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Have you read Fast-Food Nation, Slewica, it is a really good read on the subject. We are doing it in AP history. The Jungle is a little out of date, but also...horrific.
I have read Fast Food Nation, it is really good not just on this subject but on others that involve the fast food industry. I haven't read The Jungle, but I have started reading Slaughterhouse by Gail Eisnitz and I think it's kind of like an up-to-date version of The Jungle from what I've heard about that book. Maybe you should check that one out. Also, if you want to see where animal rights activists like myself are coming from, read Animal Liberation by Peter Singer, it has the facts and the philosophy behind animal rights.
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Do you have an unbiased source for animal cruelty?
Cruelty is inherent to raising animals for food on a mass scale. From separating mothers and their young way before their natural weaning time (this is required for milk production, since the cow has to be impregnated and give birth in order to give milk and the resulting calf has to be taken away as soon as possible [sometimes immediately, others after a day or two] so more cow's milk gets to humans), branding (in the case of cattle, and painkillers are not used in the process), transportation to the slaughterhouse (there are no laws that prevent animals on trucks from being denied food and water for hours on end, and some animals die before they get to their final destination, in fact the USDA estimates that about %10 of animals die before reaching the slaughterhouse) and then slaughter itself (with line speeds that way they are, it's hard for workers to be exact and accurate with every single animal and that can lead to improper stunning, regaining of consciousness during the slaughter process and in the case with pigs and chickens, sometimes being boiled alive). Death rates on farms vary, from %4 in cows and calves, %12 for turkeys, $14 for hogs, and %28 for some kinds of chickens.
The Animal Welfare Act does not cover animals raised for food, and the Humane Slaughter Act does not cover poultry, which compromise about %90 percent of the animals slaughtered for food in the U.S.
Industry publications, although biased in favor of meat industries, can give indications of how animals are raised and the general opinion the industry has about animals.
Here are some examples:
“The breeding sow should be thought of, and treated as, a valuable piece of machinery whose function is to pump out baby pigs like a sausage machine.”
— L. J. Taylor, export development manager for the Wall’s Meat Company, Ltd., National Hog Farmer, 1978
“In a contemporary agricultural context, the role and value of animals are defined in terms of their economic efficiency and productivity (and the prices for their products). In this valuational context, animal welfare (and its study) is restricted to what has an effect on production and price.”
— Bernard E. Rollin, Professor of Physiology, Philosophy and Biophysics at Colorado State University, in his book, Farm Animal Welfare: Social, Bioethical, and Research Issues
“It’s a damn shame when they kill each other. It means we wasted all the feed that went into the damn thing.”
— Herbert Reed, poultry producer, referring to chickens pecking each other to death in battery cages.
“Forget the pig is an animal. Treat him just like a machine in a factory. Schedule treatments like you would lubrication. Breeding season like the first step in an assembly line. And marketing like the delivery of finished goods.”
— J. Byrnes, “Raising Pigs by the Calendar at Maplewood Farm,” Hog Farm Management, 1976
“It doesn’t bother me. We’re no different from any other business. These animal rights people like to accuse us of mistreating our stock, but we believe we can be most efficient by not being emotional. We are a business, not a humane society, and our job is to sell merchandise at a profit. It’s no different from selling paper-clips or refrigerators.”
— Henry Pace, owner of a livestock auction yard
“Death losses during transport are too high—amounting to more than $8 million per year. But it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to figure out why we load as many hogs on a truck as we do. It’s cheaper.”
— Hog industry expert in Lancaster Farming, 1990
When an egg factory was charged with cruelty to animals for discarding live chickens in a trash can, its lawyer argued that the hens could legally be discarded like manure. This prompted the Judge to ask, “Isn’t there a big distinction between manure and live animals?” to which the egg factory’s lawyer responded, “No, Your Honor.”
— From trial transcript of State of New Jersey v. ISE America, Central Warren Municipal Court
“Sheep farming, like most agriculture, has become agribusiness and not just a way of life. We must be concerned with the amount and quality of the salable product produced from our basic production units. In sheep farming, the basic production units are the ewes. . . . We don’t need large beautiful fat happy ewes that only produce one lamb a year. We need ewes that will provide us an adequate gross income to cover all our costs and then some.”
— D. E. Hogue, Animal Scientist
“The modern layer is, after all, only a very efficient converting machine, changing the raw material—feedstuffs—into the finished product—the egg—less, of course, maintenance requirements.”
— Farmer and Stockbreeder, 1962
“At higher egg prices, crowding always resulted in greater profits.”
— Robert Brown, “Toe-Clipping May Help Hens Improve Returns in Crowded Cages,” Feedstuffs, 1985
“The slatted floor of the hog factory farm seems to have more merit than disadvantage. The animal will usually be slaughtered before serious deformity sets in.”
— Editors of Farmer and Stockbreeder, 1961
“We don’t get paid for producing animals with good posture around here. We get paid by the pound!”
— Hog farmer J. Messersmith commenting on crippling leg deformities commonly suffered by pigs on factory farms.
“The object of producing eggs is to make money. When we forget this objective, we have forgotten what it is all about.”
— Fred C. Haley, president of a Georgia poultry firm, quoted in Poultry Tribune, 1974
“Farmers treat their animals well because that’s just good business. The key to sow welfare isn’t whether they are kept in individual crates or group housing, but whether the system used is well managed. . . . Science tells us that she [a sow] doesn’t even seem to know that she can’t turn. . . . She wants to eat and feel safe, and she can do that very well in individual stalls.”
— Paul Sundberg, veterinarian and National Pork Producers Council vice president.
"According to experts, broilers [chickens raised for meat] now grow so rapidly that the heart and lungs are not developed well enough to support the remainder of the body, resulting in congestive heart failure and tremendous death losses."
- David Martin, Feedstuffs, 5/26/97
"Crowding Pigs Pays"
- National Hog Farmer headline
"If a seven-pound [human] baby grew at the same rate that today's turkey grows, when the baby reaches 18 weeks of age, it would weigh 1500 pounds."
- Lancaster Farming
"...turkeys have been bred to grow faster and heavier but their skeletons haven't kept pace, which causes 'cowboy legs'. Commonly, the turkeys hae problems standing...and fall and are trampled on of seek refuge unter the feeders, leading to bruises...or killed birds"
- Feedstuffs
"Approximately half of the calf slaughterer in the U.S. shackle calves while they are still alive"
- From a study of calf slaughter handling and processing in Meat & Poultry.
"Company trucks would enter layer operations, pick up the [dead] birds, and grind them up, on site, in a portable grinder...it [the ground-up hens] would go to Jet-Pro's new extruder-texturizer, the 'Pellet Pro'."
- Feedstuffs, describing one method of disposing of "spent" egg laying hens (meaning that they no longer produce as many eggs).
"Good handling is extremely difficult if equipment is 'maxed out' all the time. It is impossible to have a good attitude toward cattle if employees have to constantly overexert themselves, and thus transfer all that stress right down the line to the animals, just to keep up with the line."
- A Meat & Poultry article.
"Any sow that is not gestating, lactating of within seven days post-weaning is non-active."
- Successful Farming (when a sow is considered non-active, she sent to slaughter)
"...straw is very expensive and there certainly would not be a supply of straw in the country to supply all the farrowing pens in the U.S."
- A National Pork Producers Council member explaining why pregnant sows are not given straw bedding in their pens.
"Tail docking has become common practice to prevent tail biting of pigs in confinement. It shoudl be done by all producers of feeder pigs. Cut tails 1/4 to 1/2 inch from the body with side cutting pliers or another blunt instrument. The crushing action helps to stop bleeding. Some producers use a chicken debeaker for docking; this also cauterizes the cut surface."
- The USDA. Young piglets are often the victims of taildocking.
That's all for now, short on time.
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