Down on the Factory Farm

By Neil Gillespie
Cross-posted from The Justice Network

Many people are uninformed about farm animals, slaughterhouses, factory farms, industrial animal agriculture, and the normalization of violence accepted to put dinner on the table. Videos go a long way in understanding the killing of animals for human use, like those from Paul McCartney, Dr. Temple Grandin, bloggers, animal welfare organizations and filmmakers.

The book Eternal Treblinka, and others, describe the horrible suffering animals endure everyday in industrial factory farms. As Mark Bittman wrote in "The Human Cost of Animal Suffering" in the New York Times, "…once we accept that farm animals are capable of suffering (80 percent of Americans believe this to be true), we might well wonder what they’ve done to deserve such punishment."

Bittman interviewed Timothy Pachirat, author of "Every Twelve Seconds: Industrialized Slaughter and the Politics of Sight". Pachirat worked five months in an Omaha slaughterhouse. Pachirat "took the job not as an animal rights activist but as a doctoral candidate in political science seeking to understand the normalization of violence."

Bittman wrote "The most publicized stories about industrial agriculture represent the exceptions that prove the rule: the uncommon torture of animals by perverse individuals in rogue operations. But torture is inherent in the routine treatment of animals as widgets, and the system itself is perverse. What makes "Every Twelve Seconds" different from (for example) a Mercy for Animals exposé is, says Pachirat, "that the day-in and day-out experience produces invisibility. Industrialized agriculture perpetuates concealment at every level of the process, and rather than focusing on the shocking examples we should be focusing on the system itself."

A video by Dr. Grandin discusses humane methods of animal dispatch. A video by Dax Jorgenson shows the humane butchering of a live hog from killing the animal to completion. Another video by Terrence Malachy shows the utterly inhumane killing of a hog. This is hard to watch, and the authorities should investigate this outrageous torture of an innocent animal.

There are alternatives to the normalization of violence accepted to put dinner on the table. The first step is this admission: The normalization of violence toward farm animals is unacceptable in a civilized society. Next, humane methods of animal farming and animal killing must be employed. For others, vegetarianism or veganism is the way to stop the normalization of violence toward farm animals.

David Aman of Krewe De Food made this point on the KDF Chicken Killing Demonstration blog post:

"Everyone who eats meat should participate periodically in its killing. If you're not a vegetarian then do yourself a favor and eat something that you kill. There would be a lot less meat consumption if us omnivores were a little more attached to the killing portion of our meat consumption. The industrialization of our food is doing something to our subconscious; can't say exactly how it has and will effect us but it can't be good.."

As John Cassidy said on the KDF "How to kill a chicken" video, "It's not fun... but it's how life goes on without Walmarts."

Mark Bittman described a similar reaction: "Pachirat says he has changed as a result of his experience, becoming increasingly interested in what he calls "distancing and concealment." He now intends to work on those issues as they relate to imprisonment, war, torture, deployment of drones and other sophisticated weaponry that allow impersonal killing. And it’s because these connections make so much sense that we should look more carefully at how we raise and kill animals."

Could the normalization of violence toward farm animals explain other undesirable aspects of our society, like torture, perpetual war, and the highest incarceration rate in the world? Is it any coincidence that corporations are also involved with perpetual war, incarceration, and industrial factory farms?

My conversion to vegetarianism began during a hunger strike in January 2012, followed by watching videos like Earthlings and Mercy for Animals that show the horrible violence farm animals suffer. Subsequently my desire to eat animals diminished.

Killing sentient beings like farm animals should not be taken lightly. Alexia Allen of Hawthorn Farm shows the respectful harvest of a chicken in her video. Farm Sanctuary has a petition to President Obama, End factory farming!, urging reforms to our food system recommended by the National Conference to End Factory Farming.

In this 2012 presidential election year we should be discussing this important issue, the normalization of violence toward farm animals. This issue may have wider implications for all of us.