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Bills seek end to farm animal abuse videos
Now in a pushback led by the meat and poultry industries, state legislators across the country are introducing laws making it harder for animal welfare advocates to investigate cruelty and food safety cases.
- hingisundhorsa 14y agoThe first amendment exists precisely to protect our ability to publish and release such information.
- aaron695 14y agoLets be clear, if you don't like animal abuse don't eat animals. Murder is worse than abuse. These videos in essence are propaganda tools and I see little value in the so called animal rights movement that promotes clean killing as an ethical good. But at the end of the day there should be free speech no matter whether it's right or wrong or for good or evil.
- username111 14y agoThere is a huge difference between clean kill slaughter and animal abuse then slaughter if we are going to agree that animals can feel (which they most certainly can).
- jlcx 14y agoI don't think that the "animal rights" movement "promotes clean killing as an ethical good". Sometimes these videos are released with the intent of persuading people to stop consuming meat (and perhaps even eggs and dairy). But even if the videos are only intended to change certain abusive practices within the meat industry, I think many people would agree that abuse followed by killing is worse than killing alone.
- lilsunnybee 14y agoThe composition of beliefs in the animal rights movement varies quite a bit. There are some that believe all killing of animals is wrong. But there are a greater number that believe the suffering inflicted by cruelty and careless farming methods is the only evil here. Some organizations are entirely devoted only to stopping cruel practices. Some of these people might be against eating meat entirely too, but only because they believe factory farming and cruelty is an inevitability for the mass production of meat. Movements are inevitably made up of many different kinds of people with varying motives. There are always going to be radicals (like many with PETA), but the majority often have reasonable arguments and concerns.
- glesica 14y agoSo if you eat meat you can't be against pit bull-fighting? That seems like a pretty bad philosophy to me. Extrapolate it further, we shouldn't, then, be more appalled by a gruesome murder (of a human) than a gunshot to the back of the head. Since that is untrue for virtually everyone, you either have to claim that nearly every human on earth is a logically inconsistent dunce, or perhaps there is, in fact, a violence gradient of some sort.
- aaron695 14y ago> So if you eat meat you can't be against pit bull-fighting? Correct? Well you can but you'd be a bigot thinking you're beliefs are better than someone else's. >Extrapolate it further, we shouldn't, then, be more appalled by a gruesome murder (of a human) than a gunshot to the back of the head. Correct. Again a no brainer. There is however evidence that a person who commits a gruesome crime might be more likely to re-offend. This should be taken into account for sentencing/rehabilitation. But no, you should not be more 'appalled' > Since that is untrue for virtually everyone, you either have to claim that nearly every human on earth is a logically inconsistent dunce, or perhaps there is, in fact, a violence gradient of some sort. ??? Do I even need to answer that? 80% of India is Hindu. 80% of America is Christian. You think people aren't logically inconsistent?
- glesica 14y agoAt some point you have to ask yourself if it's more likely that everyone else in the entire world is crazy, or that you might be mistaken. People are not shocked by horrible crimes because of the likelihood of re-offense. They are shocked by horrible crimes because there are things worse than simple murder, at least to most people. The idea that every murder is completely equal in every way is just plain silly. Torturing someone to death is worse than shooting them in the back of the head. Rape-and-murder is worse than murder. These are things that most people can see pretty clearly. Here's why: just ask yourself which you would prefer to have happen to you (assume that you won't be able to escape your fate no matter what happens). I'd take the bullet every single time, and there's a reason for that.
- k88 14y ago
- jayfuerstenberg 14y agoWithout realizing it I've been sliding towards a vegetarian lifestyle. This will only drive me further down that path.
- paulitex 14y agovegetarianism is not the answer. Monsanto is one of the evilest companies on earth and they control most soy production (I say this because many vegetarians eat a lot of tofu). It's about understanding the source and making good choices. Eat grass-fed, antibiotic-free beef (these two things virtually guarantee you're not supporting the concentrated feedlots) and free range chicken. Eat non-GMO vegetables that are locally grown and in season. It's about supporting the right suppliers, which thankfully exist for all parts of the omnivore spectrum.
- jayfuerstenberg 14y agoI agree wholeheartedly with you. I only noticed that I tend to take in less meat these days because of not trusting how it's treated. Videos like this don't inspire me to eat it... http://kottke.org/13/03/how-our-food-gets-to-the-table http://kottke.org/13/03/how-our-food-gets-to-the-table I live in Japan and generally avoid buying any food from the US. My beef comes from Australia and vegetables mostly from Western Japan (as far from Fukushima as possible). It's not cheap but it's better than supporting Monsanto and factory farms in general.
- alwaysinshade 14y ago> Eat grass-fed, antibiotic-free beef Or just eat pastas, lentil based dishes, vegetable curries, soups, or even supplement meat with texturized vegetable protein for faux meat pies, bolognese etc. I'm a meat eater and can't tell the difference. The vegetarians I know don't eat tofu very often, and would rather eat tofu potentially produced by a notorious company than eat an animal. Didn't down-vote you BTW, just thought I'd chime in because I know a few veggos, including my wife. It's not bad food I can assure you.
- camus 14y ago
- fzzzy 14y agoBad things happening? Just make it illegal for anyone to find out about the bad things! Problem solved. /s
- randomdata 14y agoPerhaps some people are creating abuse videos to fill the demand for animal abuse videos? Putting an end to that seems justifiable, and runs along the same logic lines that makes child porn illegal. I won't say that there isn't a problem, but having been around many animal farms in my day, the videos that are out there do not seem very representative. It does make you wonder how much of it happens for the purpose of catching it on film.
- glesica 14y agoI would consider your argument if it wasn't for the fact that the farm lobby has been behind similar bills in several states in the past (most recent was Iowa, last summer IIRC). It isn't animal rights activists behind these bills, it is farmers who don't want their activities watched closely.
- randomdata 14y agoFor what it is worth, people who are interested in animal rights are generally the only ones who watch animal abuse videos, which creates a demand for said videos. They, naturally, have little motive to see an end to the production of like content being the consumer. Farmers, on the other hand, have a lot to lose by people being abusive towards animals. An animal that is sick and hurting produces far less. Margins are already incredibly slim in agriculture. You cannot afford to have animals in pain. Not to mention the embarrassment of people thinking you are abusive towards animals just by being a part of the industry. Or maybe you are absolutely right, but I don't think it is anywhere near being clear cut just by looking at the initiator.
- jiggy2011 14y agoI think most of these videos are recorded in abattoirs etc with hidden camera. So they are documenting something that would have happened without the presence of a camera. It would seem unlikely (though I guess not impossible) that animal rights activists would seek to increase the abuse of animals simply to create the videos.
- hawkharris 14y agoI think United States v. Stevens (2010) provides interesting context for this story. The case concerned the constitutionality of a bill banning so-called "crush" videos: brutal films in which naked women use their high heels to crush small animals to death. The Court struck down the bill because it was too broad, banning the sale and transport of videos that depicted an animal being maimed, tortured or killed. They cited the fact that such broad language would include hunting videos and factory protest videos like the ones in question. Although crush videos are clearly horrifying and wrong, I felt a strong sense of patriotism when I learned about the Court's verdict. You know that the First Amendment is strong when the Court will consider freedom-of-speech issues even in the face of something that is universally despised. Hopefully, the bills in question now will be challenged and same constitutional principles will be applied.
- drivebyacct2 14y agoWell, I suppose in some places animal cruelty is more universally rejected than anti-gay sentiments, but in my opinion, the Phelps family embodies the same principle. I don't know of anyone (aside from a few families that have moved to Topeka to join them) that would support the things the Phelp's family says. But their speech is protected (as it should be). And really, it forces even the most conservative, Confederate-flag-waving of my schoolmates to be vocal supporters of gay rights when I doubt they'd be otherwise.
- Evbn 14y agoPhelps is really in a class a part, as their speech serves no purpose except to harm people. Harm is not a collateral damage that must be tolerated, but the direct intent of their actions, to no greater purpose even from their own point of view.
- icebraining 14y agoNot true, they claim to be warning people about "the wrath to come".
- paulitex 14y agoI just watched "Food, Inc" this weekend, it's a very well made documentary. Much more evidence-based and non-preachy than I expected. They talk at length about what they call 'veggie libel laws' and other laws introduced by food producer lobbies that limit free speech and surveillance about food productions. There's a long history of this, unfortunately it's nothing new. If you have amazon prime, you can watch it for free: http://www.amazon.com/Food-Inc/dp/B002VRZEYM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1363576916 http://www.amazon.com/Food-Inc/dp/B002VRZEYM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=U...
- fasouto 14y agoI recommend to everyone the documentary Earthlings, you can see it for free at http://earthlings.com/?page_id=32 http://earthlings.com/?page_id=32
- gradstudent 14y agoEarthlings is an animal snuff film. Why the hell would you recommend to anyone such a horrid viewing experience??
- purephase 14y agoIt's actually pretty spot on. If you go and visit some of the places depicted in the film, without prior approval and scheduling, and you'll see it first hand. I say this as someone who use to work for an organization that sourced and inspected chicken and beef processing facilities and, I've visited them regularly.
- gradstudent 14y agoYou're missing my point: it's a horrid film. I shudder just thinking about it and I'd certainly never recommend it to anyone. Besides, I cannot believe that some of the shit in that film, like seals being skinned alive, is par for the course.
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- bediger4000 14y agoAt the end of the day it's about personal property rights or the individual right to privacy After finding out about Ragtime-A and Ragtime-B, the abuse of National Security Letters, and seeing the number of surveillance cams that litter downtown Denver, I no longer believe it when officials (private or public, federal or state) say things like this. "Personal property rights" and especially "individual right to privacy" is just duckspeak at this point.
- siglesias 14y agoAnimal rights is one of the biggest swept under the rug ethical issues of our day, and one in which I see lots of smart rational people stumble over themselves to justify their habits (or uncomfortably turn a blind eye). Recommended listening is Peter Singer's Philosophy Bites interview, which links animal suffering to utilitarianism: http://philosophybites.com/2008/05/peter-singer-on.html http://philosophybites.com/2008/05/peter-singer-on.html
- dsl 14y agoI'm curious where animals get rights from in the first place? Serious question.
- salmanapk 14y agoFrom having feelings? WTF is wrong with you people.
- hkmurakami 14y agocrap sorry I meant to upvote you but misclicked and downvoted you. I'll go upvote a random different post of yours to compensate. I'll also add that animals can feel 'pain'. The world is a better place with less overall pain.
- Volpe 14y agoThere are lots of ways to express how we should treat eachother (and animals), other than "Rights". Being able to think outside of the existing paradigm of rights based thinking is not something that is "wrong" it is actually more 'considered' than knee jerk assertions.
- glesica 14y agoThat's a tricky question. Start with a different, and probably easier (for many people) question: where do humans get rights? There are many possible answers. Some people think our rights come from God (or gods), others take different approaches. Ultimately it's just a matter of deciding what is important and "true". You have to invent your own axioms in some sense, I think. So, once you've done that, you can use those axioms to decide whether or not animals have rights.
- addlepate 14y agoWhy waste effort trying to improve the situation when we can just ignore it more strenuously?
- ck2 14y agoI really do not understand how people can stand to eat meat. I try not to be sanctimonious about it but the idea of eating animals has put me off since I grew conscious as a teenager. I don't even consider myself vegetarian, I drink milk and eat products that have eggs (not eggs directly) Just the smell of meat turns my stomach. I assure you, it's very possible to live a well-fed life without any meat.
- beedogs 14y agoPossible, maybe. Delicious? Certainly not.
- enraged_camel 14y ago>>I really do not understand how people can stand to eat meat. You realize we're omnivores and evolved to eat both meat and vegetables, right? This is not to say that everyone MUST eat meat. But you have to understand that finding meat delicious is pretty much the default evolutionary state of human beings.
- ck2 14y agoYes but it's easy as creatures with intelligence, to realize other creatures think and feel, for us to stop that consumption. There are MANY things our animal cousins do that we do not do, because we can think. I don't have any fantasies that meat consumption will disappear entirely, I'd just like to see it go down as society evolves, just like slowly increasing the mpg requirements for cars cuts fuel use dramatically over time. If meat consumption was cut in half, maybe we'd have the time, money and resources to treat livestock much better.
- HaloZero 14y agoAnother bigger problem is cultural norms, that moment where your the only vegetarian at a table sucks because now sharing food with friends / SO become so much harder. I mean obviously less of an issue when you cook at home but still.
- mark_l_watson 14y ago+100 for corporations -1 for consumers According to the book "Diet for a Small Planet" the beef industry gets $50 billion a year of free water from the federal government. Doesn't sound like fair market capitalism to me. It does sound like our elected officials can be easily bribed. The super rich have won. Hopefully not too far of topic, but a friend just sent me this video link about income inequality - an eye opener! http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DQPKKQnijnsM http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM&desktop_uri=%...
- batgaijin 14y agoEver heard of the term 'bread and circus'?
- mark_l_watson 14y agoExactly right. And there are uncomfortable parallels with our situation and the last 100 or so years of the Roman Empire.
- barbs 14y agoNicer URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM
- Ensorceled 14y agoThe problem with attempting to create ethical arguments against all eating of meat (even with human slaughter practices) is that it leads inexorably to the conclusion that we should exterminate all predators to prevent the cruelty they inflict on herbivores. While these things are horrific, it's not much more horrific than what continuously goes on in the animal kingdom.
- rsl7 14y agolions aren't building large scale slaughterhouses.
- jonmrodriguez 14y ago> it's not much more horrific than what continuously goes on in the animal kingdom. Where's your evidence for this? In the animal kingdom, isn't death due to predators rather quick? In factory farms, the animal's entire lifetime is one of outrageous torture, e.g. feeding cows a corn diet that shreds their stomach wall, and forcing them to stay alive through the pain with massive courses of antibotics. Or keeping chickens in cages so small they can't even turn around.
- FaddiCat 14y ago> In the animal kingdom, isn't death due to predators rather quick? Not always. A lot of predator species are known to play with their prey.
- joesb 14y agoGoogle search "Hyenas eat wildebeest alive" video. It probably took more than a minute before that wildebeest died.
- Ensorceled 14y agoWhat is your evidence against it? Clearly you know very little about the matter as all of this is well established and any biologist or TV wildlife program can set you straight. Few predators "finish off" their prey though they may often kill it during the hunt, once the prey animal is disabled they start to feed. House cats, for instance, will capture, release and recapture the prey animal, sometimes for hours. Wolves and Dogs will hunt and not feed, often leaving the prey animal to die from it's wounds. Also look into how predators teach their young to hunt. It is very unpleasant. I'm not saying that factory farming should be allowed. In fact, I think future generations will correctly judge us harshly for the unnecessary atrocity that is modern agriculture.
- brunorsini 14y agoReminds me of David Foster Wallace's classic "Consider the Lobster" piece on the morality of eating animals, interesting read - http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/2000s/2004/08/consider_the_lobster?printable=true http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/2000s/2004/08/consider_the_l...
- mturmon 14y agoA great piece. Who was on crack over at Gourmet when they decided to send Wallace to a lobster boiling festival? Here's a capsule summary: He travels to coastal Maine for the annual Lobster Festival. What begins as a witty, sometimes snooty point-and-laugh swerves into something altogether more uncomfortable when the author poses the question "Is it all right to boil a sentient creature alive just for our gustatory pleasure?" "Consider the Lobster" originally appeared in Gourmet magazine, and it was controversial for all the obvious reasons. Few carnivores were amused by what they perceived as an attack on their morality.
- brador 14y agoIf only their was a way of finding out who votes yes on these bills and voting them out.
- theoutlander 14y agoI just completed 13 months of being a vegetarian. I wanted to convert since 10 years prior to that, but couldn't get myself to do it because I grew up eating meat as a treat once to twice a week. It got progressively worse after I moved to the states as I started eating it three times a day and expanded from Chicken to all other red meats.I loved it! Fast forward to last year and we were having a baby and that's when it struck me - Animals often watch their family being slaughtered. The young ones before they're even allowed to walk. They scream all along. They're mistreated extremely inhumanely and the people handling them - let's just say there's a special place in hell for them! I NEVER watched a single video until I had converted and people kept asking me if I saw any videos....they're horrible! We grow up being masked from how animals are killed. If you can't even watch your meat being slaughtered, you shouldn't be eating it! Luckily, we're raising our child a vegetarian. We've found great vegetarian alternatives and yes they don't taste anywhere as great as a steak or smoked ribs, but they're still very very close and I think I can make that sacrifice because I don't ever want to see another animal deliberately hurt because of me or my family. I truly hope our society can make the necessary changes to treat animals humanely. Granted, there's no humane way to kill anyone, but I'm sure there's a quick/painless way to do it. I'm not trying to change anyone. I just wanted to share my story.
- dmxt 14y agoHe might start eating meat eventually when he grow up. I don't always follow my parents rule or tradition when I grow up.
- theoutlander 14y agoYes, you are right. My wife keeps saying the same and I can't do anything about it. I can at least raise him vegetarian for as long as I can.
- inoop 14y agoI became vegetarian when I was sixteen under the influence of punk rock music :) The funny thing is that even though I have a much more nuanced opinion on the topic sixteen years on, I have lost the ability to see meat as a something separate from the animal itself. When I see slabs of meat in the supermarket, I don't think about how great it will taste, I just see a part of a cow, pig, or chicken. In other words, my reaction is much the same as yours would be if someone would be selling say, cat meat. There is a certain amount of cognitive dissonance that is necessary to eat meat without feelings of guilt or disgust, and at the same time feel compassionate when animals of other species are hurt or killed. Once people become vegetarian, whatever the reason, they often lose that ability. I know a few people who grew up vegetarian and never had the choice as a child. Because they never learned the difference between 'pig' and 'pork', 'cow' and 'beef', 'calf' and 'veal', it's often harder for them to make a conscious decision to start eating meat.
- lignuist 14y agoI think, visiting a slaughterhouse should be a mandatory part of school education.
- jonah 14y agoAnd in general understanding where your food comes from.
- lignuist 14y agoYes. It's ridiculous, how many adults don't even know the basic vegetables.
- tomjen3 14y agoWhy? What is special about food, compared to clothing? I don't even know which part of the world my undies are made in, much less how they are made. There is a lot of bullshit about food, I want a good, non-emotional reason.
- jonah 14y agoClothes too. And electronics. And everything else too. I think we'd work to make the world a better place if we had a better understanding of the paths our things took to get to us. Some companies share a bit about the origins of their products. For example: http://www.apolisglobal.com/global-marketplace/ http://www.apolisglobal.com/global-marketplace/
- captain_mars 14y agoI have never posted comments about whether a particular action has made me lose my faith in humanity, or whether it restored my faith in humanity. But after reading the linked article, my faith in humanity is definitely shaken. The meat industry's focus is not on ending animal abuse, but on making it more difficult for animal abuse to be discovered and proven. In other words, they are determined not to change their ways, because (I imagine) doing so will be inconvenient, and might cause them to make slightly less money than they make now. How can any state legislators support such moves (and introduce these bills)? Do they have no ability to empathize with another living being? If no, are they fit to be our leaders? Edit: Typo.
- BUGHUNTER 14y agowow, 215 comments for now - and I can not find the word censorship... have no time reading, what people are actually discussing here, but if the word censorship is missing, something goes wrong.