7 Comments

1. DeAnander:

   I’m thinking that anyone who can’t see the correspondence between the disturbing footage in this video and the conditions in US prisons — both domestic and the foreign Gulag — and brothels and sweatshops — is seriously out to lunch. The memes at work are Centralisation, Efficiency and Control, and of course Domination and Profit, and the result is predictably hellish — ghastly.

   Though the video concludes that the only solution is vegetarianism, I’m of the opinion that there is such a thing as humane/sustainable meat production; but it cannot be on the industrial scale (automatically inhumane) or yield the super-cheap product that Americans are used to. Friends of mine in the back of beyond, BC just slaughtered their chickens for the year; birds that had roamed on pasture eating grass and grubs their whole lives, healthy enough that some of them would fly over an 8 ft fence even with the long flight feathers clipped on one wing. One of my friends said that she didn’t know which was better — knowing that their supply of meat for the winter was organic, unpoisoned, safe to eat — or knowing that their chickens had happy lives and were not tortured, were killed humanely in clean conditions by the people who raised them, etc.

   Joel Salatin of Polyface Farm invites his meat customers to the farm to witness — to participate in, if they wish — the yearly chicken or turkey kill. The US meat industry keeps its ghoulish factories quiet, taking (inadequate in the era of cell phone cameras) precautions to prevent any outsider from seeing what goes on in the CAFOs and slaughterhouses. One cannot imagine them inviting the Safeway customer to the slaughterhouse to see conditions for themselves.

   Salatin in 2003:
   

   I want to dress my beef and pork on the farm where I’ve coddled and raised it. But zoning laws prohibit slaughterhouses on agricultural land. For crying out loud, what makes more holistic sense than to put abattoirs where the animals are? But no, in the wisdom of Western disconnected thinking, abattoirs are massive centralized facilities visited daily by a steady stream of tractor trailers and illegal alien workers.

   But what about dressing a couple of animals a year in the backyard? How can that be compared to a ConAgra or Tyson facility? In the eyes of the government, the two are one and the same. Every T-bone steak has to be wrapped in a half-million dollar facility so that it can be sold to your neighbor. The fact that I can do it on my own farm more cleanly, more responsibly, more humanely, more efficiently, and in a more environmentally friendly manner doesn’t matter to the government agents who walk around with big badges on their jackets and wheelbarrow-sized regulations tucked under their arms.

   OK, so I take my animals and load them onto a trailer for the first time in their life to send them up the already clogged interstate to the abattoir to await their appointed hour with a shed full of animals of dubious extraction. They are dressed by people wearing long coats with deep pockets with whom I cannot even communicate. The carcasses hang in a cooler alongside others that were not similarly cared for in life. After the animals are processed, I return to the facility hoping to retrieve my meat.

   When I return home to sell these delectable packages, the county zoning ordinance says that this is a manufactured product because it exited the farm and was reimported as a value-added product, thereby throwing our farm into the Wal-Mart category, another prohibition in agricultural areas. Just so you understand this, remember that an on-farm abattoir was illegal, so I took the animals to a legal abattoir, but now the selling of said products in an on-farm store is illegal.

   Our whole culture suffers from an industrial food system that has made every part disconnected from the rest. Smelly and dirty farms are supposed to be in one place, away from people, who snuggle smugly in their cul-de-sacs and have not a clue about the out-of-sight-out-of-mind atrocities being committed to their dinner before it arrives in microwaveable, four-color-labeled, plastic packaging. Industrial abattoirs need to be located in a not-in-my-backyard place to sequester noxious odors and sights. Finally, the retail store must be located in a commercial district surrounded by lots of pavement, handicapped access, public toilets and whatever else must be required to get food to people.

   The notion that animals can be raised, processed, packaged, and sold in a model that offends neither our eyes nor noses cannot even register on the average bureaucrat’s radar screen — or, more importantly, on the radar of the average consumer advocacy organization. Besides, all these single-use megalithic structures are good for the gross domestic product. Anything else is illegal.

   We know from long experience that hidden/secret facilities foster abuse, whether that be a prison, a police precinct, a medical institution or a meat packing plant. And we know from long experience that the industrial paradigm applied to living systems is abuse. And the abusers have made it illegal to do things any other way.

   2 October 2007, 1:13 am

2. Dave Hopkins:

   I’m out in the country and was not able to download the video with my slow connection, but DeNander’s comments are right on. Grain (including corn and sugar) is the food of empire, whether it is used half-consciously as a weapon to destroy local economies and to destabilize third-world economies, or in the ancient Near East, as the first form of money and debt. I also think it is destructive of our health and keeps our high-tech medical system humming, but that’s another matter.

   For our local community here in New England, local food and local grass-fed livestock are our deepest line of resistance. Grass-fed livestock, moreover, if you can believe the Carbon Farmers of America up in Vermont, are the key to reversing desertification (yes, with proper grazing practices, because the grass co-evolved with ruminants), building living soils on a vast scale, and recapturing or locking carbon into the soil and so putting the brakes on global warming.

   The world would be a poorer place without our many milch and meat and fiber breeds, working dogs etc. Without oil, you’ll need the animal power (just returned from an animal power field day), the animal products we evolved to eat (only highly subsidized and oil-based corporate agriculture can cheaply produce the grain and soy based products that cram the shelves of our health food stores), the animal fibers, etc.

   2 October 2007, 10:05 am

3. Elaina:

   I think I’ve actually seen this video before. This time, however, after ingesting it the first time and having swallowed the initial shock at seeing non-humans treated the way these animals are treated, my second glance was directed more towards the workers in the video.

   I don’t think there are any excuses for this kind of torture, for animals and far less so for human beings. But I think that without the proper context this kind of info-media does a lot to villify the workers doing the slaughtering for their measley pay more than it does the actual “culprits”, as it were- the government that requires these conditions in order for the meat to be up to “approval” and the bigwigs who don’t ever see a day on the killing floor and pocket more money than anyone here could imagine.

   Salatin’s exerpt/statement thing does its own vilification of undocumented workers, again diverting our attention, albeit only just a bit. But that’s enough.

   I’d like for each of us, after we’ve tried on the shoes of the chickens and the cows and the pigs, to try on the shoes of the abbatoir workers for a minute. Imagine if that were the only way that you could make a living, in your town? How dehumanizing must these jobs be? And with the exception of much of the cattle “production” the workers are by and large People of Color. What does that do, in the language of numbers, to our collective psyche, if you’ll excuse my dalliance with hippiness for a minute?

   And I think that the parallel that De is drawing between these slaughterhouses and brothels and other places where humans are treated like meat is so important. I would like to see a similar analysis done, though the video would be ghastly as hell, of the treatment of modern-day sex industry workers- perhaps the only industry where the “product” is the “producer”- I wonder if it would take something along those lines to get the libruls to put their porn away.

   4 October 2007, 4:40 pm

4. DeAnander:

   @Elaina totally agree, I share your discomfort with Salatin’s populist/nationalist swipe at “illegal” (I hate that word) workers, plus his gripe about “not being able to communicate” which I think is code for “they don’t even speak English”. Salatin is not a progressive; he’s an old rural Christian whiteboy with many wingnut conservative values. He just happens to be radical — and imho absolutely right — about agriculture. I meant to post a caveat to that effect but have been rushed and careless of late (packing to move). Thanks for the catch.

   I also found myself looking at the workers, particularly the woman mutilating piglets. The film (semifictionalised) version of Fast Food Nation, which was reviewed here, does focus on the experience of the line workers, especially young Mexican women: the sexual harassment and workplace danger and filth to which they are exposed absolutely parallel the brutality to which the animals are subjected. In each case the key seems to be contempt, the totalising objectification of the Other. It reminds me that many of the dirtiest jobs in the Nazi concentration camps were reserved for Jewish prisoners; they could extend their own lives (a little while) by cleaning the gas chamber, slinging bodies into the ovens, stripping hair and teeth from the dead, etc. The price of survival was dehumanisation and desensitisation.

   Would also say that there’s a feedback loop here well-attested by clinical psych: once mistreatment has happened, to alleviate the guilt and shame that we feel about having committed the original cruelty, we have to drum up further contempt and despite for the victim. A wounded and suffering victim must be demonised or hated in order to prevent the painful empathy that would otherwise make the work intolerable. So the unnecessary, vicious brutality w/which these workers treat the suffering animals seems to me an inevitable product of the assembly line system that prohibits any care or empathy in the first place: in order to live with the awfulness of how they are required to treat the animals, they have to learn to hate the animals. [I have seen ER docs who seem to develop a similarly hostile or contemptuous attitude to their patients.]

   In one of his books, Stan writes about exactly this phenomenon w/in an Army medical training programme: goats were used as experimental animals for training surgeons. The animals were deliberately wounded and then surgically repaired. After a while the (male) students learned to hate the goats. I believe this is a psychological necessity, and is one contributing factor to the pattern of escalation of abuse: the more abuse, the more contempt must be mustered for the victim to avoid painful empathy or remorse — and the more contempt and hatred is cultivated, the more vicious the abuse becomes. The brutality of these workers in the smuggled video clips may be sadism unleashed, or it may be the Milgram Effect, the desperate response of a tortured conscience trying to weasel its way out of an intolerable situation.

   4 October 2007, 5:45 pm

5. Bench:

   This video reminded me of a piece in Newsweek from a couple of years ago by, of all people, George Will, What We Owe What We Eat. In it he references a piece by former Bush speech writer Matthew Scully titled, Fear Factories: The Case for Compassionate Conservatism – for Animals, which appeared in Pat Buchanan’s “The American Conservative.” I list this string of details only because I was surprised to discover how far into the “conservative” world this seemingly sensible writing went.

   I’ve gone back and reread both of those essays from time to time when something reminded me of them. This last time the Scully piece seemed strikingly similar to some of Stan’s (and others’) writing — apart from both being written by men — expressing his frustration in trying to talk with Liberals, Lefties and “Progressives” in a meaningful way about pornography, prostitution, militarism and other manifestations of patriarchy; the knee-jerk defenses, denial, subject changing, etc. I found myself rereading parts, exchanging “Left” for “Right”, “Liberal” for “Conservative” and substituting “women” for “animals”, “rape” for “slaughter”, and other parts of the context that translated easily from the meat industry to the porn industry or patriarchy in general.

   The comparison breaks down at some point, i.e. women and children should never be abused by (mostly male) humans vs. humans (mostly men) have the right to slaughter animals for food as long as it’s done “humanely.” Indeed Scully’s thesis seems to be that we have dominion over animals; we just have to abide by God’s laws in doing so. Maybe the “good porn” argument serves as the corollary to denying animals the right not to be killed for food, ever.

   This has me wondering if, taken to the same extent as arguments against pornography, the desire to treat animals “humanely” must logically bring one to veganism. I’ve thought about the sort of meat I could or would have available if I did not buy it from the grocery store. I think I could do chickens. But what right do I have to eat chickens even if I raise them myself in the most humane way and slaughter them with my own hands in the most “humane” way? This has troubled me for some time. Consuming pornography was easier to give up than is eating meat. I guess that makes some sense since the latter is a necessity for survival, or at least falls into a category that is.

   Anyway, to get back to these essays I wonder, is this an opportunity for some cross-pollination and common-ground-finding? I think maybe. Take this excerpt from Scully. The italicized words are my substitutes:

   As it is, the subject hardly comes up at all among liberals, and what commentary we do hear usually takes the form of ridicule directed at fundamentalist Christian groups. Often liberals side instinctively with any porn-related industry and those involved, as if a thing is right just because someone can claim “free speech” or as if our sympathies belong always with the men just because they are men.

   The parallels between Scully’s and Goff’s writing punctuate the (obvious) point that the left-right paradigm is a tool to manipulate and divide, and to mask what common ground there really is; in this case, possibly, at a deep level, gender. Although Scully’s mention of men seems to be in passing and not really addressing gender as an issue, maybe he still has room to grow.

   5 October 2007, 6:49 pm

6. michael mcintyre (plushtown):

   We are meat to the elite, our owners, our creditors. We are warned that we are too many (“useless eaters” is the term quoted for 30 years from Ted Turner, Kissinger, others), have been thus indoctrinated for 40 years plus. Factory farms test our kindness and intelligence, and foreshadow our culling and future cultures. Note that Ted Turner has sold his media holdings (less profitable if consumers consumed), buys inland acres en masse.

   We’ve been told that we are warming the earth, and indeed the powerful have made decisions for us the last 100 years to make this plausible. (LA and other city transit systems bought and dismantled, oil and coal chosen over Tesla electricity from atmosphere wirelessly transmitted possibilities, once J.P. Morgan had his people look over the plans.)

   The paid boobs who deny anthropogenic global warming are actually right, even those who say we’re likely entering an overall cooling period, but they don’t stress the significance of localized warming from below, nor visibly anticipate obvious inevitable events, but only say carbon credits are a scam, true enough.

   Like the deniers, big environmental groups are controlled, for they also don’t stress obvious things. For example: when titanic glaciers melt or slide from land to sea, the earth flexes from the weight now dispersed. Earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions result. This has happened several times for very long periods, and is standard geology.

   For prehistory repeating itself, search: “Greenland’s Ice Sheet Is Slip-Sliding Away ” (LA Times 6/25/06). Note seismic activity at end and idea of Greenland possibly being 3 islands under the 2 miles thick ice , so the center area is 1000? below sea level (from other source). No discussion of the sea water thus running under and up into the glaciers and the potential for unseen draining via the reported drill-like holes beneath the “unblemished surface”.

   A week later appeared
   “Climate Change Could Cause Earthquakes and Volcanic Eruptions, Scientists Say” (Ottawa Citizen 7/3/06). (“Could” as in “Gravity could cause unsupported objects to fall.”

   Neither article has any discussion of possible effects of earthquakes on glaciers sliding, both ignore the inevitable sequence: less weight triggers earthquake, quake causes slide, repeat until arctics are cap-less.

   “Greenland’s Ice Cap Is Melting at a Frighteningly Fast Rate” (S.F. Chronicle 8/11/06) says said ice is 3 miles thick, and also that it’s melting thrice as fast as 5 years gone (LA Times 6/25 said twice)

   Also see “Glaciers Are Flowing Faster” Nature 9/23/04,
   “A Bit of Icy Antarctica Is Sliding Toward the Sea” Science 9/24/04, “Dramatic Change in West Antarctic Sea Ice Could Produce 16ft Rise in Sea Levels” Independent/UK 2/2/05. (By the way, this explains the Dubai ports deal in Spring ’06, contracts bought from the former owners of the Penninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company. Isn’t that a wonderful Victorian name? Well, it had wonderful Victorian owners, and note the advisers to the deal at 20% above assessed 2005 value.

   NY Times 11/30/05: Dubai to Buy P&O, British Shipping Line, for $5.7 Billion:
   “P&O headquarters will remain in London, and P&O’s chief executive, Robert Woods, will stay on in that role. P&O board members are recommending the offer, and it is expected to close in the first quarter of 2006. P&O was advised by Citigroup and Rothschild.”)

   Yet Greenpeace remains headquartered in Amsterdam and stresses loss of sea ice and endangered polar bears, walruses, seals, only mentions land ice tangentially.

   UK Observer 9/8/07 ran
   “Melting ice cap triggering earthquakes” about NW Greenland in summer ’07 getting first earthquakes on record, only 1-3 Richter so far, acknowledged as due to ice lightening, implications ignored, as though historical and geological events were like dice rolls, each independent.

   UK Independent 10/3/07 ran “Record 22C [71.6f] temperatures in Arctic heatwave” about the previous July, recorded Julys in that part of Greenland usually being about 5C. Article mentions rain at the North Pole, a great hook for newspapers and late night comedians, yet stressed by no one. “Wet Santa” would be great for circulation and yucks, yet subject is ignored.

   UK Independent 10/3/07 also ran “From the air, the evidence of climate change is striking”, mentions moulins (melt-holes) big enough to fly a helicopter into but is written like a travel article, all about light and beauty.

   MSNBC 12/13/07 reported “Magma may be melting Greenland ice”, about magma close to surface of NE Greenland and NY Times 1/21/08 said “Scientists Find Active Volcano in Antarctica” about magma close to surface of West Antarctica. (Which is nice, because they didn’t report the hurricane in the South Atlantic 3/27-28/04, an unprecedented event. I confirmed the non-reportage with the Assistant Public Editor.)

   UK Independent 9/23/08 ran the horrid title and better subtitle “Exclusive: The methane time bomb:
   Arctic scientists discover new global warming threat as melting permafrost releases millions of tons of a gas 20 times more damaging than carbon dioxide”.

   This at least is getting a little play on environmental blogs, but so far not as much as deserved, and I haven’t seen it in US newspapers.

   Has anyone seen any of the above stressed by the supposed doomsayer Gore, by Greenpeace, Sierra Club, the everybody be calm naysayers, any group?

   cartoon on the subject:

   http://bp2.blogger.com/_pLWV4iq9kCU/SGNwYVDEBoI/AAAAAAAAAAs/Bx11e1bkutQ/s1600-h/Gore+7:7:07+Live+Earth60.jpg

   (from http://furrylogick.blogspot.com/)

   16 October 2008, 9:32 am

7. michael mcintyre (plushtown):

   Above should have included this, cause of massive amounts of CO2 released by warming ocean:

   Thousand[sic] of new volcanoes revealed beneath the waves

   * 10:04 09 July 2007
   * NewScientist.com news service

   http://environment.newscientist.com/article/dn12218

   “The team estimates that in total there could be about 3 million submarine volcanoes [over 100 meters high], 39,000 of which rise more than 1000 metres over the sea bed.”

   16 October 2008, 9:44 am

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