An Undercover Look at Why Pig Factories Haven't Changed Since "The Jungle."
[link] My remarks that I've posted on various sites:
I'm a person who can stomach watching surgeries, autopsies, and actual footage of gruesome deaths. I couldn't watch all of this video, which is an undercover recording of the horrors inside a pig factory. I started crying. It is unbelievably despicable what humans do to "lesser creatures," let alone each other.
I haven't seen a horror film this disturbing. I haven't seen any war footage that came close this this. I've watched documentaries on the victims of white supremacists, the Holocaust, the Black Plague, the Salem Witch Trials, the bloodiest events in history that teach you a new way for someone to be tortured. The closest thing I can compare this to is the pictures I've seen of Holocaust victims; especially the ones of the Nazi Josef Mengele, who did horrible experiments and surgeries on captured people without anesthesia.
If you have ever read "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair, you will be shocked to know that little has been done since the early 1900s. If you haven't read it, it's the story of a Lithuanian immigrant and his struggle to earn money to keep his family from starving to death. At one point he works in a meat packaging plant and the workers literally stand in a foot of blood. It's terribly hot in the factory and the sweat mixes into the meat. Sometimes bulls get loose and try to escape, maiming workers in the way. There is no sanitation, even when workers lose limbs or fingers in the dangerous machinery. It is a literal cesspool of innards and disease. Sinclair had meant for the book to be more about exposing the difficult lives immigrants had to live, but more people were concerned about how disgusting the factories were. Sinclair had gone undercover for several years in meat factories and was able to see how dispicable they were for both the animals and the workers. It became such an uproar that the president established the FDA and had factories shut down or follow new rules to make safer, more sanitary factories.
I don't want to sound like some animal-rights zealot, but anyone with a shred of decency would be uncomfortable watching this. The monstrosities that the factory workers commit to these pigs is something that would give them the death penalty were it done to another human. If they were dogs or cats instead of pigs, they could do serious jailtime and be considered someone who could have the ability to kill other people without empathy.
Pigs have been given a bad reputation through history. If someone eats sloppily we call them a pig. If someone is crude to women, we call them a pig. If someone lives in a dirty, messy house, we say they live in a pigpen. If someone eats a lot, we say they're pigging out.
The Jewish don't eat pigs because they're considered unclean animals, partly due to their cloven hooves. You would think, "Well, they may be considered unclean, but it's better than being eaten, right?" No. It further promotes the idea of pigs as brute, stupid, lumbering animals.
Want to know how the whole idea of pigs being unclean to the Jewish happened? It's economy. Thousands of years ago, when the Jews settled in Jerusalem/Israel, it was a woodland full of trees and wild food. Pigs were able to live there quite happily-there was plenty of food for them to forage, shade that kept them from getting sunburned, and mud to keep them cool because pigs can't sweat. But then the population began to grow. People needed to make houses and began cutting the trees down. Soon, they had deforested the area, meaning that pigs had to be taken care of people in order to survive. They needed food, water, mud, and some sort of shade. It became very difficult and expensive to take care of pigs just to eat them--the result of food wasn't enough to justify the work needed to raise the pig to adulthood. But people liked eating pigs, and it would be difficult to persuade everyone to give up bacon and pork because of it being expensive. What better way to get people to do something than to say "God commanded us to do it. You'll go to the inner circles of Hell if you eat pigs because they're unclean."
And that created a stereotype that pigs aren't smart. That they're messy. That they're good for nothing more than food.
Pigs are smarter than dogs. They've done as many heroic things that dogs, cats, dolphins, and horses have done. They've rescued people from drowning-they're fantastic swimmers. Their mouths are so tuned and sensitive that they only eat food at a specific temperature--that's why they're considered "messy eaters," they let any food at the wrong temperature fall out of their mouths. They can tell if their food is half a degree off.
Pigs cannot sweat and have sensitive skin that can easily be sunburned. Just like elephants, dirt and mud acts as a sunblock and protects them from annoying insects. I met a man who was severely paralyzed after a freak accident in which a several thousand pound haybale fell on him and because of the damage to his nervous system, he cannot sweat. He cannot get the slightest bit overheated because it could cause heat stroke or dehydration very quickly. And like humans, their hair is sparse, making them more easily sunburned.
Besides, who doesn't like playing in mud once in a while?
Pigs have excellent senses of smell, comparable to that of a bloodhound.
They are also very intelligent. Some people who have pot-bellied pigs as pets have shown that they're much easily potty-trained than a puppy or kitten, that they're very clean. They are easily trained and can be taken out on a leash just like a family pet. They love to be petted and brushed and will lay like a dog to have their belly rubbed.
Well, we live in a time and place where there are more humane options. This isn't an isolated tribe where your survival depended on livestock. Americans eat too much meat as it is--if meat must be used then give it to people who are starving to death and do it in the most humane way possible.
You know how the bible says to eat meat sparingly? That meant only eat meat if you don't have any other food. Even having meat once a day can increase your chances for obesity and heart problems. If you can't give up meat, there are plenty of tasty alternatives and imitations. Just cutting back on your meat consumption is healthier, saves money, and saves animals. Eat it twice a week rather than twice a day. Or get kosher meat, which means that the animal was killed in much more humane circumstances and that they weren't raised in a cage.
Animals, including people, shouldn't be caged, especially the more intelligent ones because they are able to understand what horrible circumstance they're in to the fullest extent and thus are more miserable.
They can feel pain just as much as us.
If you didn't watch the video: The squeals turned to shrieks and screams sound like a torture chamber; they sound almost like humans and the shrill of enormous pain. The babies cry just like human babies at pain and loneliness. You see them wince and back away like an abuse victim from the workers. The workers beat the pigs with metal rods, half the time for their own amusement. They laugh at a flailing, screaming pig before they kill her, trying to get in a few more whacks or kicks. They forcefully fling the runts onto the floor in an attempt to kill them-and if they die immediately then they're lucky, but oftentimes they land on the broken corpses of other baby pigs and are cushioned enough to not die on impact, which would sadly be more humane. They use the metal rods to rape and mutate the genitals of the animals, again for their own entertainment. Newborns are castrated and have their tails removed without anesthesia in crude ways--with scissors or a pocket knife--while being carelessly held upside down. These animals look forward to dying and if they had the means, are quite able to learn how to do it themselves.
If anything, those people are the ones who fit the stereotype of characteristics that are normally associated with the word "pig." Do you realize how many serial killers, psychopaths, abusers, sex addicts, rapists, and pedophiles started out by killing, torturing, or raping animals? In fact, whenever someone has a love for some sort of animal cruelty, it's seen as a sign that they could easily become one of the above. This is practically encouraging those factory workers to go out and kill someone! It destroys their sense of sympathy. And the fact that pigs more resemble humans than say, chickens, only furthers the possibility of blending the two together as victims in waiting.
This video is disturbing. I don't blame you if you can't watch it all the way through--I couldn't. You don't have to suddenly join PETA and prance around in a lettuce bikini to let people know how wrong this is. Raise awareness to this atrocity. Let people know that you don't support this.
Sta.sh
Emotional 
Agony 
Tired 
Gloomy 
Shitty 
Mesmerized 
Pleased 
Annoyed 
Isolated 
Artistic 
Sickened 
Egghead 
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