Tuesday, March 31, 2009

omg, the horrible way these animals are treated made me cry and I got tears all over my animal welfare-approved pork chops

The Animal Welfare Society blog posted the undercover videos of the abuse by that infamous Hormel supplier in Iowa.  The conclusion the blog draws from these videos is not that people should stop creating a demand for the flesh of these animals, but that they should buy their meat from family farms.  The videos horrified the blog's commentors.  Connie says...
omg, if you can watch this video and not break down crying, I do not know what to say.
Sorry for pilfering your verbiage and your brittle feelings, Connie, but if you can watch this video and break down crying and then continue to consume animal products, I don't know what to say.  She continues...
I truly cannot believe this cruelty is allowed to happen.
But it is and you know why?  Because people like you, Connie, cry your crocodile tears and continue to have pork chops for dinner.  If people didn't consume animal products, there would be no farms like the one on the video.

Meanwhile, commentor Leigh Ann thinks the problem is BIG CORPORATIONS, which she emphasizes by setting them in all caps.  BIG CORPORATIONS.  BIG MONEY.  Please support local farmers, she says plaintively, though maybe with a little more restraint than the excitable Connie.  Family farmers raise their animals with compassion.  Over and over we hear this.  I can't see Leigh Ann as she types her comment so I can't say for sure if she manages to type it with a straight face.  Raise them with compassion?  Do people slaughter the objects of their compassion?  Painless death?  Would Connie or Leigh Ann euthanize one of their pets with a stun bolt gun that more often than not shatters the skull without killing the animal?  The blade across the neck of the frantically struggling pig is not any less painful simply because it is being wielded by the steady, honest hand of the family farmer.

Family farmers profit from the deaths of these animals.  The animals' death puts food on their table.  No wonder the family farmers are smiling in all the photos of them you see on the welfarist sites.  They're probably thinking, heck, if the animal Welfare Society and Farm Forward want to give us their seals of approval so the good progressive foodies out there will pay us double, what the heck.  We'll pose next to our cattle with good earth smiles for their promotional literature and count our money.

You read the Animal welfare approved blog babble about the compassion of the friendly farmers and you keep expecting them to say, Ha, fooled you!  We wanted to see if we could actually convince people we care about animals whose deaths we contribute to.  Man, you guys atually believed it?  It was a prank, man, a prank!

The animal welfare movement is a delusion wrapped in denial inside a lie.  People like Connie and Leigh Ann fume and wail at the corporate slaughterhouse and after they're done shaking their fist in anger, they use it to pick up their fork and enjoy the tasty, succulent flesh of the animals whose deaths they grieve.