Reformed fast food mascot

The slavery analogy

2011-12-30T08:50:00.000-08:00

My friend sent me a Mark Bitman article in the NYT about semi-veganism. He asked what I thought even though he already knew. There’s no such thing as semi-veganism or a part-time vegan.

You going to use the slavery analogy again? he asked.

People don’t like the slavery analogy. It offends them. The Atlantic Monthly bans commenters for using it. Maybe it’s because people don’t want what they consider a second or third-tier sin likened to the greatest sin in America’s history. But that’s not why my friend doesn’t like the analogy. He doesn’t like it because it divides people into two groups – those who support the enslavement and slaughter of non-human animals and those who renounce it. My friend wants there to be a group somewhere in the middle, where you can sympathize with the plight of animals and do what you can to reduce their suffering but still eat them from time to time.

The slavery analogy works so well because it’s so stark. If a slaveholder claims to oppose slavery, he must free his slaves. If he adds a few links of chain to the shackles so the slave has more room to roam, he does not oppose slavery. If he vows to whip his slaves less frequently, he does not oppose slavery. People who talk about part-time veganism, bigger cages, free range, grass fed, Michael Pollan, humane slaughter, etc etc etc want to oppose slavery without freeing their slaves. And that’s simply not possible.

Big Ag wants a piece of the grass fed action and Animal Welfare Approved isn’t happy about it.

2011-12-26T11:08:00.000-08:00

We’ve seen it a million times in movies. A new dealer moves into an established dealer’s territory and the war is on.

Animal Welfare Approved owns a sweet chunk of the grass fed market. Users are willing to pay good money for the illusion the animals they eat didn’t suffer, and the Animal Welfare Approved label is the highest quality shit, the Kona Gold of humane certification labels.

Animal Welfare Approved does have rival dealers like Certified Humane, but they’ve carved out different territories and learned to co-exist. But now someone else wants a piece of the action. Big Ag.

As the public interest in ethically produced (sic) food continues to flourish … it is perhaps inevitable that food businesses jump on the grassfed bandwagon.

This isn’t some rogue animal welfare advocate. The food industry has big money behind it. Doesn’t mean animal welfare approved is just going to roll over. Drug dealers protect their teritory with guns. Animal Welfare Approved opts for an 18-page Grass fed primer.

While the range of products, labels and brands that make the grassfed claim grows by the day, the sad reality is … some of the so-called grassfed systems out there actually fall well short of our expectations.

In other words, this is our fucking territory, motherfuckers. You come here start pedaling your grass fed shit there’s going to be a fucking war, man.

Don’t know how this war is going to play out, but it won’t be pretty.

More gift ideas: Old MacDonald had a before-and-after farm.

2011-12-20T21:41:00.000-08:00

The sunshine. The green grass. The happy mooing, bleating, clucking animals. The happy farmer and the happy farmer's wife. The stun bolt gun. The dip scalding machine. The skin peeler. The slab conveyor. It's all here in the Old MacDonald had a before-and-after farm animal figurine set.

*Cow, goat, chicken & lamb figurines in carcass and pre-carcass form

*Additional figurines available for purchase:

Family farmer who names then slaughters animals

Whole Foods buyer
Compassionate carnivore picnickers and accessories

*Certified Humane labels not included

More gift ideas: Michael Pollan hypocrisy-isolating headphones

2011-12-18T07:37:00.000-08:00

State-of-the-art headphones designed exclusively for listening to Michael Pollan audio books. Two separate channels for crystal clear playback of Michael Pollan talking out of both sides of his mouth. One channel plays his profound sympathy for the plight of farm animals, the other channel his drooling accounts of watching animals get slaughtered.

Channel one:

The lives of billions of animals on American feedlots and factory farms are horrible to contemplate, an affront to our image of ourselves as humane.

Channel two:

Mike and I drove to the ranch to choose our animal and watch the itinerant butcher slaughter and dress it … Mike cuts a few slivers from the loin and passes them around; a ceremonial tasting of the uncooked animal is, he explains, a butcher’s privilege.

Channel one:

Broiler chickens spend their lives in cages too small to ever stretch a wing. Every natural instinct is thwarted, leading to a range of behavioral vices that include canablizing her cage mates and rubbing her body against the mesh until it is featherless and bleeding.

Channel two:

Melissa … has a sure hand with the hacksaw and the butcher knife; within 20 minutes the goat is transformed into considerably more appetizing cuts of meat: the baron, or hindquarters, and the saddle … two racks of ribs (for tomorrow’s lunch); the shoulders (destined for an overnight braise) and the scraps…

Contradiction-canceling technology reduces ambient hypocrisy by 87.4%
Comes in heifer black and white

What to get the person who’s killed everything?

2011-12-16T08:42:00.000-08:00

DING DONG

Who’s there?

It’s Tom from the slaughterhouse.

Come on in, Tom, and don’t forget to wipe your boots on our new Meritech Welcome Mat.

The Meritech Hog Killer's Welcome Mat

Here’s a gift idea for that special pig slaughterer in your life. The folks at Hormel and Smithfield slaughter thousands per hour without the slightest twinge of remorse, but that doesn’t mean they want entrail stains on their brand new carpet.

Conventional welcome mats clean grass blades and clumps of dirt. They don’t stand a chance against boots caked with pig innards. But the Meritech Welcome Mat is manufactured using 12 guage 304 stainless steel, so it cleans the soles, sides and tops of your guests' boots.

Those stubborn, wriggling pigs don't want to die right away and that can really dirty up a nice pair of boots. Fortunately, the Meritech welcome mat utilizes a series of horizontal brushes to effectively clean and sanitize so chunks of ground-in flesh on your wooden floor is a thing of the past.

If you’ve got pig slaughterers on your holiday guest list, make sure to replace your old welcome mat with the new Meritech Welcome Mat. Janice K of Bayard, Iowa did.

“It’s been one party after another. Friends from Smithfield, Hormel, Jimmy Dean. Our living room was starting to resemble a slaughterhouse. That’s when we decided to get rid of our old straw welcome mat and replace it with one from Meritech. Now our guests don’t leave trails of offal to the kitchen and I couldn’t be happier.”

-- Janice K, Bayard, Iowa

Swirls

2011-12-14T21:03:00.000-08:00

A feral cat lived across the alley from my apartment. I called her Swirls because the golden part of her fur curled into patterns like the inside of a shell. She'd sun herself on the roof and watch a world that hadn't done her any favors.

I flattered myself that just as I knew Swirls’ routines, she knew mine. When the sun lights up my roof, he comes out to his balcony with his coffee, she’d think.

At five she'd cross the alley to the apartment of the person who fed her. At ten past five, she'd re-cross the alley to curl up alone in the dark.
Alone -- but that’s me projecting one of my human frailties on her.

Solitude was no enemy to Swirls.

She had another enemy, though she had no way of knowing.

Apparently her transgressions became too much for someone in the apartment building.

What were these transgressions?

Her food attracted raccoons.

She left paw prints on cars in the carport.

Freshly washed cars.

And for that, someone decided to poison Swirls’ food.

Her death was slow, I’m told.

The person who feeds her found her in the alley.

She lasted the car ride to the vet’s.

Nothing will happen, of course.

Pets are property. Which makes Swirls something less than property.

She was born in the alley, the only survivor of a litter.

She dodged the cars, outsmarted the coyotes.

We feared the coyotes would get her eventually.

But they were merely predators.

The driver who didn’t want smudges on his car, the building manager who wanted to please his tenant, Swirls never had a chance against that.

How to keep consuming animal products without giving up your progressive credentials.

2011-12-10T09:11:00.000-08:00

All you need is a good rationalization. Here's an example: The world's not ready to give up meat. If I were to stop consuming animal products, I'd implicitly be saying my behavior is morally superior to those who do. That's elitism and there's nothing more repellant to the progressive sensibility than elitism. By continuing to consume animal products like everyone else, I'm declaring my solidarity with the rest of the world and only through solidarity can we affect change.

Here’s another one: The history of social movements proves change can only come gradually. If I were to stop consuming animal products all at once, I’d be violating this most basic truth. Justice takes time. Today, I’ll shake my head solemnly at what the poor creature I’m eating had to endure before it wound up on my fork. Tomorrow I’ll sign petitions giving them a few extra feet of cage space and someday in the hopefully not too distant future I’ll stop eating them.

Gradual change also works better for the animals. Animals are creatures of habit. Sudden change to their routine can upset their equilibrium. To go from the horrific treatment of factory farms to not being slaughtered at all would be too big a shock to the system of these poor creatures. They need a transitional phase, half way between factory farms and freedom, where we continue to slaughter them but do it in a more humane way. After they’ve grown accustomed to this more humane slaughter, only then will be they be prepared for the next step of emancipation.

Those are just few examples. So if you’re deeply, passionately concerned about the plight of farm animals, but you don’t want to give up the delicious taste of their flesh, don’t worry, there’s so many rationalizations out there. You’re sure to find one that works for you.

The numbers are astonishing

2011-12-06T10:05:00.000-08:00

The Whole Foods Farm Animal Welfare site begins…

"The numbers are astonishing..."

… consider this: in the time it takes to watch a 60-minute television show, 5.8 million chickens are slaughtered for meat. That’s more than 97,000 per minute ... Each one can suffer.

So Whole Foods created their 5-step Animal Welfare Rating System, which enables them to charge a premium for “humanely raised” meat.

And the numbers are astonishing.

Whole Foods Markets quarterly profit rose a larger than expected 35 percent and it raised its full-year profit forecast, fueled by robust sales and snatching market share from other supermarkets.

Whole Foods executives have a deep understanding of the mindset of their self-styled progressive shoppers:

We don’t want animals to suffer, and more importantly, we don’t want to suffer pangs of guilt while we're eating our dinner. We’ll gladly pay extra if you convince us the flesh we’re eating came from a carefree animal who lived a blissful life right up to the moment he was slaughtered with tenderness and compassion.

Yes, Whole Foods will be more than happy to convince their shoppers of this.

By choosing to support higher welfare farmers and ranchers, we can collectively make a significant difference in the lives of billions of animals.

But for shareholders who need reassurance this isn’t some wooly-headed animal rights thing...

Higher animal welfare standards are increasingly seen to be a pre-requisite to enhancing business efficiency and profitability...

Certified Humane. Improving animals’ lives by slaughtering them.

2011-12-03T09:58:00.000-08:00

Pretty impressive. And how are they able to improve these 25 million lives each year? By slaughtering the past year’s 25 million. They’re then able to improve the lives of 25 million new animals. Slaughter them and improve the lives of another 25 million. And so on. What do these improved lives consist of? “Chickens are able to flap their wings and dust bathe” before their necks are sliced open. “Pigs have the space to move around and root” before their brains are pierced by a stun bolt.

The improved life part is accurate, no arguing with that. But it’s not the 25 million animals whose lives are improved. It’s the meat producers who get to charge a premium for Certified Humane products. It’s the compassionate carnivores who like thinking they’re concerned about animal suffering and want to eat those animals without feeling guilty.

Certified Humane. The best way to help farm animals.

The people at American Heritage and Webster’s would know best, but I’ve got to believe this is the first time the word “help” has been used as a synonym for "slaughter" and the word "best" has been used as a synonym for "worst."

Thanksgiving football games

2011-11-24T17:53:00.000-08:00

At least five or six times during the Thanksgiving Day football games, they cut to a shot of the cramped cages of a turkey farm. Sometimes this image provides the backdrop as the announcers give their misty-eyed tribute to friends and family and troops stationed overseas who can’t make it home for the holidays. Other times one of the announcers will use the image of soon-to-be-slaughtered turkeys as the inspiration for a Thanksgiving-themed quip, often something simple as, “gobble gobble.” Then the announcer’s partner in the booth, and presumably the millions watching from their tables and sofas, chuckle along in goodwill and merriment. This isn’t some new feature for this year’s games. They’ve cut to these same shots every year – hundreds of frantic turkeys piled on top of each other, unable to move. The football game producers even boost the volume, like they do with commercials, so the viewer gets the full audio effect of the turkeys screeching in fear. Why do these soon-to-be-slaughtered turkeys have such appeal to the producers? Does terror and imminent death somehow enhance the Thanksgiving day experience for their viewers? You’d think people might want to forget their juicy meat in front of them was very recently a living, breathing creature. But apparently not. Apparently seeing animals about to have their necks sliced open so people can enjoy a tasty meal makes Thanksgiving that much more festive.

A new system of taxonomy

2011-10-29T06:59:00.000-07:00

Taxonomy is the science of classifying organisms. Animals are divided into the smaller, more recognizable groups phylum, class, order, family, genus, species.

Another way we could classify animals is by the various ways humans abuse them. Most would fit into one of following phylum: Poisoned by humans. Clubbed by humans. Captured by humans. Caged by humans. Shackle-hoisted and stun bolted by humans. Hunted by humans. Consumed by humans, though this category would of course overlap with the captured, caged, shackle-hoisted and stun-bolted categories.

Each of the above phylum can be divided into smaller classes.

Poisoned by human can be divided into the sub-categories, poisoned for human comfort and vanity, i.e. cosmetic testing, and poisoned because humans find their presence annoying (e.g., rodents). Hunted by humans can be divided into the sub-categories, hunted for pleasure, hunted for money, hunted out of fear. Caged by humans can be divided into the sub-categories, caged for viewing pleasure and caged for consumption.

Consumed by humans is of course the largest phylum, comprised of billions of farm animals each year. But there’s hardly an animal on the planet that doesn't suffer some form of abuse, usually culminating in torture and death, at the hands of humans. Taxonomists would have to burn the midnight oil getting them all straight.

Slaughtered with dignity. Consumed with gratitude.

2011-10-23T00:11:00.000-07:00

The animals grazed placidly, majestically, almost pre-historically…

The more an author rhapsodizes over a grazing animal, the more certain you can be the author will soon be eating that animal for dinner.

This author is describing a buffalo hunt he witnessed. Like many compassionate carnivores, he takes great pride in his willingness to “see where his meat came from.” He records the “harvesting” of the buffalo with a weeping pen. He talks about the other buffalo bowing their heads in grief.

I felt the ache of witnessing death. I wasn’t alone in my sadness. As the rancher knelt over the buffalo and hoisted it by chains with the bucket of a loader, the rest of the herd drew in close and lowered their heads. The sight of animals mourning … humbled me to my carnivorous core.

Does "the ache of witnessing death" inspire the author to consider giving up meat? No, it inspires him to get out his thesaurus and use up every word listed under honor and dignity.

“I slit the animals’s throat because I was fucking craving a big juicy steak” sounds way too profane, so the compassionate carnivore dresses things up with the noblest human impulses.

In Michael Pollan’s 36-hour dinner party “Mike wants to ‘honor the goat’ by wasting as little of it as possible."

Then there’s Katherine Friend’s letter to the lamb.

Tomorrow morning when we load you onto the trailer for your trip to the abattoir, we will be thinking about the life you’ve lived on this farm – running around the pasture at dusk, sleeping in the sun and grazing enthusiastically for the tenderest bit of grass. We will say aloud, "thank you."

The compassionate carnivores are always thanking and praising and honoring the animals they kill, as if the animal knew how hungry they were and, in a moment of selflessness, decided to offer up its flesh.

By making the act of slaughter more than mere slaughter, by transforming it into something ceremonial, the compassionate carnivore is able to convince himself that subjecting animals to the most gruesome fate imaginable is a morally praiseworthy act.

Conscientious, Compassionate, Cash-earning Carnivores.

2011-10-18T22:06:00.000-07:00

Let’s see we’ve got Conscientious Carnivores and Compassionate Carnivores. So don’t want to offend, you know, but it’s hard to keep the two of them straight. They both shed crocodile tears over the plight of farm animals and chatter endlessly about their personal conflictedness as they chow down on the remains of said animals. But there must be differences. Is it like belts in martial arts? Does a conscientious carnivore work his way up to becoming a compassionate carnivore? Who gets first dibs on the shank? Maybe the compassionate carnivores came first and the conscientious carnivores were an offshoot. They had doctrinal differences, split off like the Lutherans. Or maybe it was a naked power-grabbing move. The conscientious carnivores were sick and tired of being in the shadows while the author of Conscientious Carnivores, Catherine Friend (as in with friends like this animals don’t need enemies), was out doing the talk show circuit, getting reviewed by the NYT, hobnobbing with Michael Pollan. Michael Pollan could tell them both there’s plenty of money to be made off all those hungry progressives out there, salivating for a juicy steak and a good rationalization. Why don’t the two of you join me? Michael Pollan would say. All three of us can be Cash-earning Carnvivores.

Dinner with Trina and Mike, compassionate carnivores

2011-10-15T09:47:00.000-07:00

TRINA: There's an exciting movement out there.
MIKE: Bigger than organic, bigger than buying local.
TRINA: Compassionate people concerned about the suffering of farm animals.

MIKE: Factory farms are hell on earth. The manifesto of the compassionate carnivore is we reduce animal suffering by only buying our meat from family farms.

TINA: Some cynical people out there say to us, if we're so concerned about animal suffering, why don't we stop eating them? Mike, why don't you set these cynics straight.

MIKE: The thwing aboo compashwon is it’s a tfo we seet.

TRINA: Sorry, it’s hard to understand Mike when he’s got a mouthful of meat. He said the thing about compassion is it’s a two way street.

MIKE: We’re compassionate to the animals so they need to show us a little compassion in return.

TRINA: The way they do this is by letting us eat them.

MIKE: Believe me, we have so much appreciation for the compassion these kind animals show us. Yummy juicy juicy meat.

TRINA: It’s one big, harmonious circle of compassion.

MIKE: Chew, chomp, yum, chewy, juicy.

TRINA: Mmm, yum, pink, juicy fleshy yummy meat

MIKE: Compassion is all about empathy. Relating to the needs of someone other than yourself. When these poor farm animals live in a dark crate in a factory farm, it’s like I’m living in a dark crate.

TRINA: You are so compassionate, Mike.

MIKE: So are you, Trina. Yummy delicious flesh.

TRINA: Mmmmm! Chewy, delicious, juicy flesh.

MIKE: We empathize with the animals by not wanting them to suffer more than necessary.

TRINA: And they empathize with us by understanding how much pleasure it gives us to eat their flesh. Mmm, so rare, so pink

MIKE: Delicious blood running down my chin

TRINA: Put down the napkin, Let me lick it up, oh, tasty, heavenly blood

MIKE: Lick it up, lick it up.

All slaughter systems must protect against distress or discomfort

2011-10-13T06:27:00.000-07:00

For a meat producer to earn the Certified Humane label…

All slaughter systems must be designed to ensure livestock are not caused unnecessary distress or discomfort.

We know a shattered skull and pierced brain don’t constitute unnecessary distress or discomfort to the folks at Certified Humane. Maybe they mean stepping on the steer’s hoof or something.

It is required that producers use processors who follow the American Meat Institute guidelines for processing cattle.

These guidelines were developed by PETA Proggy Award-winning slaughterhouse designer and McDonald’s consultant, Temple Grandin.

Her “Interpretation of the American Meat Institute Animal Handling Guide” details what animal producers must do to pass a welfare audit. Here’s a sample from the FAQ section. (If the question is frequently asked, safe to say it describes a frequently occurring event.)

Question 12. A plant employee starts to skin the head of an animal that has blinking eyes. Is the audit failed?

[Temple Grandin’s] Answer: This is an automatic audit failure. The guideline states, there is zero tolerance for beginning any procedure like skinning the head or leg removal on any animal that shows signs of return to sensibility … Animals with eyes that do spontaneous natural blinking are sensible.

She has zero tolerance for head-skinning and leg removal of still-sensible animals. No wonder PETA awarded her the Proggy for innovative and animal-friendly achievements.

But for those meat producers who worry Temple Grandin’s being unfairly rigid, relax, here’s another FAQ.

Question 11. A pig squeals when it is half way into the restrainer or stun box due to an electric prod. Does this count on the vocalization score? [A high vocalization score can result in audit failure.]

Answer: No. The pig’s rear must be past the restrainer entrance to count.

Pig squealing in horror is only half way in the stun box. Audit passed. Certified Humane.

Certified Humane. Because Certified Insane was already taken.

2011-10-10T09:08:00.000-07:00

They didn’t settle on the name Certified Humane right away. The first and most obvious choice was Certified Insane. It was much more descriptive of the people they hoped to appeal to: people who, without the aid of psychotropic drugs, had such highly developed self-delusional powers they could convince themselves shackle hoisting and a brain-piercing captive stun bolt is “the best way to help farm animals.” But Certified Insane was overused. They wanted something more distinctive. So they went with Certified Humane instead.

Animal Welfare Approved vs. Certified Humane. The new McDonald’s vs. Burger King.

2011-10-08T00:28:00.000-07:00

The humane certification market is exploding. In co-ops and natural food stores across the country, compassionate carnivores are searching for the tastiest conscience-easing meats. This means big opportunity for humane certification labels but also fierce competition.

So who are the big players best poised to reap the bounty of the compassionate carnivores? An analogy is helpful. Animal Welfare Approved is McDonald’s. Certified Humane is Burger King. There’s also the Global Animal Partnership, though they don’t yet have the cachet of the big boys. They’re more of a Jack in the Box or Sonic – a regional upstart but not one to take to take lightly.

Certified Humane has come out swinging. “Don’t be fooled by similar sounding programs,” they say on their site. “Certified Humane is the best way you can help animals.” Animal Welfare Approved plays it more like McDonald’s -- above the fray. They don’t deign to acknowledge, and thereby legitimize, the competition. They stick to more quietly confident statements like, “Continuously ranked as the most stringent of all third party certifiers.”

This calm arrogance must drive Certified Humane nuts. They want to attack!

They should heed the examples of their compatriots in other highly competitive industries. There’s a long history of commercials slamming the Other Guy.

They could try a side-by-side compassion test, similar to the Pepsi Challenge. Stop progressive carnivores in the compassionately killed meat section. Hide the label. Ask the progressive to sample the meat and guess which one has more compassionate pre-slaughter standards.

Or they could copy the classic Folger’s coffee commercials.

We’ve secretly replaced this Animal Welfare Approved steak with a Certified Humane steak. Let’s see if people notice.

Hi, Sir, how’s the steak?

Delicious. And best of all it was slaughtered with compassion.

Did the steer suffer?

No. Animal Welfare Approved means animals get to “perform natural and instinctive behaviors.”

Surprise! You’re really eating a Certified Humane steak.

You’re kidding.

Can you sense that extra pre-slaughter compassion? See, only Certified Humane guarantees that all animals are “kept in conditions that allow for freedom of movement” before they’re shackle hoisted and stun bolted.

I had no idea

So what humane label are you going to buy from now on, Sir?

I’m going to buy Certified Humane!

Proof that humanely raised and slaughtered animals are much better off.

2011-10-05T00:10:00.000-07:00

You’re looking at what’s left of four steers. Three came from a factory farm. One was fortunate enough to be humanely raised and slaughtered by a compassionate family farmer. As you can see, it was much better off than the other three. You can’t see? Then you’re not looking closely enough. Look at the three on the right from the factory farm. Three living, breathing, sentient beings who craved life as much as any person, now nothing but slabs of flesh scraped off a carcass. Compare them to the fortunate humanely raised and slaughtered steer on the left. Now you see the difference, right? No? Then you’re just being stubborn. There’s an enormous difference. Otherwise the Animal Welfare Institute and Humane Farming Association wouldn’t give it their seals of approval. This is getting frustrating. Look again. Okay? Yes? You finally see one is much better off? About time. Wait, you think the one who’s better off isn’t the steer, but rather the person who gets to enjoy a juicy burger without pangs of guilt? Wrong again. Wrong and so deeply cynical. Will you please look at the humanely raised and slaughtered steer on the left. Or is it the right? Or one of two middle ones? Now you’re getting me confused. The point is, the free range, humanely raised and slaughtered steer had it much much better and the proof is right in front of you. How can you not see it?

The Animal Welfare Approved turkey

2011-10-03T00:16:00.000-07:00

I can’t believe they picked me for the header of the Animal Welfare Approved site. Now I can rest assured when I’m all chopped up and wrapped in cellophane and sitting in the refrigerated section of Whole Foods, there’s going to be an Animal Welfare Approved sticker on the other side of that cellophane. That means the Animal Welfare Institute sent an inspection team to the farm to make sure turkeys like me have the opportunity to “perform natural and instinctive behaviors” before the humans perform their natural and instinctive behavior and slit our throats. I know, I know, I look so serious in this photo. You can’t tell I’m bursting with pride. Most of my fellow turkeys only get to fill human bellies. But I get to do so much more. I get to give humans a delicious meal and on top of that I get to make them feel a nice warm glow when they tell themselves my slaughter was pleasurable and painless. What more could a turkey ask for?

Does Michael Pollan belong in the Meat Industry Hall of Fame?

2011-10-01T00:12:00.000-07:00

The 2010 class is pictured above. What about this year’s class? Does Michael Pollan have a chance? Purists will scoff. He doesn’t have the big numbers like, say, a Hormel executive who slaughters millions of pigs a year. And what about Michael Pollan’s scathing indictment of factory farms? The true greats of animal slaughter don’t have qualms about what they’re doing. Hormel executives don’t know what to make of the public outrage over videos documenting sadistic cruelty at supplier farms. But this is exactly why Michael Pollan belongs in the hall of fame. He does understand that outrage and also the guilt some people feel for continuing to eat meat, and he showed the meat industry how to use this guilt to increase sales in his best-selling book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma. The dilemma in a nutshell is people feel bad about eating food that perpetuates the atrocities in factory farms. But, damn, meat tastes good. The solution: eat meat from farms where you can convince yourself the animals lived carefree pre-slaughter lives. Michael Pollan has made conflicted meat eaters feel good about eating meat and for that he deserves to be in the hall of fame. To use a sports analogy, just as Yao Ming brought millions of Chinese fans to NBA basketball, Michael Pollan has made countless self-styled progressives realize they can profess concern about the suffering of animals and still eat those animals. I say he’d better get busy writing his induction speech.

Why family farms name their animals

2011-09-29T09:06:00.000-07:00

“…we’re on first name terms with our cows and their farmers through our sustainable dairy farming program”

“Family farmers give animals such a better life because they use the personal touch like naming them..”

Retailers like Ben & Jerry’s that use Family farm suppliers are always going on about how family farmers name their animals, as if having a name somehow makes getting slaughtered less painless.

Why exactly did the family farms decide to name their animals in the first place…

That dairy cow’s not producing like she used to, get rid of her -- Which one? -- The black and white one -- They’re all black and white -- The one with the patch on her back -- They all have patches on their back --The one, fuck I don’t know how to describe her, they all look the same -- Hey, I know, why don’t we give ‘em names? -- Fucking A, that way we can tell the slaughter boys which one to kill and it’ll make our progressive customers think we treat these cows just like family members …. Hey, that dairy cow’s not producing like before, get rid of her -- Which one? -- Wilco -- Come here, Wilco, Wilco...

More on family farms naming animals here.

Dairy cow checks out the menu of Ben & Jerry’s flavors.

2011-09-26T12:30:00.000-07:00

Let’s see…

Stun Bolt Berry Blast

Slaughtermint Swirl

Rape Rack Raspberry

...hey, someone replaced the real Ben & Jerry’s flavors with this subversive crap. Where’s the message about happy cows on a first name basis with their local farmers? Someone scratched it out and wrote how us happy Ben & Jerry’s dairy cows have our calves yanked away and shipped off to veal farms. We’re artificially impregnated, our calves are taken again. Four years and our milk production slows. We’re no longer economically viable so it's time for the slaughterhouse. Lies! Slander! I’m happy. Look at the way they drew me with all these happy bright colors. They had to. They couldn’t show the photo of the real me because then people would know the truth … Huh? Now I’m sounding subversive, too. What's going on? Ben & Jerry made me part of the team. They gave me the opportunity to help people enjoy delicious Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. They provided my calves with veal crates. And I turn on them like this? What’s wrong with me? … Hold on, my farmer who’s on a first name basis is calling me. What? I’m not efficient enough anymore? Time for what? At least I’ll get to live on on the Ben & Jerry’s website, helping tell people about their Caring Dairy program.

The Progressive Meat Pounder

2011-09-23T00:06:00.000-07:00

Meat producers are thrilled to have discovered a lucrative new target group: people who want to ease the suffering of animals without giving up the delicious taste of their flesh. They fear the torture and slaughter of the animals they consume might be incompatible with their progressive self-image, so they’re willing to pay premium prices for the illusion that these animals lived happy, pain-free lives. Meat producers and their retailers have come up with innovative ways of appealing to these prized customers. The Whole Foods five step Animal Welfare Rating Standards, Animal-Welfare Approved, Certified Humane Raised & Handled, etc. etc.

The meat producers are so intent on appealing to this progressive target group, they’ve apparently even branded their meat-related accessories as “progressive,” e.g. the progressive meat pounder (pictured).

Other progressive kitchen products include…

The progressive matching knife set and rationalization set. “Free range animals live happy lives.” “It’s a step in the right direction.” “The slaughter is quick and painless.” Store these and all your other rationalizations in one spot for quick and easy access.

“World’s Greatest Self-deluding Chef” apron. Ideal for barbequing up those animal welfare approved ribs.

The progressive mixed messaging bowl. You want to end animal suffering now. But you’re craving a juicy steak. Say what? The mixed messaging bowl is the ideal way to mix these messages to confuse yourself and others so you can crave justice and that juicy steak without relinquishing your progressive credentials.

Check out the entire catalogue of progressive products.

The Whole Foods grass fed beef disses on the Burger King Whopper.

2011-09-21T00:27:00.000-07:00

GRASS FED: I pity you. Raised on some factory farm while I was out in grassy fields.

WHOPPER: You’re a piece of charred flesh now, just like me.

GRASS FED: It’s every grass fed steer’s dream to someday make it to the refrigerated section of Whole Foods with an Animal Welfare-Approved label on the package. And I did it! I was purchased by compassionate people who turned me into Pepper Steak with pomegranate sauce. You? You get wrapped in paper and stuck under a heat lamp ‘til you get scarfed down by a carload of hungry frat dudes who couldn’t care less about your pain and suffering.

WHOPPER: We were both killed way before our time. We’re both going to be eaten.

GRASS FED: I’ll be savored with a glass of chardonnay. You’ll be washed down with 32 oz. coke.

WHOPPER: What I’m saying is...

GRASS FED: Not interested in what some low life from the 99 cent super value menu has to say. I’m grass fed, Animal Welfare Approved. I was purchased by a progressive couple who cared deeply about my well being. You should have heard the two of them discussing how good they felt that I got to graze on the grass...

WHOPPER: ..before the farmer dragged you into the slaughterhouse and shattered your skull with a captive bolt.

GRASS FED: Must you be so crass?

WHOPPER: The first bolt missed your brain. You were writhing on the ground before he got the second bolt to work.

GRASS FED: Thankfully, the compassionate couple who purchased me aren’t around to hear this. It would spoil the meal they worked so hard to prepare.

WHOPPER: If your progressive Whole Foods shoppers are so concerned about your suffering, why don’t they stop eating meat?

GRASS FED: You think you're so smart with your brain teasers and unanswerable riddles. Go to your frat boys, your Walmart deal hunters. I'm going to be eaten by refined people who want us steer to get slaughtered ethically and compassionately and you don't even have the gratitude to appreciate it.

A brief message from Temple Grandin's House of Slaughterhouses

2011-09-19T07:24:00.000-07:00

Folks, lately some of our competitors have been claiming their seal of humane slaughter will make people feel better about eating animals. Phooey! Why settle for an Animal Welfare Approved sticker on the package when you can cut out the middleman and get yourself a humane slaughterhouse from temple Grandin’s house of slaughterhouses! Folks, We’re proud to say we’re the only slaughterhouse designer to win PETA’s coveted Proggy Award for making the slaughtering process more profitable and efficient for meat processors, I mean painless and stress-free for animals. We use only the finest captive stun bolts that pierce the animals’ brains so smooth and easy they’ll think they’re getting shiatsu massage. Your animals will swear by it and so will your customers.

"I saw a video about factory farms and it made me sick to think people can treat animals like that. I vowed never to eat steak again. Then a friend told me about meat processed at Temple Grandin’s house of slaughterhouses. Goodbye guilt, hello rib eyed steak!"

-- Kim L., Gardenia, Calfornia

That’s right, folks, so come on in and check out our complete selection of slaughterhouse designs and slaughtering accessories at Temple Grandin’s House of Slaughterhouses, where humane slaughter is our middle name!

HSUS overcomes HSUS opposition to enriched cages for laying hens

2011-09-17T11:53:00.000-07:00

The HSUS and United Egg Producers had a big press conference to announce an "historic agreement." The HSUS agreed to "give up on a push to ban cages entirely in exchange for the opportunity to work for a a single, nationwide standard mandating better conditions."

If passed, the new agreement will...

Require that all egg-laying hens be provided, through the new enriched housing system, with environments ... such as perches, nesting boxes and scratching areas.

Some cynics may claim the HSUS made the agreement because their check-writing, egg-eating donors wanted them to lay off the United Egg Producers. But maybe they genuinely believe "enriched cages" really do improve the hens' pre-slaughter lives. They're opposed to “furnished cages” because...

Furnished cages are typically equipped with a nest box, perch and dustbathing areas … furnished cages provide an unacceptably limited amount of space per bird … furnished cages remain unable to adequately provide and acceptable level of welfare for hens…

These new enriched cages must address all the concerns the HSUS had about furnished cages. Let’s compare…

Enriched cages have perches, nesting boxes and scratching areas. Furnished cages have perches, nesting boxes and dustbathing areas.

That’s it then. The HSUS was playing hardball with the United Egg Producers. Replace the term “dustbathing area” with “scratching area” and the term “Furnished cages” with “enriched cages” and you’ve got yourself a deal.

Diary of a young Hormel PR executive

2011-09-15T08:58:00.000-07:00

It’s my first week on the job and I’m a nervous wreck. I wonder if I’m up for it. I mean I’m prepared. I’ve studied the classics. I have a quotation from our VP Julie framed above my desk. It’s from when the video surfaced of pigs being beaten with metal poles and slammed to the cement floor in one of our supplier farms in Iowa. I can recite Julie’s response by heart.

We found the images of the footage from the Iowa farm appalling and they are inconsistent with our standards and industry standards for animal handling. The abuse on the video shows practices that are completely unacceptable.

How did she come up with that? If the press called asking me for a statement, I would have frozen up. I would have said, “well, yeah, we kill them because you eat them. What’s the issue here? How does the way we kill them make any difference?”

But she realized people out there want to think pigs they eat are well-treated so they feel better about eating them. So in a moment of inspiration, she came up with a classic statement of outrage. She almost makes me believe we care about the well-being of the pigs. I can never aspire to that kind of greatness.

Then there’s the Hormel statement on corporate responsibility. Another instant classic.

This is simply about treating animals humanely because it’s the right thing to do … we take our zero tolerance policy for the inhumane treatment of animals very seriously. Pork producers are the best ambassadors for animal welfare in the United States. They set the standard and do everything they can to make sure the animals have the best welfare.

I read things like this and I feel like I’ll never amount to anything. I would have thought slaughter and humane treatment are a contradiction, that people would laugh at me if I made a statement like that. We kill thousands an hour and we believe in treating animals humanely? We’re the best ambassadors for animal cruelty but we call ourselves the best ambassadors for animal welfare? Wow. I never would have come up with that in a million years. I’ve got so much to learn. Well, nose to grindstone. Keep studying, keep learning. I’ll get there.

A simple explanation for the existence of “humane certified” meat

2011-09-13T10:44:00.000-07:00

Humane certified meat exists because the people in photo one don’t want to be mistaken for the people in photo two. The people in photo one contribute to public radio, sign petitions for cleaner waterways. They put their Whole Foods meats in reusable shopping bags. The guy in photo two still has his ticket stub from the Slayer concert in his pocket. He chugs beers at tailgate parties. He buys his chicken wings by the 4o lb. box.

The people in photo one read and discuss Michael Pollan books.The guy in photo two thinks Michael Pollan is that actor in "The usual suspects."

The people in photo one are concerned about the suffering of the animals they eat. Not concerned enough to stop eating them. But really really concerned.

The guy in photo two has a tee shirt that says, “I love animals. With ketchup on top.” The people in photo one consider this joke to be in very bad taste. It makes them uncomfortable to think they have the same disregard for the suffering of a fellow creature as the guy in photo two.

How can they demonstrate the difference? They can consume meat approved by the Humane Farming Association and American Welfare Institute. Meat carved from the carcasses of animals treated with kindness and compassion before the stun bolts shatter their skulls. That way the people in photo one can convince themselves that, unlike the savage in photo two, they care deeply about the suffering of the animals they eat.

Our humanely raised beef is more humane than your humanely raised beef.

2011-09-11T13:55:00.000-07:00

It all started with people who sought the dual benefit of assuaging their conscience (feeling better about eating flesh from a tortured/slaughtered animal) while at the same time showcasing that refined conscience to others (the vanity boost conferred by the possession of something impressive, similar to driving a luxury automobile). By not only consuming humanely raised meat, but also being willing, even eager, to pay a premium for it, these people of conscience managed to elevate themselves above the uncaring masses who eat meat with complete disregard for the suffering of the animal who provided it.

This dual benefit of an assuaged conscience plus a vanity boost became highly sought after by flesh-eating progressives everywhere. Humanely raised labels and brands proliferated. This posed a problem for the original progressives. They were once again just part of the herd. It was more difficult for others to see and appreciate their refined consciences. So it was only inevitable that they would seek a new way to differentiate/elevate themselves, a way of saying our humanely raised beef is more humane than your humanely raised beef. Soulfood Farm has just what these progressives are looking for. Soulfood Farm turned to the American Welfare Institute to give them a conscience-conferring label that separates them from the other providers of humanely raised animal flesh. From their blog...

To me, the name says it all. It begins with the animals’ welfare, unlike the vague “humanely raised,” that is slowly being eroded…

Now the other “humanely raised” eating progressives are forced to play catch up. Soon they too will seek the more stringent AWI approval and the progressives who want their consciences to stand out will have to find an even more humane form of torture/slaughter and so on and so on, an endless cycle. If these people really want to stand out, wouldn’t it be much easier to just go ahead and splurge on that Lexus?

Cattle Network article on the trendy, youthful phase of veganism

2011-09-10T00:22:00.000-07:00

The article talks about Mean Greens in the University of North Texas, the first all-vegan campus cafeteria in the country.

If I were a meat and poultry purveyor, I wouldn’t worry too much about this breaking news … being trendy is what college is all about. Many of the diehard vegetarians roaming the campus will turn much more traditional – in food and politics – once they hit the adult world …

…But just like the massive amounts of information students struggle to absorb in class, then rarely refer to again once college is over, much of passion for the (alleged) value of vegetarianism tends to follow a similar path once the campus rebels of today enter the real world of adulthood tomorrow.

The writer displays admirable journalistic objectivity, just like he was taught at the National Cattleman’s Journalism School.

To summarize the main points of his article:

We should see the University of North Texas students’ temporary experimentation with a vegan diet for what it is: an act of crazy youthful rebellion before they return to the sane world of gestation crates, stun bolt guns, shackle hoists, torture and slaughter. College has always been a time for exploring new boundaries. In the past, kids experienced identity confusion, possibly experimenting with drugs and binge drinking, but they never crossed the dark line and embraced wild ideas like a steer having the right to not feel his flesh ripped from his body while he's still alive. Or the positively anarchic belief that maybe animals shouldn’t spend their brief lives in a dark crate before their skulls are shattered so people can consume their flesh.

It’s hard to know how to account for the inexplicable radicalization of these vegan students. Maybe it’s the fear of entering an uncertain job market. A sense of being cast adrift. How else can we explain them believing hens shouldn’t get de-beaked with a heated blade, sickly piglets shouldn’t get slammed on concrete floors, downed cows shouldn’t be beaten with a metal pole when they can’t stand up?

But we all need to take a deep breath and realize this is just a rite of passage. A mini-bout of temporary insanity. We need to remind ourselves that thinking an animal has the right to not have a bolt driven through her brain is just a nutty phase some college kids go through. These kids will be okay. Soon enough they’ll be ordering up a big juicy sirloin at Applebees, shaking their heads at their wild youthful beliefs. They’ll have entered the sensible world of adulthood, where steers, pigs and chickens only exist so we can enjoy the taste of their seared flesh, just like God and the National Cattleman’s Association intended it.

The rough and final drafts of the KFC statement on animal welfare

2011-09-08T00:04:00.000-07:00

The final draft:

KFC is committed to the humane treatment of animals … As a major purchaser of food products, we have the opportunity, and responsibility, to influence the way animals supplied to us are treated. We take that responsibility very seriously. We are monitoring our suppliers on an ongoing basis to determine wither our suppliers are using humane procedures for caring for and handling animals.

The rough draft:

KFC is committed to making people think we care about the humane treatment of animals. We thought there was big money when we came up with dipping sauces. Shit, that’s nothing compared to the PR bonanza of making people think we give two shits about the lives of the little chickies before we off them. It’s a friggin’ gold mine. We’ll kill the buggers any way you want -- gas, knife, metal pole. Just so long as you give us your gold star or your Proggy or whatever you call your animal welfare compliance award. As a major purchaser of food products, we have the opportunity of killing a shitload of these chickens and if one of our suppliers needs to blow off a little steam by stomping on one of them or throwing one against the wall, well, shit, what would you expect? But give us some pub and we’ll pretend we care. It worked for Burger King and McDonald’s and it can work for us too. We take the responsibility of profiting off animal rights concerns very seriously. We’ll write animal welfare statements up the wazoo. We got a whole floor’s worth of PR flaks who can say things like “These actions are completely contrary to all our company’s practices and policies regarding the humane treatment of poultry.” Cha ching! You guys have no idea how much the public concern for animal welfare is gonna make us, cluck, cluck, cluck, here chickie, chickie, let poppa fast food exec kill you kindly so you can make him a rich man, heh heh!

HSUS: Humane Society of the United Egg Producers

2011-09-06T07:50:00.001-07:00

Go to the farm animal campaign on the HSUS site and the donation button says “Let’s phase out battery cages!” They could say, "Let’s phase out consumption which results in the slaughter of millions of chicks and laying hens per year. Even free range hens come from hatcheries where half the chicks born are males who, because they're useless to egg producers, are ground up in machines or suffocated in dumpsters. Laying hens undergo forced molting (starvation up to two weeks) and when their egg production becomes commercially unviable, they’re sent to slaughter. Bigger battery cages won’t help. The only way to end this endless suffering is to stop eating eggs."

Why won’t the HSUS say this? Let’s see how it might go…

HSUS: Let’s phase out our consumption of food which results in slaughter of millions of hens each year.

HSUS donors: Let’s phase out donations.

So the biggest animal advocacy organization in the world can’t advocate a behavioral change which will result in preventing the death of millions of the animals they supposedly exist to help. Instead, they put their money into campaigns for bigger cages. They make videos depicting abuses. This means bad PR for the United Egg Producers. They don’t like bad PR. And HSUS donors don’t like feeling bad about eating their eggs. Maybe it’s time for the HSUS to dial back on their bigger cages campaign.

HUSU: Let’s phase out opposition to the United Egg Producers.

HSUS donors: Let’s phase out donations.

HSUS: Okay, let’s eliminate our opposition to the United Egg Producers in one fell swoop. We’ll hold a big press conference touting the new partnership. We’ll toss out phrases like “better way forward” and “historic agreement” We’ll give them fifteen years to implement their changes. How’s that?

HSUS donors: Where’s my checkbook?

More detailed account of lives of laying hens here.

Meet Kristen, the newest California Happy Cow

2011-09-04T08:03:00.000-07:00

America viewed the casting videos and selected Kristen as the newest Happy Cow in the California Milk Board advertising campaign. We're told we can follow Kristen's experiences as a Happy Cow at RealCaliforniaMilk.com. Really? The milk board really wants its milk drinkers to follow the life of a dairy cow? In the first commercial, we'll see the farmer remove Kristen's calf when he's only a day old and ship him off to become veal. Kristen will be so traumatized the farmer will have a difficult time strapping her into the milking machine. In the next commercial, he'll shoot Kristen full of hormones to increase her milk output. She'll be forced to produce ten times the amount of milk she normally would. When her milk productions lapses, the farmer will artificially inseminate her, remove her calf and repeat the process. We won't be able to follow Kristen much longer at RealCaliforniaMilk.com. Her life span would normally be around twenty five years, but her milk output will decrease to unacceptable levels after four, so in the final video of Kristen's brief existence, we'll see the farmer apply the stun bolt gun to her head then the commercial will fade to black. It will be time for Real California Milk to audition for a new Happy Cow to replace Kristen. Here's a group shot of all the Happy Cows who produce real California Milk waiting to see who will become the next Happy Cow.

Michael Pollan will be having a carcass signing

2011-09-02T10:02:00.000-07:00

Michael Pollan’s website says he’ll be having a book signing October 12 at the Barnes & Noble in Methesda, Maryland. Book signings are so passé. Why doesn’t his publisher organize a publicity event more in keeping with Michael Pollan’s writings and stage a carcass signing instead? It couldn’t take place at a bookstore. They wouldn’t want blood and entrails all over the espresso machine. They could stage it at the farm where Michael Pollan purchased steer 534 so he could witness first hand the raising and slaughter of a steer.

First, he’ll read a quotation from one of his outraged attacks on factory farms..

The lives of billions of animals on American feedlots and factory farms are horrible to contemplate, an affront to our image of ourselves as humane.

Followed by an excerpt from his NYT article on a 36-hour dinner party he hosted...

Mike and I drove to the ranch to choose our animal and watch the itinerant butcher dress and slaughter it.

As he signs copies of the carcasses, he’ll explain how slaughtering animals in factory farms is an "affront to our image of ourselves as humane" while hungrily watching an itinerant butcher slaughter them for a 36 hour dinner party promotes fellowship and goodwill. Is it because the butcher is itinerant while the factory farms exist in a fixed location? Only way to find out is to attend this gala carcass signing for yourself.

But Michael Pollan won't only be signing steer carcasses. No sir. Pick a farm animal, any farm animal, he'll sign them all. He'll sign carcasses of pigs, chickens and goats he consumed at Joel Salatin's Polyface Farm as he reads another excerpt...

In Polyface Farm, chickens live like chickens, his cows like cows, pigs, pigs ... animal happiness is unmistakable. And here I was seeing it in abundance.

He’ll then describe his own unmistakable happiness as he sat back and let his digestive juices go to work on those animals whose happiness he just got through celebrating.

He’ll finish with a final one-two punch of moral outrage and meat-juice-dripping-down-the-chin ecstasy. The outrage...

Broiler chickens spend their lives in cages too small to ever stretch a wing. Every natural instinct is thwarted, leading to a range of behavioral vices that can include canablizing her cage mates and rubbing her body against the mesh until it is featherless and bleeding.

The ecstasy...

Melissa has a sure hand with the hacksaw and the butcher knife; within 20 minutes the goat is transformed into considerably more appetizing cuts of meat ... Mike cuts slivers from the loin and passes them around … the raw meat is surprisingly sweet.

There’s sure to be plenty of talking out of both sides of the mouth for everyone at the Michael Pollan carcass signing. He’ll share some his favorite rationalizations. He'll offer up recipe ideas. He'll explain how condemning the abuse of animals in factory farms while celebrating their slaughter by local farms has made him a best-selling author. So mark your calendar and be sure to bring a knife and fork to the Michael Pollan carcass signing.

Whole Foods must use a really small type size.

2011-08-31T13:59:00.000-07:00

The title of the post in the Whole Foods blog says, “Let’s respect farm animals.” But then they switch to a smaller type size for the asterisk that says, “until we kill them and eat them.” So small I can't even see it. But that asterisk has to be there somewhere, doesn't it? Unless Whole Foods is trying to make the point that slaughtering and eating someone is a new way of showing them respect.

Now the type gets nice and big again.

Our meat and poultry standards at Whole Foods ... take into account the comfort, physical safety and health of the animals.

Then the asterisk at the end of the above sentence says, "This may appear at first to be counter-intuitive since shattering skulls with stun bolts, shackle hoisting upside-down, slicing necks, etc. would seem to some to adversely affect the comfort, physical safety and health of animals. But what you’re missing here is our shoppers want to feel good about themselves and their planet citizenship. Nothing ruins a good steak dinner faster than a conscience nagging you about how the animal suffered in order to become the flesh you're so happily chewing. Our shoppers want to delude themselves into thinking the animals they eat lived happy joyful lives right up until the moment they became meat. At first we tried telling them a happy meat fairy waved her wand and turned the animals into meat, but even our shoppers weren’t falling for that one. So we came up with this elaborate fantasy about happy, well cared for animals, grazing in the fields, living in the sunshine, and guess what, our shoppers bought it. If we can help our shoppers accept this wild story by repeating things like 'let's respect farm animals,' and 'we care about the comfort, safety and health of animals,' it means more money for us. Get it? Good. Now get out of our face."

I can't quite make out that asterisk, the type's so small, but it's got to be there somewhere.

With Whole Foods new 5-step Animal Welfare rating system, there’s a meat for every level of compassion.

2011-03-19T19:45:00.000-07:00

So Whole Foods has a new 5-step rating system. A color-coded label tells you exactly how humanely the animal was treated before it became your meat.

Step one, no crates. Step two, enriched environment. Step three enhanced outdoor access. Step four, pasture centered. Step five, animal centered, no physical alterations. Step five plus, animal centered, entire life on farm.

If you’re confused about which level is right for you, simply ask one of their helpful meat department team members.

-- Excuse me, I’m serving pork chops tonight. I didn't know what step you recommended.

-- What level of compassion do you have for the farm animals you consume?

-- I saw a video on the miserable lives of pigs in factory farms. It made me cry. I swore off pork two whole weeks.

-- Do you give a snort of disgust when you see a Costco shopper remove a box of Tyson chicken wings from the frozen section?

-- Yes! It makes me sick. Don’t these savages realize Tyson clips the beaks off their chickens with a hot blade? Tell you what else I believe. Animals deserve to live in the sunshine, romping in the fields, at least while people are in between meals. So what do you think? Do I have level five compassion for farm animals? Do I? Do I?

--Have you ever attended a Michael Pollan book signing?

--I was meaning to but…

--No Michael Pollan book signing, no level five. I’d say level three is appropriate for you.

--Hi, I’m having a dinner party, looking for a side of beef, wondering what step is right for me.

-- Did you support Prop 2 for bigger cages for farm animals, Sir?

-- Sure did. Even talked a guy I worked with into voting for it.

-- Did you put a "Stop Cruelty Now. Support Prop 2" bumper sticker on your car?

-- Uhm, well, I didn’t want to seem like an extremist or anything.

-- Better stick with level one.

-- Can I work my way up?

-- Absolutely, Sir. Go to the Santa Monica open market and sign a petition demanding more humane treatment of animals. Start a Michael Pollan discussion group.

-- Awesome. I’ll have a level five conscience in time for grilling season!

The steer selfishly tries to prevent the progressives from enjoying his flesh.

2011-03-16T22:50:00.000-07:00

434! We know you’re out there somewhere. It’s time to become Animal-welfare approved steak. Don’t you think you’re being just a little selfish hiding in the very grass the animal welfare-approved farmer let you graze on? Think of all the good progressive people out there whose consciences won't permit them to eat meat from factory farms that cruelly abuse animals. They'll only meat carved from the carcass of cattle like you, who get to roam in the open air, graze in the green fields. Do you have any idea how happy you’re going make these people? Do you have any idea how much sweeter the chardonnay that accompanies your flesh will taste when they can reassure themselves you lived a carefree life before the animal welfare-approved farmer humanely applied the stun bolt gun that lovingly shattered your skull? In between bites, they can express righteous indignation about the horrible conditions of factory farms. They can quote each other passages from Michael Pollan essays. They can put bumperstickers on their Priuses demanding bigger cages for farm animals. And you, you want to hide in the grass and cruelly prevent these progressives from enjoying these pleasures? That’s precisely the kind of cruelty the Animal Welfare Institute wants to eliminate.

Michael Pollan and the Ghost of Steer 534 audition to be the new spokesmen for Sonic

2011-03-13T17:29:00.000-07:00

While we’re on the topic of the pork board’s new tag line, there’s a fast food company in need of a new advertising campaign. Not Burger King. It has the king. McDonald’s, of course, has Ronald McDonald and Temple Grandin. But Sonic recently fired their long-time ad agency, so they’ll be needing a new spokesman. Hmm… Spokesmen teams can work well if they’ve got the right chemistry. You had the two Budweiser Lizzards. Bartles and Jaymes. How about Michael Pollan and the ghost of Steer 534? Naturally, Sonic executives won’t just hand them the role. They’re going to have to audition for it. So let’s get started…

MICHAEL: Hi, I’m best-selling author and conscience of a meat-eating nation, Michael Pollan.

GHOST OF STEER 534: And I’m the ghost of steer 534. Michael purchased me because he wanted to experience the entire meat production process. He raised me, fattened me...

MICHAEL: Then I ate you.

GHOST OF STEER 534: But before you did, you cared deeply about my suffering. You wrote very movingly about it.

MICHAEL: I felt deeply. I said…

The lives of billions of animals on American feedlots and factory farms are horrible to contemplate, an affront to our image of ourselves as humane.

GHOST OF 534: I think I remember you quoting that passage as you delivered me to the slaughterhouse door. It was so thoughtful of you to speak with such fire and outrage in what was a very emotional moment for me.

MICHAEL: I couldn't contain myself.

GHOST OF STEER 534: Michael cares deeply about the suffering of all farm animals, not just me

MICHAEL: That’s right, ghost of steer 534, and you know the most horrible fate that can befall a steer like yourself? Being part of bland, tasteless burger. That’s why Sonic uses only the freshest cuts of choice lean meat. Then they top it with ripe, juicy tomatoes and slather it with tangy barbeque sauce.

GHOST OF STEER 534: Don’t forget the melted cheddar cheese and crisp lettuce.

MICHAEL: I’m getting hungry just thinking about it.

GHOST O STEER 534: I wish I could help you out, Micheal, but you already ate me.

MICHAEL: Don’t make my mouth water when I have to say the tag line.

BOTH: Sonic. Because people who care deeply about the suffering of animals don't let them wind up being boring burgers!

“Be Inspired” inspires everyone!

2011-03-10T17:54:00.000-08:00

“Pork. The other white meat.” only appealed to the consumer. But the Pork Board’s new tag line, Be Inspired, speaks to everyone -- the slaughterhouse worker, the Hormel VP of corporate communications ... Nobody’s left out.

Be inspired! the pork board said. And the Hormel suppliers in Bayard, Iowa were. No more settling for the humdrum everyday ways of killing like shackle hoists and stun bolt guns. They used metal poles and cement floors, they shocked and impaled. It’s all on video, though not one of the videos posted on the Feed your Creativity site the Pork Board set up on PorkBeInspireddotcom. You'll only find pork recipes there now. Maybe when they expand their video library?

Be Inspired! the pork board said, and the PR flak in the Hormel corporate communications department was. When the video of the abuses in the Bayard plant hit the news, he didn’t settle for the conventional spin or the little white lie. He said,

We found the images from the Iowa farm appalling … this is simply about treating animals humanely because it’s the right thing to do … Pork producers are the best ambassadors for animal welfare in the United States.

Slaughter 1,000 animals per hour and you’re the best ambassadors for animal welfare in the United States? He didn’t worry about people asking if he was on drugs when he said that, maybe the same drugs Hormel injects into their hogs. He was inspired. He came up with a statement on the dark side of truth and it ended up in the Hormel Corporate Responsibility report and probably earned him a reserved parking spot.

Be Inspired! the Pork Board said, and Temple Grandin was. Killing was too inefficient in most slaughterhouses. Animals inexplicably resisted entering. Struggling hogs slipped on the floor, holding up the line, causing delays, decreasing efficiency. So Temple Grandin invented a grooved tile to keep the hogs hoofs from slipping. Improving efficiency. Increasing the number of hogs slaughtered. Earning herself cash bonuses from the fast food companies and the coveted Proggy Award from PETA.

Be Inspired is all-inclusive. It speaks to everyone. No wonder the Pork Board changed their tag line.

Questions for the Pork Board's PR guy

2011-03-08T21:00:00.000-08:00

The Pork Board changed their tag line to “Be Inspired,” and the Adweek reporter asked their PR guy why.

“We’re going toward a new target of people,” the PR guy said.

Here are a few of the questions the Adweek reporter didn’t ask the PR guy: It’s estimated 112 million pigs are slaughtered every year. Do these pigs have nervous systems? Do they feel pain? When your children ask you what tail docking is, what do you say? Can you look into their eyes when you say this? Does it ever strike you as arbitrary that you treat your dog like a family member but you confine similarly intelligent creatures in cages too small for them to around in and poke them with electric prods and and fire bolts into their brains? Did you know pigs are fun-loving creatures? Did you know they love life, and fear death, just like you? Do you like your job? Have you seen the video of the workers slamming the piglets to the ground until they die, except they’re not all dead, some are still moving around in the bloody pile? Do you ever reflect that you too have but a brief time among the living? Does this awareness make you question why you spend it justifying the slaughter of hundreds of millions of animals every year? A typical slaughterhouse kills about 1,000 hogs per hour. Do you comprehend how much death that is? Do the darkest hours of night ever make you tremble for what you do?

The AdWeek reporter doesn't ask the PR guy any of those questions. He asks why they changed their tag line. "We’re going toward a new target of people," the PR guy says.

New tag line for the National Pork Board

2011-03-06T12:51:00.000-08:00

The National Pork Board has a new tagline. “Pork. The other white meat” is gone. The new line: “Pork. Be Inspired.” Adweek Magazine has the scoop. Now anyone who’s ever read an article about pork products knows you don’t have to read far to find a play on words. Sure, enough, Adweek can’t even wait for the article to begin. They give us the first one in the title. “The other white meat finally cedes its place in the pen." Then another in the subhead. “The national pork board hoofed out a new tagline.” People can be so somber and earnest about so many things, but nothing brings out a spirit of levity like the topic of animal slaughter. You can almost see the wide grins forming in the Adweek newsroom when they got assigned to a story on the pork tag line change. So many puns, so little article space. “Plenty of restaurants and grocery stores fattened up the margins.” Hee hee. The same playful spirit inspired the people doing the ads for the new “Be inspired” campaign. “To all a good bite,” the headline says. You get it? To all a good night. Famous line. Bite rhymes with night. Funny stuff. Some of us might not think puns and rhymes and light-hearted whimsy go with stun bolting the brains and slashing the throats of living, pain-feeling creatures, but what do we know?

Have your conscience and eat it, too.

2011-03-05T09:16:00.000-08:00

Dan Cudahy of Unpopular Vegan Essays has a penetrating essay on the rationalizations people use to keep themselves ignorant of the suffering caused by their consumption of farm animals.

There’s a different type of rationalization used by people who acknowledge the misery and horror farm animals endure but are unwilling to stop consuming them. People like Michael Pollan. One of his recurring themes is how conflicted he feels about it all. Michael Pollan doesn't want the animals to suffer. He wishes there were a way he could get at their tasty flesh without having to slaughter them. This desire to eliminate their suffering lets Michael Pollan off the hook. Because as Kant said, it's the intent of the act, rather than its outcome, that determines whether or not an act is moral.

Michael Pollan gives himself big points for the forthright way he questions his consumption of meat. The honesty of his self-analysis cancels out any culpability he might feel and even allows him to vview his consumption of animal flesh as a morally praisworthy act. He offers up his sympathy to the soon-to-be slaughtered animal and manages to convince himself this somehow lessens the suffering. After all, the tortured, slaughtered animal is far better off being tortured and slaughtered by someone saddened by its suffering than someone who couldn’t care less.

You read his dismissive remarks about vegans and it becomes clear his rationalizing mind takes him a step beyond that. Not only is he morally superior to the unwashed masses unconcerned by the suffering of the animals they eat. He is also superior to the people who aren’t strong enough to endure the same moral conflict he does. He is willing to agonize and bear the burden of his hypocrisy and, ultimately, rationalize his way out of it. People who refuse to consume animal products take the easy way out. They are unwilling or unable to endure the moral conflict that Michael Pollan endures.

He credits himself for having beliefs counter to his own self-interest and for how strictly he holds himself accountable. He also gives himself a point for the moral courage it takes to be so frank about a belief which indicts not only himself, but, by extension, the animal agriculture industry and so might be frowned upon by executives with the power to cancel his lucrative speaking engagements at colleges and universities.

It's his pride in considering himself a thorn in the side of animal agriculture that explains how Michael Pollan can constantly express outrage at the way factory farms treat animals without any apparent awareness of the irony that such an unforgiving indictment is coming out of the same mouth that chews animal flesh every meal.

Goat juice dribbles down Michael Pollan’s chin as he talks out of both sides of his mouth.

2011-01-18T17:14:00.000-08:00

Michael Pollan is having a 36-hour dinner party…

Here’s the conceit: build a single wood fire and, over the course of 30-plus hours, use it to roast, braise, bake, simmer and grill as many different dishes as possible – for lunch, dinner, breakfast and lunch again.

No, here’s the conceit: thinking people would be interested in reading a 4500-word account of 36 hours' worth of Michael Pollan’s cooking and eating over a “cob burning oven” in a “shady backyard of Napa.” But apparently Michael Pollan means conceit as in theme, not as in narcissistic presumption. So on to the 36-hour dinner party.

Since Michael Pollan is involved, you know he’s only whetting our appetite with all his rhapsodizing about baskets of morels, canopies of mulberry and oak logs burning in a cob oven. He’s biding his time, building up to his favorite topic: the lovingly described slaughter and consumption of an animal.

Which turns out to be a goat.

Mike and I drove to the ranch to choose our animal and watch an itinerant butcher slaughter and dress it; Mike says the experience made him want to honor our goat by wasting as little of it as possible.

Michael Pollan doesn’t fraternize with heartless killers, so we know his friend Mike will be deeply affected by the goat’s suffering yet still desirous of consuming it without pangs of guilt. Michael Pollan pulls this off by insisting a goat get to experience his “goat-ness” before he becomes Michael’s dinner. Mike takes a different route to guilt-appeasement.

Mike says the experience makes him want to honor the goat by wasting as little as possible.

Typically, honors will be conferred in the form of medals, trophies, speeches, toasts, etc. etc. Mike has come up with something altogether new here -- conferring honor by consuming every last bit of the honoree’s flesh. Consuming only a small portion of the flesh would of course be an intolerable insult to the goat, throwing scraps on the ground a slap in his face. But having as much of his flesh consumed as possible, at a 36-hour dinner party, no less, knowing his flesh is helping Michael Pollan and friends rediscover the pleasures of the communal fire, what goat wouldn’t burst with pride at the honor?

They must run out of things to talk about at a 36-hour dinner party. To re-establish any animal defender credentials the goat bone he’s gnawing on may have lost him, Michael Pollan could quote some of the outraged passages from his article on the foie gras industry.

"...the lives of billions of animals on American feedlots and factory farms are horrible to contemplate, an affront to our image of ourselves as humane" … hey, can you pass the goat stew?

Oops, better try again.

Legislation to ban foie gras has been introduced in six states. How delicious it must feel for a legislator to strike a blow on behalf of defenseless ducks and geese at the expense of an unpronounceable and Frenchified delicacy…

Did he ridicule this unpronounceable French delicacy while he was eating...

the [goat] scraps which Anthony collects to make a sugo – a slow-cooked Italian meat sauce..

Michael Pollan continues:

...the battle to ban foie gras must seem like a tasty target of opportunity.

Michael Pollan’s constant glorification of eating animals has started to affect the way he expresses himself. “How delicious it must feel?” “Tasty target of opportunity?” Can’t he come up with a simple descriptive modifier that isn’t related to flesh consumption?

By suggesting we’ve outlawed the most heinous practice in animal agriculture, the campaign against foie gras allows everyone to feel good about doing something for animals. Yet it leaves the much larger problem untouched.

No, the above passage wasn’t written by a critic of Michael Pollan. It came from Michael Pollan himself. How does he not see how seamlessly he fits into his own indictment? Simply replace foie gras with Michael Pollan and voila…

By becoming a prominent critic of the most heinous practices of animal agriculture, Michael Pollan’s campaign against the abuses in factory farms allows Michael Pollan to feel good about doing something for animals. Yet it leaves the much larger problem, i.e. animal torture and slaughter, untouched.

Because you see the same man who decries the “heinous practice of animal agriculture” delights in the details of carving up the goat carcass at his 36-hour dinner party.

Melissa … has a sure hand with the hacksaw and the butcher knife; within 20 minutes the goat is transformed into considerably more appetizing cuts of meat: the baron, or hindquarters, and the saddle … two racks of ribs (for tomorrow’s lunch); the shoulders (destined for an overnight braise) and the scraps…

Meanwhile, Mike is still in the process of honoring the goat…

Mike cuts a few slivers from the loin and passes them around; a ceremonial tasting of the uncooked animal is, he explains, a butcher’s privilege. The raw meat is surprisingly sweet….

Maybe this is the point, with the juices of the raw goat meat dribbling down his chin, that Michael Pollan slams his hand on the oak firewood and exclaims...

the lives of billions of animals on American feedlots and factory farms are horrible to contemplate, an affront to our image of ourselves as humane.

Stop talking with your mouth full of goat flesh, Michael Pollan. I can’t hear a word you’re saying.

I said, “the lives of billions of animals on American feedlots and factory farms are horrible to contemplate, an affront to our image of ourselves as humane”

His fellow 36-hour diners hear him this time and they pause for a solemn toast: to the billions of animals on American feedlots and factory farms. May mankind someday find the compassion to ease their suffering. And until that day comes, can I have another piece of the raw goat meat, please?

Temple Grandin's House of Slaughterhouses

2011-01-07T10:55:00.000-08:00

Folks, have you had it up to here with stubborn animals that refuse to enter the killing room? Then maybe it’s time to replace that old slaughterhouse with one of the many new designs at Temple Grandin’s House of Slaughterhouses. Whether you’re a big supplier or a local family farm, we’ve got the perfect solutions for all your killing needs. Folks, I’m considered the authority on farm animal welfare, so every slaughterhouse from Temple Grandin’s House of Slaughterhouses comes with unbeatable PR.You’ll get kudos from PETA the Humane Society and countless other animal rights organizations.

At Temple Grandin's House of Slaughterhouses, we’ve taken my cutting edge insights into animal behavior to create state-of-the-art slaughterhouses that will improve killing efficiency and increase profits! See, the problem with ordinary slaughterhouses is cattle often refuse to enter the chute, fall down and jam up the entryway. And a downed cow means downed profits! But my curved cattle chutes take advantage of the natural circling behavior of cattle, so they move toward the killing room peacefully, without holding up the line. Or maybe your animals slip and fall when you’re trying to restrain them in the holding pen. Then get rid of that old slick concrete and check out the non-slip flooring options from Temple Grandin’s House of Slaughterhouses. We start with the highest quality concrete then we use a special grooving machine to make it virtually slip-proof. We haven’t forgotten you pig killers, either. This handsome diamond-patterned flooring was specially designed for the unique shape and texture of pig hoofs.

Best of all, when you shop Temple Grandin’s House of Slaughterhouses, you can rest assured that everything comes with our risk-free, six-month guarantee. If after six months, you’re not convinced your new slaughterhouse has improved your killing efficiency by at least fifty percent, return it and we’ll give you your money back, no questions asked. Big companies like Hormel and McDonald’s swear by the slaughterhouses they got from me and you will too. But don’t just take my word for it. Listen to what some of our satisfied customers have to say.

"Thanks to the curved chutes I got from Temple Grandin’s House of Slaughterhoues I kill more cattle in a day than I used to kill in a week."

--- Billy S.

All that slipping and sliding used to drive me nuts. It lowered productivity and the video of my workers beating downed cows with a metal rod resulted in negative publicity that had our PR department working overtime. So I went to Temple Grandin’s House of Slaughterhouses. She showed me how her non-stick flooring keeps the animals from slipping and I couldn’t be happier.

-- Ron K.

So if stubborn animals who don’t want to die are making your slaughterhouse less efficient, depriving you of the profits you deserve, give Temple Grandin's House of Slaughterhouses a call today. Call in the next fifteen minutes and we’ll throw in these mats made from woven tire threads, guaranteed to reduce hoof damage, absolutely free. Kill more. Make more. At Temple Grandin’s house of slaughterhouses.

Joel Salatin on the importance of making pigs happy before you slaughter them.

2011-01-04T18:48:00.000-08:00

He may look like the villain in the latest James Bond movie, but he’s really Michael Pollan’s number one sidekick in the heroic struggle against industrial farming. Virginia farmer Joel Salatin rose to fame after Michael Pollan featured him in Omnivore’s Dilemna. The Guardian newspaper paid a visit to Joel Salatin’s Polyface Farm to talk about his role in the film, Food Inc. and find out more about this farmer so “admired for his outspoken articulacy on the horrors of industrial food.”

Joel Salatin offers up some of that outspoken articulacy...

Films like Food, Inc. are finally exposing the kind of corruption and evil when you don’t ask: how do we make pigs happy? .. the industrial food system is so cruel and horrific in its treatment of animals. It never asks the question, should a pig be allowed to express its pig-ness?

To summarize…

Evil, cruel, horrific = factory farms that shatter pigs’ skulls and slice open their necks without first taking into account the pig’s pig-ness and asking how do we make pigs happy

Moral, decent, good = family farms that take into account a pig’s pig-ness and ask how do we make pigs happy before shattering their skulls and slicing open their necks.

Sounds like a fair distinction to me. And if not fair, at least a money making distinction. After his starring role in Omnivore's Dilmena and Food, Inc, joel Salatin is in high demand. He’s got speaking engagements all over the country. His farm can barely keep up with all the new orders. He even had to leave the Guardian interview early to take a call from Oprah.

Joel Salatin lives and kills on Polyface Farm. (Polyface Farm maybe because Two-faced Farm wouldn’t do him and all his inconsistencies justice) The Guardian reporter is smitten with Polyface Farm. He rhapsodizes about the

...absurdly picturesque landscape … the rambling white clapboard farmhouse … and as if the children’s book looks were not enough, the roads have names like Cattleman and Sugar Loaf and Buttermilk Spring.

Guess he didn’t make it as far as Stun Bolt Drive and Carcass Lane. The reporter starts off the interview with a faux paus. He sees...

...the nicely treated hens, all happily pecking and glossy-feathered, and I’ve held one in my arms. Suddenly it makes little sense that this animal, whose welfare has been of such great concern, will be killed in a matter of days. Naïve, I know, and Salatin seems surprised when I ask if he ever considered becoming a vegetarian.

“Never crossed my mind,” Joel Salatin says. The problem is what he calls the “animals as people” movement.

You have to concede it, Salatin is right about that. Animals are nothing like people. People are unique. We have special abilities. For instance, we have the ability to slaughter other living beings because we enjoy the taste of their flesh while simultaneously perceiving ourselves as moral defenders of the animals whose necks we’re slicing open. A pig is simply not capable of such profound self-deception. That’s what makes pigs lower animals.

Self-deception is just one of mankind’s unique abilities. We also have the limitless capacity to rationalize our behavior. And some of us, like Joel Salatin, even have the ability to rehash trite truisms without realizing they undermine the very point we’re trying to make.

Joel Salatin thinks the way you treat animals is a reflection of the way you will go on to treat human beings.

Uhm, Joel, if that's true, since you kill and eat animals, is that a reflection of the way you will go on to murder and cannibalize human beings?

But the reporter doesn’t ask this natural follow-up since he’s still trying to make amends for naively getting the interview off on the wrong foot by asking Joel Salatin if he ever considered going vegetarian. Joel Salatin has now started to ramble and there’s nothing the reporter can do but hit the play button on his recorder and fasten his seat belt.

What happens when you don’t ask: how do we make pigs happy? Well, you view the pig as just a pile of protoplasmic structure to be manipulated however cleverly human hubris can imagine to manipulate it. And when you view life from that kind of mechanistic, arrogant, disrespectful standpoint, you very soon begin to view all life from a very disrespectful, arrogant, manipulative standpoint. And the fact is we aren’t machines.

There’s got to be some explanation for this whacked-out meaningless random jumble of words. Joel Salatin doesn’t inject his animals with hormones before he eats them. Maybe he injects them with LSD. But he's back to his main theme again.

Respect for animals leads to respect for people. If we don’t care for our least, we can’t care for our most.

Sounds like something on the crocheted wall hanging above the Salatin fireplace next to the "Slaughterhouse sweet Slaughterhouse" needlepoint.

And yet, and yet… "Joel Salatin is admired for his outspoken articulacy against the horrors of industrial farms." Maybe he should be admired in business school seminars about capitalizing on moral concern for animal welfare to expand his business by creating a demand for higher priced free range meat. Maybe he should be admired by self-styled activists who want to proselytize for animal rights without giving up their chicken dinners. Maybe he should be admired by sadists who simply appreciate torture and killing. But who else could possibly admire him?

It’s hard to imagine opponenents of capital punishment honoring a death row warden because he spoke out against cramped jail cells and let the death row inmates stroll around the yard and served them a home-cooked dinner before he clamped them to the electric chair. But for some reason Joel Salatin, Michael Pollan, Temple Grandin and all the others like them are considered important advocates for animals. With friends like these, farm animals really don’t need enemies.

btw, the Bond villain comparison was flawed. Bond villains are kind to their animals. We all know that chicken's neck was wrung the moment the photographer finished packing up his gear.

HSUS and Hormel: separated at birth?

2010-12-18T18:55:00.000-08:00

Was reading Wayne Pacelle’s blog and saw a post on the horrific conditions at a Smithfield Foods supplier farm. He talked about the gestation crates…

Asking that animals merely be able to turn around hardly seems like asking too much, especially for a company that had $144 million in profits in the second quarter. But it’s the right thing to do.

It’s the right thing to do. Those words had a familiar ring. I went back to the Hormel site on humane treatment and there it was.

This is simply about treating animals humanely because it’s the right thing to do.

But that’s a common enough expression. One of the world’s biggest slaughterers couldn’t have any more overlap with the world’s biggest animal advocacy organization. Well, they do cite the same authorities…

Wayne Pacelle: “Dr. Temple Grandin, among the world’s foremost farm handling experts, properly observed that these crates need to be phased out.”

Hormel, on their website, takes great pride in being a Temple Grandin-approved slaughterer (though, in fairness, it’s hard to find any deep-pocketed animal slaughtering company that isn’t TemplGrandin-approved).

Temple Grandin says, “[Hormel] has been a leader in working with university researchers on studies that will improve animal welfare”

Okay, how do Hormel and HSUS react to undercover videos documenting abuse of pigs?

Hormel on the video taken in one of their supplier farms: “We find the images in the video appalling.”

Wayne Pacelle: "It is shocking to see these intelligent curious animals immobilized in the crates with bloodied heads and gaping wounds … endure rough handling with no veterinarian in sight."

No veterinarian in sight. The Hormel PR people are nodding in unison. We couldn’t agree more. We have a head veterinarian. His name is Daryl Olsen. According to the Hormel website, Daryl Olsen loves animals and takes pride in producing top quality hogs. Proper judicious use of antibiotics is going to ensure the consumer a better product in the end, he says.

But can we digress back to Wayne Pacelle talking about the shock of seeing “these intelligent curious animals immobilized.”

As intelligent and curious animals these pigs might wonder how you could film undercover videos and document the horrific abuses and hold press conferences about said horrific abuses but not once in all your many pages of literature offer up the suggestion that people could end the abuse of these animals by not eating them. Here’s your big opportunity, HSUS. Separate yourself from Hormel. If people stopped eating pigs, you’d never see another video like this again.

Silence…

Wayne? Wayne? There's a blank page on your blog, just waiting for you.

Hey, did you hear the latest on Michael Vick? I put a photo of him on my blog, addressing some school kids on the importance of treating pets with kindness.

Yeah, Michael Vick's having a great season, getting plenty of ink, and if the HSUS can position itself as his moral rehabilitator, it could mean plenty of $$$. But put it somewhere, anywhere, in your blog. Tell people they can stop consuming animal products. It isn’t hard to do. A vegan diet is surprisingly delicious. Far healthier than an animal-based diet. Yeah, we know, Reducing the consumption of meat is in one of your campaigns, part of the Three R’s. But instead of Reduce, why not Eliminate? It doesn’t begin with the letter R and "Two R’s and one E" doesn’t have the same sing-song catchiness as the Three R’s.

Okay, how about an asterik next to Reduce? Then way down at the bottom in mouse type, so none of your donors can see it unless they squint, say, “If you really want to do your part to make sure pigs aren’t treated this way, don’t reduce your consumption of animal products, stop. Just like that. Stop. Go vegan."

To paraphrase you, Wayne Pacelle, asking that you merely offer up the possibility that people stop consuming animals hardly seems like asking too much, especially for an animal advocacy organization that had $97 million in donations last year.

But you won’t do it because of that same R word. Reduced, as in reduced donations. Look, nobody’s asking you to invade your donors’ suburbs with leaflets. Just say the word. Once. Vegan. Or maybe the same way a child is forbidden to say the word “fuck” the Humane Society can never use the word "vegan." Their donors eat meat, they don’t want to offend and that’s that. And, of course, there are only so many hours in the day. Waste time on a post advocating veganism and you might not be able to weigh in on that day’s developments in the ongoing saga of of Michael Vick’s rehabilitation and his worthiness for dog ownership.

HuffPo readers don’t like having their animal rights credentials challenged

2010-12-16T08:28:00.000-08:00

Sarah Palin said on some caribou-killing reality show, “Unless you’ve never worn leather shoes, sat on a leather sofa, or eaten meat, save your condemnation.”

This really pissed off screenwriter/playright Aaron Sorkin. He wrote an angry essay in the Huffington Post. He said, unlike Sarah Palin, he took no pleasure in the slaughter of animals whose flesh he consumed.

Prof Gary Francione wrote a brilliant rebuttal to Aaron Sorkin.

You object to her killing the caribou because it was unnecessary; she did it because she enjoys it. And why do you eat meat and animal products? That’s a rhetorical question. There’s only one answer: because you enjoy it.

The fact that you pay someone else to do the dirty work is morally irrelevant. I teach criminal law. If you pay someone to kill another human, try telling the judge that the killer actually enjoyed the act of killing but that you just paid for it. The judge will tell you that you’re both guilty of murder. You’re both equally culpable.

Of course Prof. Francione’s post didn’t get printed. People with views like his can’t enter through the front door of the Huffington Post. He gets relegated to the comments section. And the HuffPo progressives didn’t like what he had to say. One wrote...

I am grateful for the animals that bring me comfort and sustenance. I go to great lengths to buy from caring, humane farms where the ranchers show genuine concern for their animals. I pay nearly twice as much, in some cases, to avoid buying from farms whose conditions I don’t approve of.

He pays nearly twice as much. He goes to the grass fed, open range meat section in places like Whole Foods, where none of the meat is injected with hormones, but it’s injected with plenty of clean conscience. The clean conscience is well worth paying nearly twice as much for. The progressive can enjoy the juicy meat while at the same time ridiculing people like Sarah Palin for their barbaric treatment of animals. She’s a savage. A neandretahal. Man, this steak tastes great. But now here comes this law professor, this abolitionist, saying the progressive eater of flesh is no better Sarah Palin, and the clean conscience he paid good money for at Whole Foods is spoiled. Spoiled conscience is way worse than spoiled meat. The professive wants his money back.

What about the gratitude he feels for the animals who bring him comfort and sustenance? He’s got a point there. The gratitude of a progressive gives meaning to any farm animal’s death. If his throat is slit merely to feet the belly of some dirty Walmart heathen, forget it, the steer will struggle like crazy to avoid walking town the Temple-Grandin designed cattle chute. But if his death can bring about the gratitude of a progressive, he can’t get to the stun bolt gun fast enough. The commenter continues...

I refuse to be lumped in with people who send trusting companions out to fight and die, or people who dance around a dead moose so people think they’re a maverick.

He can’t tolerate being in the same group portrait as people like Sarah Palin and the factory farmers. In a way he’s right. He can’t be lumped in with her. She at least acknowledges her disregard of the animal’s interest in living.

Next commeneter says to Prof. Francione…

I’m not sure what you mean by serious animal advocacy but I know from my own personal experience that there are a great many serious animal advocates and organizations out there accomplishing wonderful things, one baby step at a time.

One baby step at a time. You hear this one all the time. You heard it constantly during the HSUS campaign for Prop 2. Baby steps. We insist on bigger cages for laying hens because that’s all the industry will give us. Baby steps. People won’t realistically stop eating meat. We can’t stop the animal from being slaughtered, but we can give him a better life before it happens.

They’re taking the longer view. They’re realists. Very hungry realists. And baby steps permit these "serious animal advocates" to fight for an animal's rights at the same time they’re consuming that animal’s flesh. It’s quite a sleight of hand and they manage to pull it off. They campaign for bigger cages with fire in their eyes and animal flesh in their bellies. And they don’t appreciate someone like Prof. Francione pointing out their hyprocrisy.

The 2010 class inducted into the Meat Industry Hall of Fame

2010-12-11T23:45:00.000-08:00

You think of the people who keep the slaughterhouses running and you imagine them forcing their gaze away, hardening themselves. The ceaseless screams of terror infect their dreams. They beg forgiveness every sleepless night.

Actually, it doesn’t bother them much at all. They think it’s kind of cool. So cool they set up a Meat Industry Hall of Fame to honor the most prolific killers among them. In a black tie ceremony in conjunction with the meat processors outlook convention, they recently had the induction ceremonies for the class of 2010.

There was plenty of misty-eyed camaraderie as the inductees and their presenters looked back on their careers. These aren’t some local yokels who brought down a few deer. This is the A list. We’re talking numbers that will never be approached. Six of them alone can claim credit for the torture and slaughter of over 50 billion farm animals. These six would be would Dave Thomas, Founder of Wendy’s, Ray Kroc, founder of McDonald’s, Colonel Harlan Sanders, Joel Johnson, former president, CEO and Chairman of Hormel Foods and Richard Bond, former CEO and president of Tyson Foods.

(By the way, what are those inductees holding in their group photo? Do the trophies come in the form of miniaturized gulliotines? Maybe they don't want to risk missing out on a kill, even on the day of their induction. That's the kind of attention to detail that got them into the Hall of Fame in the first place.)

Not all the inductees are as famous as the big six. You had H. Kenneth Johnson, former vice president of the National Live Stock and Meat Board who was credited with being “one of the first people to educate the industry about listening to consumers and developing more convenient products to meet their needs.” Just as the baseball Hall of Fame has room for singles hitters next to the sluggers, the Meat Industry Hall of Fame can’t consist only of fast food company CEO’s. It needs its H. Kenneth Johnsons too.

You had Deven Scott, former executive vice president of the North American Meat Processors Association, “who received a spontaneous standing ovation in recognition of a long and influential career spent serving the industry in positions as the NAMP and at the American Meat Institute.” The spontaneous standing ovation couldn’t have come as a surprise. After all, his record seven National Provisioner cover photos is unlikely to be equaled.

Of course, what would a Hall of Fame induction be without controversy? Where were the slaughterhouse workers caught on video beating a downed cow with a metal pole? Granted, they’ve only slaughtered a fraction of the cattle slaughtered by some of the big boys. But numbers don’t tell the whole story. They found creative ways of inflicting pain. Surely there’s a place for people like this in the Meat Industry Hall of Fame.

Meanwhile, outside the ceremony there were cries of speciesism, progressive ranchers asking why this Hall of Fame class was limited to people. Plenty of cattle achieved greatness too. They’re the ones shackle hoisted and stun bolted, who offered their bodies to the quartering saw and their seared flesh to so many satisfied meat lovers. They’re the ones who marched proudly down the Temple Grandin-designed cattle chutes, eager to bring glory to Wendy’s and McDonald’s. (Anyone who questions the cattle’s Hall of Fame credentials can find detailed accounts of their prolific self-slaughtering achievements here.) There would be no Wendy’s old fashioned hamburger without the flesh of a steer. Yet, Dave Thomas gets inducted and all the cattle his company slaughtered are mere footnotes. You can’t expect this injustice to be rectified overnight. It’s good to know there are people out there working quietly behind the scenes to put an end to this unfortunate speciesism and bias. The veterans committee would do well to start drawing up a list of worthy cattle for next year’s class.

But enough with the controversy. It’s a time of celebration. According to the awe-struck correspondent from National Provisioner, “the inductees spoke eloquently and at times movingly, about their careers, the milestones they experienced.”

So to all the young dreamers in agricultural schools from Iowa to Kansas, sharpen those blades. Oil up those stun bolt guns. The class of 2011 set records that may never be broken, but soon it will be time for the next generation of killers. It could be your bust that ends up next to the bust of Dave Thomas and Ray Kroc and Deven Scott at the Meat Industry Hall of Fame.

An account of last year’s Hall of Fame class here.

The Humane Society’s four Rs: reduce, refine, replace and rationalize.

2010-12-09T22:41:00.001-08:00

The HSUS promotes eating with conscience and embracing the Three Rs.

The three R’s: Reduce, refine and replace. Three simple actions can reduce the suffering of billions of farm animals on factory farms.

The fourth R: Rationalize. This one simple action can reduce the guilt felt by people who want to advocate for animal rights without giving up the taste of their flesh.

Morality is like the cage of a laying hen. Just as we in the HSUS fight for bigger cages, we also advocate expanding the definition of animal welfare. The bigger cages permit the laying hens to turn around freely and fully extend their limbs. Our new expanded definition of animal welfare gives us plenty of room to consume animal flesh and still pass ourselves off as advocates of the animals we eat.

We can sign petitions in support of bigger cages for farm animals with one hand while holding a chicken sandwich with the other. Hypocrisy? Insanity? Not if you embrace the fourth R.

The meeting of Michael Pollan and Steer 534

2010-12-07T22:25:00.000-08:00

Michael Pollan decided to raise his own steer and bring it to slaughter so he could observe the entire process. He refers to the steer as 534. It’s hard to read the “Fresh Air” transcript of Michael Pollan telling Terry Gross about his acquisition of Steer 534 without thinking of those eharmony TV ads.

Michael Pollan: Well, I didn’t know the first thing about picking animals … So I asked the ranchers, you know, How do you find a good one?

Steer 534: Most of the cattle around here grow up assuming they’ll get picked by a buyer from McDonald’s, places like that. I always held out for something better. I wanted someone who cared about me before he slaughtered me.

Michael Pollan: And the ranchers said, when you’re buying beef flesh, you’re looking for a straight back, really even line without any kind of sway, and wide hips, or hindquarters, as they call them, and broad shoulders. And basically you’re looking for a really strong, level and plump frame on which to hang a lot of meat.

Steer 534: When I saw Michael walk into the field with the rancher, I held my breath. I mean, Michael Pollan. The author who wrote so eloquently about letting us romp around in the fields before it’s time for the slaughterhouse. Some cattle want ranchers that treat them bad before they slit their necks. It’s a self-esteem issue.

Michael Pollan: So I spotted this one … a nice stout animal. But he also had these three white blazes on his face. It was very distinctive … so that’s the one I picked.

Steer 534: Michael was stooped over, shaved head. Kind of an effete intellecutual looking guy. Not the hard muscled farm people I’m used to at all. He had this way about him. He wouldn’t look you directly in the eye. Like he felt guilty or something. It was so endearing. I mean he was after the same thing as all the others, but you know...

Michael Pollan: 534 was born on the Blair brothers’ ranch, which is a beautiful spread of 11,000 acres outside Sturgis, South Dakota.

Steer 534: just a small steer from South Dakota. Never in my wildest dreams did I think … I mean, come on, he’s Michael Pollan.

Michael Pollan: And as soon as he could stand up and begin nursing from his mother … he’s number 534, she’s number 9534 … they send him out to pastures … you know, incredible salad bar of gorgeous native grass that kind of form a pelt in this ranch. It’s an idyllic setting. And, you know, these are the best months of his life, I dare say.

Steer 534: Best month of my life? That would be November. The first week. I’ll never forget it.

Michael Pollan: I met 534 the first week of November and chose him so he was already living the confined life…

Steer 534: I mean you don’t want to be killed by just anyone. It’s a once in a lifetime event, so you want to find the right person. Most of my friends end up in a can of Dinty Moore stew or maybe a quarter pounder with cheese. I’m like, no thank you, I’m holding out for someone who eats me with consciousness, ceremony and respect.

Michael Pollan: And, you know, my big question, as I look ahead to what’s going to happen to number 534 is, will he know when he’s traveling up that ramp at the National Beef plant … this is his destiny right now in June … will he know what’s about to happen to him?

Steer 534: Michael is so considerate. How many people are compassionate enough to care what we’re thinking when we’re about to be slaughtered?

Michael Pollan: And I asked Temple Grandin this. And she is the best student of the animal point of view I think we have. And she said she very carefully observed animals going through the chutes … that take them to their death. And she detected no difference in their reaction. And she claims there would be a whole lot more agitation on the part of the animal if they were getting any kind of inkling what lay ahead down the end of this ramp.

Steer 534: can you believe it? He cared enough about me to actually ask Temple Grandin. I mean she’s a busy woman, what with her consulting gig at McDonald’s and her slaughterhouse designing and all .. yet Michael thought enough about me to ask her if we know we’re about to die. It was so incredibly thoughtful of him. I didn't have the heart to tell him of course we know we're about to die. His sense of self-righteousness is so adorable. I didn't want to change it in any way.

Michael Pollan: The slaughterhouse has promised me a box of steaks from 534, and I feel obliged to eat them.

Steer 534: That’s the kind of guy my Michael is. I know how much he prefers grass-fed beef and other forms of beef that are better for him and more defensible from an environmental perspective. But he’s going to accept the box of steaks carved from my carcass after I’m slaughtered because of his affection for me. I count my blessings every day that with a world of cattle out there, a guy who could have the steer of his choice picked little old me.

The beef industry is out to get MIchael Pollan.

2010-12-05T14:58:00.001-08:00

There’s a Mother Jones article entitled Big Meat vs. Michael Pollan. And in interviews, Michael Pollan claims the beef industry is out to get him…

Michael Pollan rubs his hand over the hot motor oil sweat of his forehead. His eyes go to the chandelier. Shit, he didn’t check that yet. Maybe the meat industry thugs hid their listening devices in there. He grabs a screwdriver, loosens the plate from the ceiling. Removes the outer shell and shines his maglite into the socket cap. There. Could be light bulb filament, but you never know with the meat industry and their high-tech listening devices. He removes it and washes it down the disposal. Imagining the meat industry ops in their truck, sound of the garbage disposal exploding their ears, Michael Pollan laughs out loud, harsh laughter like his voice is scraping over metal. But then he sees a shadowy form moving outside the window. He peels back the curtain. It’s a guy from Time Warner Cable. Shit. Michael Pollan doesn’t have cable. It must be one of the meat industry ops in disguise. Michael Pollan falls to the ground so the op can’t detect him with his body heat detector. How can he convince the meat industry to leave him alone? Maybe he could go the dairy council, cut a deal. He doesn’t talk as much about dairy in his books. But, shit, who’s he kidding? They have it out for him too. Who can he trust? Joel Salatin, the friendly farmer from Polyface farm. He takes out the pre-paid cellphone he bought earlier in the day and dials.

“Joel, it’s Michael.”

“Michael, speak up, I’m butchering one of the sheep and I can’t hear you over her bleating.”

"Which sheep?"

"Sally."

"I remember feeding her on your farm. She’d bounce around and rub her nuzzle against me. She was adorable."

"Still is. Will be for a couple more seconds, too."

“That's why the beef industry’s after me. They read my books talking about all the happy animals on farms like yours and they think I’m against slaughtering cattle.”

“I’ll vouch for you. Hell, when you were at my farm we slaughtered cattle, pigs, chickens, rabbits, turkeys, sheep…"

"It’s not good enough for them. I criticize factory farms in my books.”

"You’re only doing it to make a buck. The beef people ought to be okay with that. Don’t understand how they can be after you. You’ve done more to ease peoples’ consciences and get them feeling good about eating animal flesh than just about anyone."

"Thanks, Joel, I appreciate the support. Shhh, there’s a clicking sound on the line!

"That clicking ain't on the line, Michael, I’m re-loading my stun bolt gun."

"The line’s tapped! It's the beef council. They're on to us!"

Michael Pollan slams down the phone. He slips out the back door. he turns into a dark alley and runs.

Michael Pollan eats animals with consciousness, ceremony and respect.

2010-12-03T22:09:00.005-08:00

An Animal’s Place is a long article that starts with Michael Pollan recounting his first opening “Animal Liberation” while eating “a rib-eyed steak cooked medium rare,” delighting in the details of his steak as a way of reassuring his meat-eating, book-buying readers, “if in parts of this article I should appear to question the ethics of consuming animal products, don’t worry, it’s a long article, you can rest assured I’ll circle back and justify meat eating in the end.”

The arguments against killing animals for human pleasure seem to have caught Michael Pollan by surprise. He spends the first hundred paragraphs of the article being astounded by simple ideas. “Okay the suffering of animals is a legitimate problem,” he says, “but the world is full of problems and surely human problems must come first. But, hold on, “there’s no reason I can’t devote myself to solving humankind’s problems while being a vegetarian…”

Eventually, he gets to the horrors of the factory farms. He punctuates the harsh description with a sheepish apology. “Simply reciting these facts … makes me sound like one of those animal people, doesn’t it? I don’t mean to … it certainly wasn’t my intention to ruin anyone’s breakfast.”

And if you read further, I’ll redeem myself, proving I’m not one of those animal people by giving you a feel-good way of eating meat and feeling morally upright at the same time, which can best be summarized thusly: Animals may have an interest in not being killed, I’ll admit that, but damn their flesh tastes mighty fine so I’m going to find me a rationalization. I’ll first convince myself consumption of meat is a biological invetiability I’m helpless to resist. But I won’t stop there. Because I want to feel more than helpless. I want to feel a sense of moral purity when I chew the flesh of animals so I’ll pay a visit to a family farm overflowing with animal happiness.

"Before you swear off meat entirely, let me describe a very different kind of animal farm," he says, and he takes us to Polyface Farm. “Here, Joel Salatin and his family raise six different food animals … in an intricate dance of symbiosis designed to allow each species, in Salatin’s words, 'to fully express it’s physiological distinctiveness.'” At least for the few months it has remaining before Joel Salatin expresses his species’ psychological distinctiveness and kills the animals for money.

And dance of symbiosis? Are those randomly splattered words supposed to mean something or has Polyface Farm put Michael Pollan in some kind of ecstatic trance? He writes of “hens fanning out over the pasture .. a diet of grubs and grass makes for exceptionally tasty eggs and contented chickens … meanwhile the pigs are in the barn turning the compost.” When Michael Pollan starts rhapsodizing like this, you know he’s about ready to pick up his knife and fork and dig into another a rationalization.

"This is where, it seems to me, animal rightists betray a profound ignorance of the workings of nature. To say of one of Joel Salatin’s caged chickens that the life of freedom is to be preferred betrays an ignorance about chicken’s preferences.”

Life of freedom? Nobody’s saying Joel Salatin’s chickens want to thumb it across the country like Jack Kerouac. They want freedom to live out their lives without having their necks slit. But Michael Polllan is hell bent on ridiculing the his straw dog animal rightists.

"To many animal rightists, even Polyface Farm is a death camp. But to look at these animals is to see that as the sentimental conceit it is."

And why is it a sentimental conceit? Because these animals are happy.

"Chickens live like chickens, his cows like cows; pigs, pigs ... animal happiness is unmistakable. and here I was seeing it in abundance."

Nothing would make these animals happier than to wind up in the belly of a best-selling author. Nothing would make the best-selling author happier, either. Great tasting sausage with the happy awareness – yes, he too is happy; everyone’s happy on Polyface farm – that he’s not like those unrefined rubes who eat their slaughterhouse meat. Michael Pollack had pangs of conscience and he did something about it. He went through agonizing self-reflection and then Joel Salatin and Polyface farm showed him the light. You can have it all. Soft, chewy flesh and a country-fresh rationalization to boot. These animals have it good. “a mutualism between species,” Michael Pollan says. They couldn’t subsist in the wild. They’re grateful for the life farms like Polyface give them. They’d hoist the blade themselves if they only had hands.

But they don’t have to because Joel Salatin does it for them. Joel is a religious man who understands “people have a soul; animals don’t. It’s a bedrock belief of mine. Unlike us, animals are not created in God’s image, so when they die, they just die.” Joel’s bedrock belief just happens to coincide with the source of his income. Funny how that works.

Michael Pollan still can't over how good these animals have it, pre-slaughter.

"For any animal, happiness seems to consist in the opportunity to express its creaturely character -- it’s essential pigness or wolfness or chickenness."

And here Michael Pollan expresses his essential Michael Pollanness.

"Were the walls of our meat industry to become transparent … maybe when we did eat animals, we’d eat them with the consciousness, ceremony and respect they deserve."

Well when he puts it that way. What animal wouldn’t jump at the opportunity to have its neck slit for the opportunity to be eaten by Michael Pollan with consciousness, ceremony and respect?

Give it up for PETA Proggy Award-winning slaughterhouse designer, Temple Grandin.

2010-12-01T18:09:00.014-08:00

PETA gives out its annual Proggy Award to people and companies for “innovative, animal-friendly achievements.” Looking over past recipients, I saw an unexpected name. 2004, in the visionary category, Temple Grandin. Temple Grandin? The famed designer of more efficient slaughterhouses? Surely there had to be another Temple Grandin out there, a visionary who fought to challenge laws defining animals as property, or maybe someone who documented abuses in some of her namesake's slaughterhouses.

I went to the slaughterhouse designer’s website and there it was in the bio, not far from the picture of one of her slaughterhouses. “Winner of PETA’s 2004 Proggy Award.” That made 2004 a big year for Temple Grandin on the awards front because I believe the Beef Council awarded her the 2004 Stun Bolty award for the same innovations. And the pork council presented her with its 2004 honorary pig scalder. Or was that the 2005 honorary pig scalder? It’s hard to keep the dates straight.

So what does the award winner have to say about her work with animals. No, “Ever since I was a little girl playing with my puppy I knew I had to help animals” for Temple Grandin.

Quiet handling of cattle and pigs is impossible if animals slip or fall during handling. Animals tend to panic if they slip even a little bit. If cattle are constantly agitated while standing in a race, stun box or restraining chute, this is often due to slipping. On ramps and in restraining chutes the cleats must be spaced to fit the stride width of the animal. This prevents the hoof from slipping between the cleats … you can download blueprints of cattle pen layouts that will reduce stress on cattle and improve handling efficiency.

There you have it. You want to be a PETA-honored animals rights advocate, don’t waste your time leafleting. Learn how to design curved-chute handling systems and non-slip flooring. It’s not only PETA that raves about the Temple Grandin slaughterhouses. Carghill is another big fan of her animal-friendly achievements. “She has been instrumental in helping us enhance our animal handling systems and programs at our beef and pork facilities," a Carghill executive said.

Wonder who next year’s Proggy award winner might be. Maybe a hunter who by slaughtering vast numbers of animals prevented them from breeding, thereby protecting the offspring they would have had from suffering a slow, painful death inflicted by future generations of hunters.

Or the lab worker whose cruel practice of flooding rabbits’ eyes with toxins raises awareness of the cruel practice of flooding rabbits’ eyes with toxins. The citation might read, "congratulations. If you didn’t pour toxins into the eyes of rabbits, nobody would know people did such a terrible thing. By raising our awareness, you give us the opportunity to protest against this horrific act. For your courageous consciousness raising, PETA hereby presents you with the coveted Proggy Award."

The evolution of man.

2010-11-29T20:39:00.022-08:00

“The time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men.”

-- Da Vinci

500 years after Da Vicini...

Well, at least he got the Mona Lisa right.

Stop Cruelty now. Support Prop 2: two years later

2010-11-27T20:50:00.014-08:00

I was biking on San Vicente in Santa Monica and I saw a Jeep with a “Stop Cruelty Now. Support Prop 2” bumper sticker. Prop 2, of course, was on the California ballot two years ago. Official title: Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act. It “prohibits the confining of certain farm animals in a manner that does not allow them to turn around freely, lie down, stand up, and fully extend their limbs.” Because getting your neck slit or having a stun bolt driven through your brain without first having the opportunity to extend your limbs and turn around freely is utter savagery.

Bill passed. Cruelty stopped. The farm animals who keep ending up on dinner menus across California might dispute that last part, but that’s raining on the parade, man. It passed. 63% of the vote. The progressive voters of Californaia did it. The egg and meat industries tried to fight but the compassion of the people prevailed. The chicken cordon bleu tasted more tender than ever election night 2008 as California progressives gathered to savor the victory. The vibe was so good it’s no wonder dude in the Jeep parked on San Vicente doesn’t want to let go. Keep the “Stop cruelty now. Vote prop 2” bumper sticker pasted on his bumper and maybe he’ll convince others out there to stop cruelty. Maybe a hot babe totally into social conscience and all that will see it and…

I go to the Santa Monica open market twice a week. I’ve signed petitions. I’ve brushed my hemp shopping bag against the hemp bags of California progressives. I’ve asked them about Prop 2. I said I thought the first step in “ending cruelty now” was to stop consuming animal products. The progressives told me where I erred. My first mistake was I took the word “now” far too literally. Now was a rallying cry. It’s symbolic. The fight against animal cruelty won’t be won overnight. Didn't I understand how much power the meat industry has? We've got to take baby steps. Prop 2 is a step in the right direction.

“It’s true,” I said, “you can’t eliminate the meat producers, but you, you personally, you could reduce demand for their products by one person if you stopped consuming animal products this very minute. Then you really would be stopping cruelty now.”

It was pretty uncool of me to call the progressives out like that. Like I was implying they weren’t part of the struggle for animal rights just because they eat meat. Like the fact that they enjoy a good juicy burger now and then somehow disqualifies them from caring about the well-being of the steer that provided the flesh for that burger. I’m such an asshole. I’ll be the first to admit it. Okay, I do my best to understand. The progressives want to stop cruelty now. They give the progressive version of the high-five when a small group of farm animals is given a few extra feet of cage space, effective 2015 (it takes that long to re-design cages, apparently). So why won’t these progressives stop consuming animal products? I’ll summarize, clarify, exaggerate, their most common reasons:

Sure, we could give up eating meat, but the thing about that is, I mean the last thing we as animal rights advocates want to project is a holier than thou image. If I went ahead and stopped eating animal flesh before the rest of the world was ready for it, I’d be like saying I’m better than you. That turns people off so fast. They’ll never hear our message.

Well, when I say stop cruelty now, I don’t mean now as is in this very minute. I was thinking more like, let’s see, I’m twenty seven now, say I live to be eighty, I’d say ninety but all this animal flesh I eat’s bound to be taking some years off, so, anyway, when I say stop cruelty now, I mean stop it in fifty three years, when I die, and I won't have to give up the taste i love.

Have you ever been to the restaurants on Montana? You’re like eliminating every option on the menu.

The rough and final drafts of the Tyson mission statement on animal well-being

2009-05-08T05:45:00.008-07:00

The Final Draft:

The rough draft:

The PR department prepared a statement for me to read? Let's see it. "The Tyson Mission Statement on animal well-being" ... wait, this is a joke, isn't it? A mission statement on animal well-being? Was it Charlie who put you guys up to this? Good one, Charlie! You got me. Back to work, everybody. What? It's for real, you say? People care about how we treat the chickens? Undercover videos of abuse? You mean that video you showed me depicted animal abuse? I thought the folks from corporate communications made that to inspire the troops. Okay, fine. The Tyson mission statement on animal well-being. At Tyson foods, it's our mission to kill as many of the buggers as we can as fast as we can and we care about their well-being about as much as I care about this cockroach under my shoe. What? That's not what the statement you handed me said? I'll have to put on my glasses. Okay. Here's we go. Tyson Foods is committed to the well-being ... hee hee, I'm sorry, I can't read that with a straight face. Give me a minute. Okay, I'm ready. Tyson Foods is committed to the well-being, proper handling and humane slaughter ... now that part sounds more like it. Take out the "humane" in front of "slaughter" and you've got yourself a mission statement. Okay, fine, "humane" stays in. I pay you PR folks good money so I'll listen to you this time. Where was I? We're committed to the proper handling. You wrap your hands around the neck and twist. Heh heh. We pledge our diligence in leading the industry pursuit of new and improved methods of denying allegations of animal cruelty. I'm getting the hang of it, aren't I? I'm a natural. I don't need you suck-ups from corporate communications to hold my hand through this thing. What's this next part? "Stewards of the animals we work with every day?" Are you serious? I say something like that, I'll be the laughing stock of the entire poultry business. Okay, now I know it's a gag. You got me and you got me good. I know it was Charlie who put you up to this. The stewards of animals we work with every day. That's a classic. Good job, people. I like my employees to have a sense of humor. What comes next? "This is not only the right thing to do, but it is an important moral and ethical obligation." Hee hee! You guys are too funny. I practically peed my pants when I read that one. You tell Charlie I owe him one. Funny stuff, funny stuff!

Other rough and final drafts here and here.

Young, rebellious steer rejects the life of his elders

2009-05-05T19:25:00.018-07:00

-- Your father was a beef burrito, his father was a beef burrito. But it's not good enough for you.

-- Look, I don't want to be slaughtered at one of those impersonal factory farms, eaten by people who care nothing about our well-being. I want to be eaten by people who treat us with kindness and compassion before they slaughter us. I want to be an animal welfare-approved piece of steak, purchased by a progressive shopper who cares so deeply about reducing my suffering that she/he is willing to pay a little extra for a taste of my flesh. You see how I say she/he? I picked it up from them. These people are so sensitive to any and all forms of oppression/domination ... ah, you wouldn't understand. I mean when you're a beef burrito, you'll end up getting eaten by a car full of drunken fraternity guys at two in the morning, guys who couldn't care less about how much you suffered. Not me. I'm going to be eaten by sensitive, refined progressives who sip chardonnay in between bites of my flesh. And believe me, they won't be talking about the hot chicks they want to do, like your drunken frat boys in the drive-thru lane. Not even close. The progressive people who consume my flesh will be discussing important things, like saving the planet, reducing their carbon footprints, making sure animals like us are treated humanely.

-- You'll still be dead.

-- yes, but I'll die knowing my flesh will soon give sustenance to people who are fighting to give us a better life.

-- If these people care so much about your suffering, why do they eat you?

-- Everything is so black and white with you. These progressives are comfortable with ambiguity. They can believe passionately in reducing our suffering and still eat us.

-- How?

-- How should I know? I'm only a steer. I'm not a human progressive. If I were, I'd know the answer but I'm not. So fuck off, I don't give a fuck if grandad was a beef burrito or a Whopper or a Big Mac. I'm going to be an Animal Welfare-Approved piece of steak eaten by a progressive and that's fucking that.

We can stop worrying about meat consumption causing global warming. The American Meat Institute says so.

2009-04-24T07:46:00.009-07:00

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been going around saying,

...animal agriculture sector is responsible for 18% of human-induced greenhouse emissions, greater than the share contributed by the transportation sector.

Not so fast. According to the American Meat Institute, the number is really 2.8%. It's about time we had some unbiased figures to counter the UN report. The sustainable food people can breathe a sigh of relief. Now whenever anyone accuses them of hypocritically ignoring the single biggest contributor to global warming, they can reply, "Well according to the American Meat Institute..."

The Animal Welfare Society cites the study too. In a post about the connection between meat consumption and global warming they say,

On first glance, it may seem that the only options are to ignore our impending climatic crisis or to cut out meat altogether. But rather than throwing the baby out with the bathwater perhaps there is a way to raise farm animals sustainability, and to leave a lighter footprint on the planet.

In other words, come on, folks, we've managed to present ourselves as concerned with the welfare of animals while we continue to consume their flesh. If we can pull off that sleight of hand, I'm sure we can also continue to consider ourselves good progressive environmentalists without giving up the meat we crave.

The American Rationalization Institute has a special award for the Animal Welfare Society, Farm Forward, Humane Farm Animal Care and sustainable food organizations. They'll all be dueling for the coveted Golden Rationalization Award and accompanying Happy Slaughtered Steer trophy, to be presented at the annual gathering, where the dinner menu will include thick, juicy steaks from animals lovingly slaughtered by humane family farmers.

The man explains to the steer why human animals have moral status and non-human animals don't

2009-04-18T16:28:00.007-07:00

"In these last few minutes you have left, I'm going to try and explain to you my justification for holding this stun bolt gun to your head. The simplest way I can put it -- and, believe me, I know I have to dumb things down for you -- is we humans have moral status and you non-humans don't. The thing that gives me moral status is my ability to step away from my actions and contemplate them, whereas you're just a bundle of sensations. You're 'engaged in conscious activities but you're not conscious of them' is how the philosopher Christine Korsgaard puts it. Let me give you an example. The stun bolt gun I'm pressing against your head is causing you fear. I can feel you tremble, I can see your eyes round with terror. The reason for this irrational terror is you lack the ability to step back and understand you're one of the few cattle fortunate enough to be raised and slaughtered humanely. When we're finished here and your flesh gets chopped up and wrapped in cellophane, there's going to be a little sticker that says, 'Certified Humane,' which will tell people you were raised and slaughtered in a manner that met the Humane Farm Animal Care Program standards. If you possessed the capacity to understand this, you'd be calm and thankful right now. You'd understand you're getting the best possible treatment from considerate people willing to pay a little extra for your flesh to ensure you have a happy life. Come to think of it, that's another thing that separates us human animals from you non-human animals. The capacity to feel gratitude. When someone does me a good turn, I thank them. But look at you quivering and shaking in fear, completely lacking in gratitude to all those folks willing to provide you with this humane termination of your life. You also don't appear the slightest big grateful that I took the time away from my busy schedule to explain all this to you when there's a backlog of other cattle I have to slaughter humanely. You still don't get the distinction between us, do you? I'll try one last time. Not only am I about to fire this captive bolt into your brain, I'm also capable of contemplating that action and deriving pleasure from it, which gives me the moral status you lack. Well, I think that's enough philosophizing for today."

Pet sitter sentenced to probation for over-feeding potbellied pig

2009-04-14T06:33:00.005-07:00

A Minnesota pet sitter accused of animal abuse for letting a potbellied pig triple her weight was fined $1,000 and sentenced to a year of probation. So how could the pet sitter have avoided the animal cruelty charges? Simple. Confine the pig in a cage too small for her to turn around in, shoot a captive stun bolt into her brain, then while the stunned pig is still blinking and struggling, dunk her in a tank of scalding water to loosen her hide for skinning. After the flesh of the finally-dead pig is carved off her carcass, invite the sentencing judge over for a nice pork chop dinner. Not only will you avoid charges of animal cruelty, you'll receive lavish praise for your cooking skills and, if you're lucky, maybe even a reciprocating dinner invitation at the judge's house.

The PigCasso Art Show at the World Pork Expo

2009-04-12T05:20:00.032-07:00

June 2-5, the world's pork producers and the usual assortment of groupies and hangers-on will be descending on the Iowa State Fairgrounds for the 20th annual World Pork Expo. They'll listen to speakers, attend seminars and events and hobnob with other movers and shakers in an industry that's optimistically expecting to produce just under 100 million metric tons worth of pig flesh for human consumption in 2009. The speakers and topics aren't up on the site yet. Maybe the editor of National Provisioner will kick things off by whipping the attendees into a frenzy with one of her diatribes against the sinister animal rights activists. PR experts will conduct role playing seminars on how to feign moral indignation when the next undercover slaughterhouse video surfaces. The attendees will need to unwind a little too. Along with music and a golf outing, the website says there's going to be a clay target shooting competition. There'll also be plenty of memorabilia, like the commemorative toy tractor. Of course no World Pork Expo would be complete without the breathless reporters from National Hog Farmer Magazine taking photos of the VIP's as they arrive.

Not so predictable is the PigCasso art show. You know at the very top of the achievements section of some ambitious PR executive's resume it says, "Came up with the name PigCasso for the Annual World Pork Expo art competition." Meanwhile, this executive's rival, whose LichtenSwine was the runner-up, is left to curse fate and a naming committee whose superficial knowledge of art history biased them in favor of the bigger, better known names.

Last year, Herbert Goodwin, of Gary, Indiana, won Best of Show for his painting, "Pork Producer." He won $400 and a ribbon. What is it with pig slaughterers and their ribbons? It's kind of reached fetish proportions. Ribbons for winning paintings, ribbons for soon-to-be-slaughtered 4H club victors. How is it that they arbitrarily landed on the ribbon as the ideal way to honor the artistic rendering of the slaughter and the emergence of a new generation of slaughterers?

Michael Frakes, a PigCasso judge, called Pork Producer,

visually engaging, with the use of wonderful details, colors and shadowing ... we had a lot of talent this year. It was a challenge to pick the best in each division.

Each division? As if discovering an art competition is part of the World Pork Expo weren't paradigm-shifting enough. Now we find out there's multiple divisions. It turns out the artists can enter the following categories: Oil, water and soluble PigMents (another coup for the punning PR executive?); Drawings, prints, pastels; sculpture; textiles, fibers, crafts; and photography. Why not break it down even further into style and movement? impressionism, dada, surrealism, post impressionism. Jackson Pollock-type abstract expressionism might be the ideal way of rendering the spattering of blood when the heroic pork producer raises the stun bolt to the head. (The entry form for this year's PigCasso competition isn't on the site yet. The PR release about last year's competition is here.)

Here's the most amazing thing of all: people actually enter this competition. You think of artists contemplating the cosmos, trying to find their place in the world. You go down a list of the artist's themes -- love, redemption, despair, rapture ... pork production? When these artists bought their very first sketchpad, did they have any inkling that at some point in the future they'd be painting helpless pigs confined in crates, dying in train cars, brutalized, shackle hoisted, stun bolted? But maybe those aren't the "wonderful details" judge Michael Frakes was praising in Pork Producer. Maybe like so many of their contemporarites, the World Pork Expo judges have discarded realism in favor of more post-modern sensibilities.

The works with the most detailed rendering of pork production are in the short film category. It's not an official PigCasso category, but if it were, the winner hands down would be the undercover video shot at the Hormel supplier farm in Bayard, Iowa. Frakesean details suffuse the entire film: metal rods, wooden palettes, hard cement floors. Anyone who's seen this video would have to agree with the judge, Satan, who awarded it the first prize ribbon.

Group photo at the local family farm

2009-04-08T19:41:00.007-07:00

Family farmers give animals such a better life because they use the personal touch like naming them, talking to them, and so forth.
--- letter to New York Times in support of family farms

Okay, everybody, group photo. One of the great things about family farms, like the one you all came from, is the compassionate farmers there give you names. That personalizes things. It shows the meat purchasing public the family farmers care about the well-being of their animals. Hold on, is that Luther on the right or Earl? I know Jeb had a white patch over his eye, but I can't see it any more. Ed, or is it Josh, why don't you switch places with Barnaby, or is it Nate? We want the bigger carcasses on the end, smaller carcasses in the middle. I tell you, it was a lot easier telling you guys apart before. Now you all look kind of the same. Come on, strike a pose here, it's not like you guys haven't been photographed before. The photographer from the Animal Welfare Institute came out to your farm and snapped all those shots of you guys in green fields, nuzzling with the farmers. That's right, Jenny, give Bill, or is it Zack, a nice pat, just like you did in that really heartwarming shot taken at your family farm. Hold on, we've got an empty hook in the back, where's Alex? Late as usual. What's that? Okay, we can't wait for Alex. Apparently, he struggled too much and the stun bolt didn't pierce his brain right the first time and now Compassionate Family Farmer Tom has to lock him in place and try again. Ready? Say "cheese." Nah, that's more of a dairy cow thing. Say "porterhouse steak." Cone on, fellows, that's photographer humor. I'm trying to loosen you guys up. Arturo, or are you Fritz, this is way too frustrating, you're blocking Bertrand, or is it Elmore? I swear, next time I agree to do a group portrait of the happy cattle at the family farm, I'm only doing the before shots, not the after.

letters, letters, letters

2009-04-05T18:34:00.005-07:00

So many letters in response to that New York Times article (in the previous post) about how the author learned to love goat meat. A lot of recipe sharing and gratitude for being turned on to a new kind of meat, a few disgusted vegans and vegetarians, some aggressive rebuttals from carnivores who, like Moses receiving the tablets, have had revealed to them the truth that mankind was designed to eat meat. On to some of the letters. A rancher in Montana wrote...

I wanted to address, as a rancher, some of the concerns that I have seen expressed from those who believe a goat, or any meat for that matter, is not to be eaten.Many of us who raise livestock as independent producers are just as sickened as my vegetarian friends at the site [sic] of confined animal feeding operations ... Goats are ... truly a pleasure to raise. The most difficult time of year is when it comes time to kill. I sell my animals on the hoof, and if someone wants meat I will then process it for them after they own it. Even though it is painful every time, I feel like I owe them the most humane end possible. This means they should die with dignity on the ranch they were born to avoid the stress of shipping, etc. It comes quickly and cleanly. Our animals never know fear, anxiety or cruelty ... Every time we eat meat, there was a profound sacrifice made that should be deeply appreciated.
--- MPS, Montana

Dear Sir,

I am writing in reference to the letter by the rancher MPS from Montana. I know this rancher well. He is a good man capable of some of the most breathtaking distortions of reality I have ever encountered. I can't tell you how astounded I am by his ability to convince himself that he is genuinely saddened when he slaughters his goats.

Sincerely Yours,

the Montana Rancher's container of antipsychotic drugs

Dear Times,

I read the condescending letter from the Montana Rancher's antipsychotic drugs. I'm one of the goats that rancher MPS will soon slaughter. It just breaks my heart when I think of how bad he feels that he has to kill me after he named me and patted me on the head every morning. It's not easy for me either. Always in the back of my mind I know the time is coming when rancher MPS has to suffer the trauma of killing me. It pains me to see him in such pain and know I'm responsible for it. I'll try not to bleat in horror when he yanks my head back because that will just intensity his guilt. Don't blame yourself, Rancher MPS. It's not your fault that you have to slit my throat. It's my fault for having flesh people love to eat.

Yours,

Cyrano the Goat.

Dear Times,

I'm writing to clarify a letter from your reader Cyrano the Goat. AS you may have guessed, it wasn't really written by a goat. Rancher MPS projects many of his uncomfortable feelings into a persona which takes the form of a sympathetic goat on its way to slaughter. I'm afraid I have to side with Rancher MPS's container of antipsychotic drugs on this one.

All the best,

Reality

Dear Times,

I don't want to get in the middle of things here, but I can only report what I see in front of me. The goats are terrified. Their eyes look like they're about to explode with fear. Rancher MPS calls it a humane death? he says they never know fear, terror or cruelty? Say what? are we attending the same slaughter?

Sincerely,

Rancher MPS's knife

Times,

REality can go F itself and so can antipsychotic drgus. What the F do they know? REality's basically calling me stupid, saying I can't form my own thoughts, saying rancher MPS is projecting his thoughts onto me. Now that's what I call speciesism. Why don't those F'ing vegans attack reality and antipsychotic drugs instead of decent people like Rancher MPS? As a matter of fact, Rancher MPS does consult with us goats before he slaughters us. He says to us, hey, guys, there's a customer of mine who wants to eat your flesh. He's going to pay me good money. What do you think? And we say to him, we're just grateful to be able to slaughtered by a compassionate person like yourself instead of those horrible factory farms.

Sincerely,

Cyrano the Goat

p.s. you've got me all confused, Reality and antipsychotic drugs, and you're going to pay for it! Maybe I'll start selling you guys by the hoof to the highest bidder. How'd you two punks like that, huh, see you in hell, your worst enemy, Rancher MPS, I mean, Cyrano the Goat.

The joy of discovering a new species to slaughter and consume

2009-04-02T17:55:00.026-07:00

The New York Times food reviewer has discovered goat meat and he's positively giddy about it.

Mine is a tale of a recent convert. Goat ... has been edging its way into yuppier climes ... click-clacking its cloven hooves up and down the coasts..

His exuberant language goes romping and leaping all over the article, like the playful baby goat whose barbecued flesh awakened him to the pleasures of this newfound delicacy.

My conversion moment came when I went to Cabrito and had the goat tacos ... suddenly, I was go go go goat.

Unknowing goat. You thought you wanted to go on living your life. You thought you were happy. You feared the knife. But little did you know your seared flesh would become the muse that inspired the New York Times reviewer to come up with gustatory gems like:

"Go go goat." "Their chin hair is sometimes prodigious enough to carpet Montana." "Think lamb but with a rustle in the bushes. Think jungle lamb."

It goes without saying animals' highest calling is to satisfy human taste buds. But the act of consumption is usually so uninspired. God is great, God is good, pass the meat, do the dishes, watch the TV. But the consumption of you was different, unknown baby goat. Your flesh in the New York Times reviewer's mouth set off a veritable fireworks display of metaphors and word plays and literate sexual innuendoes.

I'd partaken of the bearded ruminant ... yielding a dish that evokes the saturated greenness of a meadow in springtime. ... More recently in an effort at romantic overture, I mail-ordered some wonderfully flavorsome loin chops and ate them with my boyfriend amid candlelight and fresh flowers. Did the goat yield the desired end? Let a veil of decorous restraint fall over the proceedings forthwith, the better to mask a small storm of bleats and four cloven hooves, gently twitching.

There. You see. Not only did human hand slaughter you and human tongue savor your flesh, but a human mind exalted you by describing you in such ornate terms. "partaken of the bearded ruminant." How did the Old Testament poets overlook that one? Ah, but it's not all praise from the New York Times reviewerer.

Indeed, goats have always had a low reputation.

And the source of this low reputation? Goats don't adequately serve the master species. Their flesh lacks the appropriate tenderness. Their bodies aren't well-suited for cosmetics testing. They go about their own lives, without bothering to enhance the human experience at all. "Their unappetizing visage is simultaneously dopey and satanic," the New York Times reviewer says in playful disgust.

But he redeems the goat! The goat has its use after all. It is worthy. It is fit to be eaten by a party of festive Manhattanites in the Times reviewer's fourth floor apartment. No more envying the pig and cow and chicken. Now the goat too can join the pantheon of animals who offer up their flesh, unwillingly, it's true, but only because of their imperfect knowledge of the joy they'll bring to the humans who consume them.

It's not just the goats who come away from this article with reputations restored. Once again humans have shown themselves to be endlessly complex. Anybody who thought we could be narrowly defined as killers and consumers of prosaic cows, chickens and pigs had better think again. There is far more to us than that! We are forever discovering new animals to slaughter and consume. The New YOrk Times reviewer is our guide. Like the traveler who brings back tales from foreign lands, he has sampled the exotic. He has tasted new flesh and he joyously offers it up to his erudite and sophisticated New York Times readers.

He closes his article with a description of the dinner he served his guests in his fourth floor apartment.

Indeed, I recently threw a dinner party at which I served goat at every course ... At evening's end, as my wine-fueled guests prepared to scramble down the stairs of my four-flight walk-up, it was all I could do not to tie tiny bells around their necks.

Ah, I get it, goats wear bells. His guests have turned into goats because of all the courses of goat meat they've eaten. What better way to wrap up the article than this final taste of wit. Like his dinner guests, his readers have been served up a feast -- of lavish metaphors, exuberant language, frisky wit. Now it's time to go home and throw up.

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

2009-03-31T06:42:00.010-07:00

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.

Taking a lunch break from saving the planet

2009-03-22T12:00:00.006-07:00

-- Welcome to Taco Bell. Can I take your order?

-- Yeah, leafleting for the environment all day sure gives you a big appetite. Can I have two Burrito Supremes? Oh, and you get extra meat for 49 cents, right?

-- Yup.

-- Cool. By the way, I know you're not the decision maker, but I see the menu board uses really bright lights. If you used fluorescent lights instead, you'd reduce energy consumption.

-- You say you were leafleting for the environment?

-- Yeah, trying to fight all these lying hypocrites who deny their actions are causing global warming.

-- You know, meat consumption is responsible for 18% of all greenhouse emissions.

-- That's a bunch of crap!

-- Even more than automobiles and airplanes combined.

-- It's a lie! I deny it!

-- According to a UN report, if people stopped eating meat...

-- What? I can't hear you. Your microphone's breaking up.

-- I said if people stopped eating meat, greenhouse emissions would be significantly reduced.

-- Sorry, dude, still can't hear you, music's too loud. This band rocks. The bass player has a green bass to support the cause.

-- Okay, so your order is two beef burritos with extra meat. Please pull up to the window.

-- Look, dude, suppose what you say is true. Here's the thing. Say it takes me half an hour to eat my ham and eggs for breakfast. Then say a half hour for lunch and an hour for dinner. That's only two hours of eating meat. Which means the other 22 hours of the day I'm fighting for the environment. How many people are that committed to their cause? But I'm happy to do it. It's my duty. The future of our planet's at stake ... Mmm, speaking of steak, could you throw in one of those steak tacos?

-- Two beef burritos, extra beef, and one steak taco.

-- Hey, I got a box of "End Global Warming Now" bumperstickers in the back of my Prius. Want one?

-- Maybe you could get one that says, "End global warming not now but right after I finish eating my beef burritos."

-- Damn, I almost forgot. I'm going to a global warming meet-up to talk about ways we can reduce our carbon footprints and the folks there will be famished. Can you give me a dozen more beef burritos, extra beef?

-- You got it. Please pull up to the window.

Dr. Peter Singer on what sets humans apart from other animals

2009-03-18T22:21:00.010-07:00

Gary Francione referenced (and then demolished) a passage by Peter Singer, Princeton bio-ethicist and author of Animal Liberation.

You could say it's wrong to kill a being whenever a being is sentient or conscious. Then you would have to say it's just as wrong to kill a chicken or mouse as it is to kill you or me. I can't accept that idea. It may be just as wrong, but millions of chickens are killed every day ... What is different about humans? Humans are forward-looking beings, and they have hopes and desires for the future. That seems a plausible answer to the question of why it's so tragic when humans die.

So humans are forward-looking beings and animals are not. Forward-looking humans have hopes and desires for the future. Okay but ... a murderer has hopes and desires for the future. He hopes to kill his victim and desires not to get caught. Point being, don't we have to assess the content of those hopes and desires before we cite the capacity to have them as proof of our existential worthiness?

But put aside whether Singer's distinction between humans and non-human animals is accurate and, even if it is, whether that provides sufficient justification for our wanton killing of millions of animals every year. Take a closer look at the thinker doing his thinking, in his study, maybe munching on a left-over drumstick, trying to come up with a characteristic that separates humans from other animals. Surprise! This reasoning human comes up with a characteristic that confers greater value on the lives of ... humans. Humans are forward-thinking. Animals are not. The slaughter is justified. Pass me another one of those drumsticks.

You know, I bet an AIG executive could come up with a characteristic of AIG executives that demonstrates that AIG executives deserve to keep every dime of their bonuses.

Suppose other animals took their turn after Dr. Singer. Suppose they were able to list things that separate human animals from non-human animals. What might they come up with?

-- Kills not merely out of necessity but for pleasure

-- Tortures and slaughters millions of farm animals each year because he craves the taste of their flesh

-- Tortures and slaughters animals because their fur gives an added oomph to all the latest fashions

-- Pursues animals in their natural habitats and kills them for the sheer joy of it

-- Pours toxins into the eyes of rabbits to make sure the lipstick goes on without irritation

-- Beats elephants with meat hooks so the festive circus goers can enjoy the spectacle of the elephant running around the ring and stepping onto the colorful stool

Maybe it's better for Dr. Singer's argument if he sticks with forward-thinkng as the defining human characteristic.

The source of hostility toward veganism

2009-03-17T13:09:00.007-07:00

Every vegan has encountered ridicule and hostility. Even when there's no preaching or attempts to convert, the very existence of veganism is enough to set many people off. What's the source of this hostility?

One easy surface explanation: The vegan is always at least implicitly condemning the omnivore by rejecting the consumption of animal products as immoral. When we reject animal products offered to us at someone's home, ungraciousness doubles our sin. But think of other actions people take in support of their ethical beliefs, e.g. volunteering at a homeless shelter. This too could be seen as an implicit judgment of those who don't volunteer. But nobody ever ridicules someone else for volunteering at a homeless shelter. They praise and admire the volunteer, sometimes they're even inspired to volunteer themselves. Other than veganism, it's hard to think of any behavior undertaken to reduce the suffering of others that results in hostility to the person engaged in the behavior.

Maybe it's just that people attach so little value to the lives of non-human animals. But, given the choice, most people would prefer that their meat didn't require the death of an animal. They therefore acknowledge that the reduction of suffering and pain is morally desirable. But still they ridicule vegans for acting on this belief.

Maybe non-vegans simply see vegans as overly earnest in the pursuit of an objective that doesn't merit it. They think this kind of moral obstinancy should be reserved for more appropriately serious causes the rest of the world deeems worthwhile. They object to what they see as the disproportionate intensity of our purpose. We refuse to consume animal products. Very few of us "slip" and eat meat. Anyone who does slip from time to time would not be considered a vegan. I think maybe this is what people can't stand. They see the ideals of veganism as unworthy of the moral rigidity of its adherents.

Either that, or they're all just a bunch of self-centered punks who will gladly inflict torture and pain if they get a nice tasty meal out of it.

Animal welfare groups demand the humane treatment of family farmers and, oh yeah, animals too.

2009-03-10T13:53:00.013-07:00

One recurring theme in the so-called humane treatment movement is the glorification of the family farm. The Animal Welfare Institute says...

Only family farms can earn our seal. Families who own, labor on and earn a meaningful livelihood from their farms have a true commitment and connection to their animals that is lost on factory farms managed by distant, corporate owners and run by hired hands.

And in keeping with that "true commitment and connection to their animals," they slaughter them. Using this logic, the animal welfare institute obviously considers the person who murders a friend morally superior to the person who murders a stranger.

Humane treatment advocates are always contrasting the family farmers to the "distant, corporate owners." They rail against the impersonal factory farms, using the same kind of stock populist language that has always been used to demonize corporations. They're appalled by the way industrialization of agriculture has separated us from the land and the food we eat, i.e. on the deleterious effect it's had on humans. The suffering of the farm animals is nothing more than a support point in their indictment of greedy, impersonal factory farms and their yearning for their lost agrarian utopia.

You want proof that concern for the suffering of animals isn't the primary motivation of these self-proclaimed animal advocates? How about this? They eat them.

Humane treatment certification

2009-03-08T17:06:00.018-07:00

Farming in an animal welfare friendly way can be the key to better profitability.
--speaker at the Oxford Farming Conference

It's no secret that the "humane treatment" movement is motivated by profit. Most things are. If humane treatment and free range labels were accurate, they'd say, "We treat animals in ways people consider more humane because it makes them feel better about consuming the flesh of these animals, which, in turn, earns us a bigger profit." But truth makes for bad marketing. So the producer of humanely treated meat has to alter the truth. But how much? Does he have to resort to outright lies or can he maybe get by with some well thought-out distortions? Let's re-state the truth and see. "We treat animals in ways people consider more humane because it makes them feel better about consuming the flesh of these animals, which, in turn, earns us a bigger profit." Obviously the part about bigger profits has to go. They probably want to delete the part about making people feel better about themselves too, since accusing your prospective customers of hypocrisy is not the best way to build customer loyalty and generate sales. So they're left with the first part of the proposition. "We treat animals in ways people consider more humane." "Ways people consider" is far too ambiguous. It might lead people to the uncomfortable realization that it's also possible to consider slaughter as something less than humane. So what's left? "We treat animals humanely." That's it. Perfect. Now all they need is someone to deliver the message. It can't be the farmers themselves. People do tend to associate farmers with homespun virtues and uncomplicated beliefs, but they also understand that the producing and selling of animal flesh is the farmers' livelihood, which might be considered a conflict of interest. So if not the farmers who? Third party certifiers. But not a merely impartial certifier. They need a certifier the public considers an advocate for the well-being of animals. The big names, the A-listers, if you will, are out of the family farmer's league. They offer their services to the bigger, deeper-pocketed corporations. For instance, Temple Grandin sells her glowing testimonials to McDonald's. She wouldn't even return a family farmer's phone call. So the family farmer is forced to turn to organizations like the Animal Welfare Institute which specializes in family farms. The labels are printed. The photographer comes out to the farm and takes heart-melting photos of the farmer making goo goo eyes at the steer he'll soon slaughter, maybe just a few minutes after the photorgrapher packs up her gear. But it's the image of the happy steer and the caring farmer that lives on in marketing materials, PR releases and news articles. Humane treatment is a win-win-lose situation. The farmers win because they get to charge more for their products. The consumers win because they get to consume their animal flesh with an untroubled conscience. The only losers in the happy green field utopia are the animals.

One McCruelty-free McChicken sandwich. Please drive through.

2009-02-19T14:58:00.010-08:00

-- Welcome to McDonald's. Can I take your order?

-- Yeah, I'd like a McChicken sandwich, please. And can I get mine slaughtered with gas?

-- Sorry, sir, that's not on our menu.

-- How do you slaughter them?

-- We dump them out of their crates and hang them upside-down in metal shackles then we cut their throats.

-- I prefer my chicken gassed. It's called controlled atmosphere killing. It's a much more pleasant death.

-- You're from PETA aren't you?

-- Yeah.

-- You guys are protesting against us again?

-- I know, it's been a while. Nine years since our last one. This time we're demanding that you slaughter your chickens with gas. We're calling it our McCruetly campaign.

-- That's what you called that last protest.

-- Just like old times, huh? You guys will cave in the end, you know.

-- I know. Then you'll give us lots of praise for doing the right thing. Sales really go through the roof when that happens. Hey, I got a question for you. I heard if the gas isn't administered properly, the chickens go berserk, shaking their heads around, gasping for air. I hear it's a really excruciating death.

-- That would suck.

-- So shouldn't you guys be encouraging people to stop eating chicken instead? Then the chickens wouldn't get shackled and have their throats slit and they wouldn't get gassed either.

-- What would we dress up as in our protests? A piece of tempeh? There aren't any good vegan costumes.

-- I see your point.

-- 'kay sorry to sound ornery, but I'm really craving a chicken sandwich here. Can you maybe make me up a special order? Gas it out back or something.

-- Sorry, sir, I could check with the manager, but I don't think we have slaughtering capabilities on premises.

-- Look, dude, I'm really hungry. But I'm not ordering a chicken that wasn't slaughtered humanely.

-- We still follow the humane slaughtering procedures for steer.

-- You mean from our last McCruelty campaign?

-- Yeah.

-- Cool. Gimme a Big Mac.

-- Please drive through.

The new cola wars: animal welfare-approved versus Dr. Temple Grandin certified sustainable & humane products

2009-02-13T22:32:00.032-08:00

The refrigerated section of the local grocery store is getting crowded with all the humanely treated meats out there. You've got animal welfare-approved. Certified Humane Raised and Handld. Free Farm Certified. And now a new player has entered the mix: Dr. Temple Grandin certified sustainable & humane. They're all targeting the same customers, so competition is bound to be fierce. It's only a matter of time before the TV commercials hit the airwaves.

Hey, folks, the other guys like to talk about their humane treatment standards, but at animal welfare-approved, we deliver. We've just received a new shipment of animal welfare-approved meats and we need to make room, so everything in our refrigerated section must go! You won't believe the rock bottom prices on pork, steak, chicken, you name it, all compassionately slaughtered with the animal's comfort and well-being in mind. Folks, your conscience deserves the very best! Animal welfare-approved is the number one humanely treated meat dealer in the tri-county area. We've got the most rigorous and progressive animal care standards anywhere and our friendly farmers always treat the animals with tender loving care. But don't take our word for it. Listen to what Paul and Janice from Madison, Wisconsin say: "Dear Animal Welfare-approved, we're very progressive people. We recycle, we only buy free trade coffee, we read the American Prospect and Counterpunch every day. We were so appalled at the way animals are treated on those factory farms that last week we had a barbecue fundraiser to raise awareness about the plight of these poor creatures. (Paul's succulent ribs went over big time!) We feel such compassion for these animals, but how can we stop buying meat? I mean what would we serve at the next awareness-raising barbecue? We didn't know what to do. Then we heard about your animal welfare-approved meats. Now we can eat all the meat we want and we never have to feel guilty again." that's right, folks, at animal-welfare approved, we give you all the flavor with none of the factory farm abuses. So if you're a progressive who wants to feel like you did the right thing without giving up the great taste of animal flesh, make sure to stock up on animal welfare-approved meats today!

It's dealing days here at Temple Grandin's House of Certified Sustainable & Humane Products! Check out this beauty -- a thick, tender top sirloin steak made from a peaceful and contented grass grazing steer. It's juicy, delicious and best of all it was processed with our unique humane slaughtering methods that guarantee a guilt-free eating experience every time. How much would you expect to pay for this piece of mind? Twenty dollars? Eighteen? Try just $14.99. You heard me right. Our competitors over at Animal Welfare-approved claim they've got demanding humane treatment standards. But at Temple Grandin's House of certified sustainable & humane products, we've consulted for some of the biggest companies on the planet. Temple Grandin has written best-selling books on animal happiness, and she's the world's number one authority on designing humane slaughterhouses. No wonder in taste tests across the country, progressive eaters preferred the humane treatment standards of Dr. Temple Grandin Certified Sustainable & Humane products over our competitors three to one. Why would you eat anything else?

Dr. Temple Grandin certified sustainable & humane products

2009-02-12T07:44:00.006-08:00

Temple Grandin has joined with Niman Ranch to introduce "Dr. Temple Grandin certified sustainable & humane" products. She gave National Provisioner magazine the exclusive. National Provisioner is the bible of meat production that recently wrote an editorial about the threat posed to the animal agriculture industry by those terrifying people who care about animal suffering. If National Provisioner thought Temple Grandin sided with people like this, they'd excommunicate her. So Temple Grandin reassures them:

The thing I'm most concerned with is letting pigs wreck the land. Pigs will just destroy pasture.

In other words, "Please, oh please, don't group me in with those nutjobs who care about animal suffering. YOu want proof of my indifference? Here's a copy of the check McDonald's cut me for consulting services rendered. Heck, there's a photo of me on the McDonald's website. Would they put a photo of a rabble rousing activist who cared about animal pain and suffering on their website? I think not. I sincerely hope the readers of National Provisioner won't question my motives. Please believe me when I say animals are simply a means of making money. YOur readers do it more directly by brutalizing them, slaughtering them and selling slabs of their flesh. People like me and Whole Foods and Farm Forward and the Animal Welfare Institute, we've got a more roundabout approach. We're making money off people who want to think they care about the suffering of farm animals and are willing to pay a little extra for a clean conscience. Guys, please understand, there's a gold mine here and I'm the perfect person to mine it. I write books with titles like Animal Happiness, so people think I care about the pain and suffering of animals. I do care, in the sense that appearing to want to reduce that suffering is a highly profitable gig. I know it's not profitable on the scale your readers are used to, and I bow down before them, but it's a growing market. It'll only get bigger."

Readers of National Provisioner are still suspicious. They still wonder if secretly, in her heart of hearts, she really does want to reduce animal suffering. So Temple Grandin reassures them once again...

Some people who are purely welfare-minded want no [nose] rings at all -- but the pigs wreck the ground.

There. She wants to keep the nose rings on the pigs to make sure rooting is so excruciatingly painful that they won't do it. Okay, that cinches it. Even the most hardened cynics at National Provisioner are convinced. They've got nothing to worry about from Temple Grandin. She's one of them. "Temple Grandin certified sustainable & humane" really means sustainable cash flow thanks to plenty of certified checks. Make sure to send her VIP passes to the Pork Expo and the K-state Swine Profitability Conference. She's earned them.

A new member in the Big Greasy BBQ Forum

2009-02-09T21:05:00.014-08:00

BUZZ: Welcome to the Big Greasy BBQ forum, anmlwfre, what's your nic stand for, animal warfare?

ANMLWFRE: Animal Wel-fare. I'm from Farm Forward. It's our mission to improve the lives of farm animals.

BELLYBOY: The topic today is big juicy sizzling kielbasa. Don't you love how the juice drips down your chin? Come on, you can admit it, anmlwfre, you're among friends here.

ANMLWFRE: Okay, yes, I do love a big juicy kielbasa, provided the pig it came from had ample space to turn around in before it was slaughtered, mind you.

BUZZ: Wink. Wink.

ANMLWFRE: No, I'm serious.

BELLYBOY: You're a funny dude, anmlwfre

UNCLEMIKEY: So you say you believe animals should be treated well. But you slaughter 'em. Isn't that kind of like a contradiction?

ANMLWFRE: Not at all. Hold on, I got rib sauce on my fingers, don't want to get it on my keyboard. Okay, I'm back. It's okay as long as you slaughter them humanely.

BELLYBOY: Humane slaughter. That's a good one. Mind if I use that one at my next tailgating party?

ANMLWFRE: It's not a joke. We're entirely serious.

GREASEGUY: Hey, my burger's so juicy it's a good thing I got one of them super absorbent buns.

ANMLWFRE: YOu're making my mouth water. I mean provided the steer the burger came from had plenty of grass to graze on before it was slaughtered.

BUZZ: You crack me up.

ANMLWFRE: I'm serious, guys. We at Farm Forward believe factory farming is one of the most important issues of our time.

BELLYBOY: Look, anmlwfre, you're our kind of people. You like big hunks of juicy meat just like we do.

ANMLWFRE: Well, I must say, I feel a kinship too.

GREASEGUY: Yeah, at first I thought you were one of those freaks who don't eat meat but you're pretty cool.

ANMLWFRE: Are you kidding! By being so rigid about not eating meat and dairy, those people are setting the animal rights movement back a hundred years. It really annoys the CEO's of the big fast food places when they hear someone refuses to eat their products. I ought to know, at farm forward we consult for them all the time.

CHOWHOUND: Hey, anmlwfre, I once scarfed down eight kielbasas in one sitting.

ANMLWFRE: Impressive.

CHOWHOUND: How about you?

ANMLWFRE: The other night at a benefit, they served some delectable lamb medallions. My wife had to attend an art gallery opening, so I helped myself to hers.

BELLYBOY: Pretty cool. So where did you say you're from again?

ANMLWFRE: Farm Forward. Don't mean to boast but Jonathan Safron Foer is on our board of directors.

CHOWHOUND: Who's that?

ANMLWFRE: He's only one of the most accomplished writers of his generation. He's going to do a reading from his latest book this weekend.

BELLYBOY: Cool. He writes books on barbecuing?

ANMLWFRE: No.

BUZZ: He going to read a passage about how much he loves juicy ribs, smothered with sauce?

CHOWHOUND: I don't get it, anmlwfre, how does having this rib cookbook writer guy on your board help animals?

ANMLWFRE: He's not a rib cookbook writer. I told you. He writes literary fiction.

UNCLEMIKEY; He must be real creative. He the one who came up with humane slaughter?

BUZZ: This consulting with big fast food places sounds like a good gig, anmlwfre. Bet they pay you plenty.

ANMLWFRE: Money's not what's important. We get to communicate our point of view.

CHOWHOUND: About how delectable pork medallions are?

ANMLWFRE: No, our broader point of view. Our mission statement, if you will.

BUZZ: Hey, anmlwfre, I just marinated some chicken breasts and threw 'em on the grill. you'd love 'em.

ANMLWFRE: Sounds tasty. Provided the chickens had access to sunlight before they were slaughtered.

CHOWHOUND: I got five words: pass me the hot sauce.

ANMLWFRE: I got two words: me too.

BUZZ: anmlwfre, I'm glad you joined our Big Greasy BBQ forum.

ANMLWFRE: Thanks for making me feel so welcome.

BELLYBOY: And thanks for giving me that joke about humane slaughter. Don't worry, I'll give you credit. I ain't into stealing other peoples' jokes.

ANMLWFRE: It's not a joke.

CHOWHOUND: This guy cracks me up.

ANMLWFRE: I've got to go attend another fund raiser. I'll be back later. Enjoy your kielbasa, everyone!

BELLYBOY: We will. Provided the pig had plenty of space to turn around in before it was slaughtered. Ha ha ha!

World Egg Day was Oct. 10, but it's still not too late to send a card!

2009-02-07T21:05:00.021-08:00

So I was visiting the American Egg Board website to read about their new advertising campaign featuring incredible people who do incredible things thanks to incredible eggs and I was struck by something else: World Egg Day was October 10th. And here we are in February. I have to be honest here. I'm kind of pissed at the people who made my 2008 calendar because October 10 was completely blank. I mean aren't calendar makers supposed to help us out and remind us about the important holidays? Whatever. It's too late to bitch about it now. I missed it. I'll have to make sure not to miss 2009 World Egg Day.

But, guess what, apparently it's not too late to send your 2008 World Egg Day greeting after all. On the American Egg Board site, you can still create your own World Egg Day card and email it to people. You can add cool shapes, paint on your egg, add backgrounds, even write on your egg. I'm not sure about the etiquette here. Sorry it's late works if you send a card a couple weeks after the holiday, but it's five months late now. I guess I'll have to trust the American Egg Board on this. Let's see, what should I say on my card? Happy World Egg Day, the day we commemorate the hatcheries where the laying hens come from. Half the chicks born there are male so they have to be disposed of. Sometimes they're ground up in machines, sometimes they're tossed in garbage bins, where they die of either suffocation or starvation. Thing is, I'm not sure if that's the message the American Egg Board had in mind when they created World Egg Day.

Stop! That's way too cynical. The American Egg Board didn't create the holiday. It came about by popular acclaim. They just help us commemorate it. Anyway I've got other things to worry about. Like I was all set to send a World Egg Day card to my friends Sarah and Tom but now that I think about it I'm pretty sure I didn't hear from them last World Egg Day. So fuck 'em, they're off my list. back to what I should say on the card. I could talk about how World Egg Day is a time to reflect on the laying hens who spend their two years in beyond-comprehension misery in their cramped cages until productivity declines and it's slaughter time. Greeting cards often work their magic with rhyming verse. Maybe I should try that.

On this special World Egg Day,

We celebrate the hens who lay.

And when their laying days are done,

An electric bath until they're stunned.

Shackle the legs, slice the neck,

The eggs were yummy, so what the heck.

To these hens we give our thanks

As they're boiled alive in the scalding tank.

No! That totally misses the spirit of the holiday. The American Egg Board would be horrified. They give us the tools to design and write our very own World Egg Day cards and this is how we show our gratitude? The Senior VP of Marketing offers up his own favorite egg-based recipes and this is how we repay him?

These living, breathing hens feel pain as much as American Egg Board Senior VP's of Marketing feel pain. 23 million chickens are killed each day in the US so people can have their chicken meat and their eggs. Happy belated World Egg Day.

Animal welfare and the power of self-delusion

2009-02-06T09:31:00.007-08:00

In a recent article in the London Times, a long-time vegetarian wrote that she has now gone back to eating meat. The reason? Animals are raised more humanely now. I had an email exchange with a friend about the article. At one point he wrote, "to say I think eating meat is okay implies I'm indifferent to animal suffering. That isn't true. I do believe animals shouldn't suffer and die to satisfy human desires. I eat meat because I am a hypocrite. I'm violating my beliefs."

But is that his belief just because he says it is, even though his behavior contradicts him? What constitutes a belief? If I say I believe in helping the homeless and then I kick the first homeless person I see in the head, have I just violated my belief or was I maybe deluded when I claimed it as a belief? That may sound like semantics but it's not. People who think they believe in the rights of animals cling stubbornly to this belief. They don't want to give it up. They like that part of themselves. I know "animal lover, animal advocate" makes up a big part of my friend's self-image. If he were forced to abandon that belief, he wouldn't like the person who remained.

But he can only call himself a hypocrite for so long. Eventually, he'll have to make a choice. He either believes animals have the right not to suffer and die for our pleasure or he doesn't. Either he supports the horrors of what happens to these animals or he rejects it. Not so fast, say the "animal welfare" proselytizers. You don't have to choose. You don't have to abandon your cherished self-image. There's a middle ground between the horrors of factory farms and giving up the consumption of the animal products you love so much and the middle ground is this: you can support our campaign to improve the lives of these animals before they're slaughtered. We'll push for bigger cages for laying hens. We'll demand more space for hogs to roam around in. We'll confront the big fast food companies. We'll demand more humane treatment for all farm animals.

So now people like my friend are able to grasp hold of that middle ground, that purgatory, and it allows them to keep their self-image intact. I really do care about the well-being of animals. I am doing my part to reduce their suffering. I don't have to give up eating meat and dairy after all. Phew.

This is the problem with animal welfare campaigns.

Promoting animal welfare by stapling green numbers in their ears

2009-02-04T17:47:00.016-08:00

You are one lucky steer is all I can say, number six. You were born on an animal welfare-approved farm. That means you get to romp around in green fields under blue skies until your number is called, which, don't worry, won't be for a while yet since Number One's just getting locked into the head clamp now. If you'd been born on one of those inhumane factory farms that care nothing about the well-being of animals ... excuse me, Number Two! It's your turn, Number Two! Hey, no worries, Number Six, but you might want to start romping around soon because it looks like this Animal Welfare-approved farmer likes to work quickly.

You know, you should be proud of yourself, Number Six. You're making so many people feel so much better about themselves. You see, a lot of people are appalled at the conditions of the factory farms. Not appalled enough to stop eating animals like yourself, mind you, but appalled just enough to be willing to pay a little extra for the flesh of animals that got a chance to romp around in green fields under blue skies before they were slaughtered. Excuse me. Number Three! It's your turn, Number Three!

I only wish you got a chance to meet the compassionate people who will be eating you, Number Six. They're really going to enjoy it and not just because they crave the taste of your tender flesh. They'll be able to eat you with a clean conscience. You don't know anything about consciences because you're just an animal. A conscience is what helps us humans do things that are morally just, like slaughter and consume other living beings ... oops, that's not what I meant to say, I must have gotten distracted by the wailing of Number Three. It seems the friendly Animal Welfare-approved farmer didn't slaughter Number Three properly the first time and he's in an awful lot of pain right now. Hopefully he can hearken back to his memories of romping around in green fields under blue skies and it will distract him from his pain.

Number Four! Number Five! It's your turn. Hey, what's up, Number Six, you're shaking, you look so frightened. Please don't wast this time when you should out romping around, your turn's getting closer. Ah, I see. I know why you're not romping around in green fields under blue skies. It's because you're actually stuck in a cage. I can explain. When we talk about romping around in green fields under blue skies, it's more of a symbolic thing. It's our intention that counts and our intention is to get people who buy Animal Welfare-approved products to think you get to romp around. You're a realist, Number Six, I can see that you are. You understand that people who like thinking they care about your welfare have a lot of disposable income. Well, enough said about that, eh?

Well, Number Six, it's almost time. I know you'd thank us if you could for bringing you up here rather than in one of those inhumane factory farms. Come here, let me give you a pat on the head before you go. That's something they'd never do at one of those impersonal factory farms. They'd send you straight to the slaughter without giving you a friendly pat on the head. That really gets me so worked up. What kind of inhumane people would slaughter a fellow living being without giving it a friendly pat on the head first? Oh, the world we live in! Well, Number Six, looks like the friendly animal welfare-approved farmer is calling you.

Gifts for the hog butcher who has everything

2009-02-02T06:56:00.011-08:00

Hog producers who go to the Pork Expo in June won't come away empty-handed. There's all kinds of cool gifts and mementos to bring home.

Yes, it's unique all right. Not many desktop items symbolize your role in the slaughter of over a hundred million living beings each year. But this pig cell phone holder isn't just decorative. When the call comes in from the boys on the farm that they were playing around with the piglets, maybe got a little carried away with those sharp metal stakes, that some of the undercover footage might not go over so well when it hits the local news, the hog producer can take that call using his pig cell phone holder!

Pig Lighter. It's only human nature. People get to boasting. Hog producers are no different. They start comparing numbers, going for bragging rights. "You processed fifty thousand last month? Ha, that's nothing. I could slaughter fifty thousand in my sleep. Says who? Says me." Then just when things are about to get heated, the hog producer pulls out his pig lighter and offers to light his competitor's cigar and camaraderie reigns once again. And note the placement of the lighter device, right where the stun bolt shatters the pig's skull. "It's perfectly aimed, right above the brain. Maybe I should hire the guy." This observation can make a good ice breaker when the hog producer experiences any awkward lulls in social settings or when he simply needs a fresh supply of banter to amuse other folks in the pork production world.

An adorable plush pig that, according to the product description, makes an "oink oink" sound when you squeeze it. I don't mean to find fault. The Pork expo gift committee is no doubt harried and overworked. But is "oink oink" the only sound they could think of making? What about the screams of ungodly terror at the pig's final moments. That's what the hog producer wants memorialized. That way when his kids ask him what sound does a pig make, Daddy, daddy can squeeze the plush toy, which emits the terrified wailing of the slowly dying hog, and say, "that's the sound a pig makes, kids."

Yes, the product description is right. This handmade treasure is sure to be passed down from generation to generation. A rope tailed oak piggy bank like this has family heirloom written all over it. I even think the folks at the pork expo gift committee were a little too modest. It won't just be passed down. Future generations will fight over it. Who did grandpa Pig Slaughterer leave the roped tailed pig bank to? Families have dissolved over less than this.

Anyhow, this is just a small sampling of the exciting gifts available at the Pork Expo.

A useful purpose gives meaning to every life

2009-01-30T21:06:00.012-08:00

There's an article in Animal Person, discovered by Bea, who's one of the most passionate advocates out there, about "agricultural speaker, radio personality, columnist" Trent Loos. He's giving his canned speech, making churches full of farmers chuckle at his folksy anecdotes and breathe fire when he warns them of the dangers of animal rights activists. He's talking about farm animals and he says something surprising.

Everything lives and everything dies and having a useful purpose gives meaning to every life.

I'm thinking, hold on, sounds pretty progressive for an agricultural speaker/radio host/columnist. He's acknowledging farm animals are not merely objects to be slaughtered for human consumption but sentient beings who can actually lead lives filled with meaning. And what gives their lives meaning? Having a useful purpose. Sages say the same thing. I'm starting to wonder why there aren't more agricultural speakers/radio personalities/columnists in the ethics section of the library. I'm reading on with bated breath. And what is the farm animals' useful purpose that gives meaning to their lives? .... it's to be slaughtered for human consumption.

If they merely grazed all day, depression would set in. There's got to be more to life than that. If only they could somehow serve up pieces of their bodies to human beings, then their lives would have new meaning. Providing chunks of flesh to be seared on the grill is the steer's version of nirvana. Getting impregnated on the rape rack, watching her calf get hauled off to the veal auction so she can get pumped full of hormones, put back on the rape rack and artificially inseminated again is the dairy cow's version of the rapture. Getting her neck sliced open and bled while the last bit of life slowly twitches out of her is the chicken's version of earthly paradise.

Over at Suicide Food, they've spent so much time pondering the mindset of these animals who crave self-slaughter, offering themselves up to human dinner tables and barbecues, some with stoic resignation, others with flat-out glee. Maybe this agricultural speaker/radio host/columnist has cracked the code. The animal seeks self-slaughter as a way of finding meaning in his life. Having a useful purpose is what gives his life that meaning. And that useful purpose is discovered through the transformative act of becoming the main entree at the human banquet.

I don't mean to quibble with this agricultural speaker/radio personality/columnist, but being consumed can't be the perfectly fulfilling act he thinks it is because, you see, the steer is modest enough to recognize his limitations. He's not ample enough. He can only provide enough flesh for a tiny handful of humans and that saddens him because he wants to serve the entire human world. He wishes he could rise from the dead like the one in the main human religion. "If I could come back from death to life and be slaughtered again and again then I'd be able to feed even more people and my life would have even more meaning." Greedy steer. How dare you desire perfect fulfillment. A partially fulfilling life should be good enough for you. You're only an animal, after all, not an agricultural speaker/radio personality/columnist. More from him:

We allow everyone to talk about better treatment of pigs, chickens, cows. And what about people?

I know I believe people deserve equal treatment. During the debate over California's Prop 2, which would give laying hens bigger cages, I advocated for a separate proposition that would replace the window offices of all Tyson executives with cages proportionate to the size of the battery cages they use to confine their laying hens. I think this agricultural speaker/radio host/columnist deserves a cage every bit as luxurious. One big enough to fit his microphone and radio equipment so his folksy charm and meaningful existence-through-slaughter philosophical musings can be appreciated by all.

what the critics of the critics of Temple Grandin are saying

2009-01-29T01:24:00.000-08:00

Criticize Temple Grandin for saying "death is not the most terrible thing that can happen to an animal, the most important thing is quality of life" and one of the more common responses is...

"Be real. These animals are going to die regardless. Temple Grandin understands that reality and she's doing what she can to improve the lives of these animals before they die. She's influencing companies like McDonald's for the better."

Temple Grandin's only influence over McDonald's is getting marketing executives and corporate communications executives to exchange high-fives in the main conference room. McDonald's knows a PR coup when they see one. They'll gladly put photos of Temple Grandin posing in the stockyards on their website, right next to her breathless statement about how it's the biggest improvement in animal welfare she's seen in her 25 years in the business.

Which isn't to say she doesn't have influence because she does. She has the same kind of credible figure influence as the scientists bought by Exxon to dispute climate change. Most people who eat at McDonald's couldn't care less about how animals are treated. But some do. Some feel conflicted when they hear about the horrors of factory farms. But then they see this animal welfare expert reassuring them, hey, everything's cool, McDonald's is doing the right thing, I'm lovin' it and you should too. She wipes away doubts and eases consciences.

And McDonald's, they're lovin' it too, they really are. The executive who came up with the idea of getting Temple Grandin to whitewash, I mean consult, that's the kind of stuff reserved parking spaces and corner offices are made of. No doubt he got a first column mention in Food and Beverage Digest. Swooning marketing executives in every industry are begging him to connect to them on linkedin.

See, advertising characters have to be made up from scratch. Someone had to come up with the idea of the Pillsbury Dough Boy giggling when he gets poked in the belly. The unctuous, smooth-tongued cockney accent of the Geico gecko only came into being after long months of creative struggle. But McDonald's didn't have to burn any billable hours brainstorming Temple Grandin. She came with her persona fully formed: animal welfare expert. Professor of Animal Science. Best-selling author. It's only a matter of time before they come up with a Temple Grandin figurine to go in the Happy Meal.

So I guess the only thing left to say is, please drive through.

Help Wanted ad found in National Hog Farmer Magazine

2009-01-27T02:20:00.001-08:00

Immediate opening

*Must be self-starter

*Prior supervisory experience

*Ability to juggle multiple projects

*Must be able to thrust metal spike with force and accuracy

*Must have proven ability to suppress mercy, compassion and empathy

*Minimum of 2-4 years experience as sadist required, with at least one year experience of either psychosocial maladjustment or the pathological need to lash out and inflict pain

*Creative problem solver wth "always say die" attitude

*Must have rotting black soul

Sadly, people misrepresent themselves on their resumes. The last person who applied for the job claimed to have experience as a sadist, but it was all fabricated. It turned out he only stood by and watched as his fellow workers slammed piglets to the ground. Fortunately, we were able to find out the truth before we offered him the position. Sadism is not something that can be learned in school. Sure you can pick up some theory. But we're looking for on-the-job experience. When a hog decides it would rather live than die and it attempts to wriggle free, the professor of animal husbandry up in his ivory tower won't help. And, no, leaving your dog out in sub-zero temperatures doesn't count as relevant experience. That's passive sadism. We're looking for self-starters, people who inflict pain and suffering without being told. The ideal candidate is a creative thinker. He doesn't see the piece of wood on the ground as a discarded fence post. He sees it as a way of stunning a stubborn hog. He will possess leadership qualities. When people start kicking an intransigent hog, he won't merely join in, he'll initiate the violence. We're looking for a total team player, someone who takes as much pleasure in someone else's stun bolting of a hog as he does his own.

We're especially open to people with experience at the Hormel supplier farm at Bayard, Iowa. The sadistic behavior of the workers at this farm didn't have to be learned in a company manual. They figured it out on their own. That's the kind of self-starter we're looking for. We are a recognized leader in the slaughter of millions of hogs per month. We offer an attractive package that includes, medical, dental and a fully staffed PR department to defend your sadistic behavior to an appalled public should an undercover video ever reveal your abuses. Are you sadistic enough to join our team? The future is waiting so apply today!

Temple Grandin is stealing Ronald McDonald's thunder

2009-01-24T05:50:00.001-08:00

Classic advertising icon Ronald McDonald. Animal welfare advocate, slaughterhouse designer and McDonald's consultant Temple Grandin. If it weren't for the wig and face paint, we'd have a hard time telling them apart. They both both boost McDonald's sales and increase shareholder value. They both pimp McDonald's whenever a microphone's put in front of their face.

McDonald's should be given credit for bringing about improvements in animal welfare in the entire beef industry ... I have been in this business for more than 25 years, and I have never seen such a transformation. -- Temple Grandin

In other words, McDonald's. I'm lovin' it!

Ronald's been getting a little jealous of all the attention Temple Grandin's been getting lately. He's like the aging star quarterback when a hotshot rookie is drafted. All his years of loyalty and hard work and now on the responsible purchasing page of the McDonald's website there's a quotation from Temple Grandin praising McDonald's and even a picture of her inspecting cattle. But there's no picture of Ronald. Hell, they could have found a photo of him hamming it up with Mayor McCheese, scolding the Hamburglars, something. The website refers to Temple Grandin as a "prominent animal behavior expert." Ronald's more than a prominent spokesman. He's been the face of the company for all these years. Now he's being put out to pasture. No, the cattle grazing pun was not a happy accident. Ronald's mind is still razor sharp. But they don't think so, those executives in their fancy suits, driving their fancy cars. Sure, they're all smiles and pats on the back when they see Ronald at one of the commercial film shoots, but behind his back it's Temple Grandin this, Temple Grandin that. Temple Grandin is getting people to think we care about the animals we slaughter. Temple Grandin just praised us in her book on animal kindness. Temple Grandin, Temple Grandin. It's enough to make Ronald sick. He thought getting shit-faced last night with Mayor McCheese would get his mind off things, but it didn't help at all. This morning he woke up with a vicious hangover and Temple Grandin was still out there, going on interviews about her new book, talking about how McDonald's is doing so much for animals. It won't be long before she works her humane slaughter garbage into one of Ronald's all-time favorite songs. "Two humanely treated all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun." Ronald can't take it anymore. He doesn't know what he's going to do but he's going to do something. In the meantime, there's still a few gulps left in that bottle of whiskey lying on the ground.

The Frank Lloyd Wright of slaughterhouses writes book on animal happiness

2009-01-22T07:18:00.000-08:00

The New York Times reviewed a book on animal happiness by Professor Temple Gardin, well-known slaughterhouse designer. It's kind of like having the makers of Smith & Wesson handguns write a book on pacifism. Some excerpts...

Some people think death is the most terrible thing that can happen to an animal. The most important thing for an animal is quality of life.

This is a real head-spinner. She says it's the quality of life that's important. But death ends life. There is no quality of life after the slaughter. There is no life period. And it's not like there's some Dr. Kevorkian of the animal husbandry world putting animals out of their misery when they've lived out most of their lives and are nearing death. These animals are slaughtered in their youth. So if quality of life is the most important thing for animals like she says, then death IS the most terrible thing that can happen to an animal since it terminates life and there can be no quality of life without life.

She says slaughterhouses need "strong, caring" managers. Strong and caring. That sounds like the hero of a Danielle Steele novel.

"Stand back, my darling" the heroic slaughterhouse manager said, stun gun held firmly in his thick, corded arms, his strong yet caring voice sending chills down Tessa's spine, "this animal will feel no pain. But you might want to take a few steps back so you don't get brain tissue on your beautiful green dress, which would spoil our first dance at the ambassador's ball tonight. Oh, and better plug your ears, my darling, because the stun gun doesn't always work right the first time and the steer will start to scream, disturbing your delicate ears which should only hear my tender words of affection, not the death throes of the cattle."

Temple Gardn's advice for these strong, caring managers?

A captive bolt gun has a steel bolt that is powered by either compressed air or a blank cartridge. The bolt is driven into the animals' brain ... if a non-penetrating captive bolt is used the animal may revive unless it is bled promptly.

This word "caring" comes up over and over among people who talk about improving "animal welfare." Words have agreed upon definitions. These definitions turn otherwise random sounds into pieces of communication. If you use the word to describe something that's the polar opposite of the agreed upon definition, communication is no longer possible. Caring slaughterhouse worker. If Temple Gardin arbitrarily decided to suspend the agreed upon definition of "caring" and replace it with a new one, if caring now means "willingness to drive a metal bolt through the skull and brain of an animal," then I suppose these slaughterhouse workers are caring.

The article tells us Temple Gardin has consulted, i.e. received money from, McDonald's and Wendy's. And guess what? "She has kind words for them." They sent her home with a wad of cash and a Happy Meal and she spread the word. People suspect PR agencies of being bought off so they don't believe press releases by companies like McDonald's. But when an animal rights thinker with genuine cred and books to her name and a publicity photo of herself surrounded by happy animals has kind words to say, that's going to sell a lot of Big Mac's.

Don't bother reading the book. Wait until the McDonald's tray liner version comes out.

The different types of people who consume animal products

2009-01-20T07:25:00.001-08:00

Among people who consume animal products you tend to see a continuum:

1) Those who not only are indifferent to the suffering of animals raised for food but who actively derive pleasre from killing animals themselves. Hunters say they eat what they kill, but most will usually admit the primary motivation is the thrill of the hunt.

2) Those who don't slaughter animals themselves but who make no pretense of caring about the suffering and death of these animals. For these people, the human desire for animal flesh outweighs the animal's desire not to suffer. Presumably, if these people did not benefit in any way from the suffering and death of the animals, they would reject it. Dan at Unpopular Vegan Essays has an intriguing analysis of the willingness of people who consider themselves "kind and gentle" to suspend those values when they consider the animals who end up on their dinner plates.

3) Those who do care about the suffering of non-human animals. They are aware of this suffering but don't want to be. They don't want to see it or hear about it. They actively avoid images or information that make more vivid their purposefully vague conception of what happens to animals raised for food. Too much awareness would force them to re-consider their behavior and they are unwilling/unable to do that.

4) Those who are fully aware of the suffering of non-human animals and who renounce it but whose renunciation is not strong enough to get them to give up their own role in perpetuating that suffering. These people justify their behavior by coming up with gradations of cruelty. If an animal is raised in what they arbitrarily deem humane conditions, then the suffering and slaughter becomes morally tolerable. This acceptable level of suffering enables them to rationalize their own consumption of animals by placing themselves in a position of moral superiority relative to other people. "Unlike those people who disregard the conditions of animals," they tell themselves, "I do care. I insist on only consuming animals who, prior to the slaughter, lived tolerable lives." These people, paradoxically, often become proselytizers for animal rights. They genuinely see themselves as passionate and committed advocates. The Animal Welfare Institute is one of many examples of people who advocate for a reduction of animal suffering but who refuse to eliminate their own perpetuation of that suffering. You read their accounts of sumptuous pork dinners at their animal welfare conferences and you think they're making a morbid joke. But they are completely in earnest.

The Animal Welfare Approved spokesman auditions

2009-01-18T07:27:00.000-08:00

Burger King has the King. McDonald's has Ronald and a slew of lesser lights. Jack-in-the-Box has Jack. Sure, Animal Welfare Approved has a handsome label, but they deserve a spokesman too. Like any spokesman selection process, there needs to be auditions. You don't hand out a coveted role just like that. First up, Grinning George.

GRINNING GEORGE: The table is set, the candles lit, the wine poured. Stories are shared and toasts are made. Good fellowship fills the air. And then it happens. Your conscience spoils the dinner party by reminding you of all the pain and suffering the animal endured before it became the slice of meat on your plate. My name is Grinning George and I'm here to tell you it doesn't have to be that way. Now there's a way to appease your conscience without giving up the taste you crave. All you need to do is make sure your meat is Animal Welfare Approved. It's just that simple. With the unique Animal Welfare Approved system of elaborate rationalizations and twisted self-deluding logic, you'll be able to convince your conscience the former animal whose carcass sits on your plate actually had a happy life, nut just before it was slaughtered, but even while it was being slaughtered. Sound hard to believe? Think of it as a beer that tastes great AND is less filling. Or a cereal bar that's good AND good for you. Animal Welfare Approved meat is good for your taste buds AND your conscience!

Animal Welfare Approved means the animals were raised and slaughtered on family farms, not big, impersonal factory farms. And that makes all the difference. The family farmers are kind and gentle. They give the animals space to run around in, or at least they claim to when the Animal Welfare Approved representative comes out once a year to audit the farm and share a hearty pork dinner. Animal Welfare Approved works on even the most stubborn conscience. Your conscience may tell you "humane slaughter" is a morbid contradiction in terms. But Animal Welfare Approved says to your conscience, no, you're so wrong, the animal was slaughtered with "a philosophy of respect."

With Animal Welfare Approved labeling, the days of bad conscience and a heavy heart spoiling an otherwise delightful dinner party are a thing of the past. So make sure to look for the green and blue Animal Welfare Approved label. Deluding yourself with preposterous rationalizations isn't just for progressives anymore. It's for everyone who loves the great taste of meat without the nasty nagging conscience.