FACTS like the fact that humans need vitamin B-12 and that it can only be obtained naturally from animal products.
You are a perfect example of being so blinded by your ideologies that you can’t see reality. My diet is basically vegan, with some eggs or wild meat once in awhile. But because I eat some animal products occasionally, you act like I’m an immoral killer. And because I state facts that you don’t like, you make ridiculous arguments like humans should ignore how they evolved and should get vitamin B-12 artificially instead of naturally. No wonder a friend who briefly worked at Whole Foods told me that the vegans working there were the most miserable and angry people he’d ever met.
Nowhere did we state it is not OK for predators to eat animals. What is problematic is using them as role models without employing critical thinkin and acknowledging that one is going to pick and choose which behaviors are worth emulating. Without providing a firm defense of such selections,, why include one behavior and not the other, one’s argument is quite poor.
And since you’re still on the B12, much of the farmed animals are fed B12 supplements. So at best you’re eating supplemented (“unnatural”) B12 filtered through a non-human animal. Given that you have yet to provide any rationale (and even admit yourself you are unaware of any adverse health effects) this is pure grasping at straws.
When you unnecessarily take a life, one is commiting an immoral act. We are not sure how we could make it any clearer for you. If we carelessly step on an anthill, we are committing an immoral act as well. Each and everyone of us is an immoral individual at times.
Nowhere in my comments do I advocate eating farmed meat. Again, you’re so blinded by your ridiculous ideology that you can’t see reality. I’m done arguing with you, you’re just another fanatic vegan. In my groups of friends, the vegans, vegetarians, and meat-eaters all get along, because no one bugs anyone else about what they eat. You should get a clue from this.
Either you advocate for eating farmed meat or you advocate for eating no meat at all. Anything else is not operating within the unavoidable constraints of our current reality and the fact that wild populations can in no way support both the human population and more importantly the non-human populations that truly require them to survive.
It is no surprise that you and your group operate under a “live and let live” ruleset. It is precisely this ruleset which the dominant ideologies use to stamp out and demonize and marginalize those who might agitate for truly revolutionary change. Such a rulset has been internalized by the majority of those in the west.
The problem with such a ruleset is that it does not withstand even the most basic of critical scrutiny. It is also a rulset which you and your grooup are unlikely to adopt on many issues, what those specific issues are we do not know, we can only say with certainty that the current topic does not meet the criteria for you.
The idea of everythings equal is certaintly tempting, it allows us to not face a truly difficult dilemma. By making the choice to believe this we remove from our future all of the difficult choices one must make should they not adopt this ideology. Perhaps one should focus their blinders argument inwards.
Repost atempt due to missing reply:
We never stated that humans did not evoolve eating meat, simply that today it is not rquired.
Farmed non-plants are fed B12 supplements, so at best you are eating artificial b12 filtered through a non-plant. You have also provided no evidence for the non-equivalence of “natural” source b12 and “Nonnatural” source b12.
If one takes a life unnecessarily, one is commiting an immoral act. Were we to burn ants with a magnifying glass or simply step on their hill, we are commiting an immoral act. We all commit immoral acts each day. None of us can claim perfection unless our critical thinking is blinded by poorly defensible mysticism.
And I recall hearing that Smithfield Farms is owned by the Chinese.
Hence, US soil, food and politics is subverted by a foreign country.
But, what the heck, if it is good for business, who cares?
As Fredrick Jameson is reported saying, “it is easier to imagine the end of the word than the end of capitalism”
Great quote. But at least the Chinese didn’t hack our facebook accounts – just our food supply.
Until we elect a new Congress and president who have their hearts, wallets and consciences in the right place these kinds of atrocities will continue.
The fish does stink from the head.
BTW, I don’t eat dead animals. It is amazing how happy and healthy one can be without consuming dead animal flesh.