Category: Op-ed

March 11, 2019

Nevertheless, she persisted (part one)

It’s been a while…a long while, and I’d like to tell you why. I have been experiencing a long period of deep discouragement. When I look around the world, despite the horrors that continue daily for animals, I see many successes: whole countries banning animal testing for cosmetics. Cities and countries banning circuses that use animals. Animal activists becoming ever louder, more animal farmers turning to plants instead, small dairies sending their cows to sanctuaries and becoming vegan cheesemakers. The astonishing rise in the availability and quality of plant-based versions of animal foods, and the almost mind-bending frequency with which animal issues are in the mainstream news.

And yet, within my own circle, which is quite broad, there seems to be so little change. The Year of the Pig brought the predictable number of “Mm, bacon!” posts on Facebook (where I suspect a number of friends, finding me tiresome, have simply unfollowed me). Ninety-nine percent of all animal agriculture takes place on factory farms, and yet it seems every omnivore I know buys meat, eggs and dairy that come only from the one percent of “small family farms.” (How do the 99% stay in business? How does the 1% keep up with demand?)

I fear I have run out of different ways to say and to show people that animals matter, that they feel…that from an emotional perspective they experience their own lives very much as we do. They have friends and they mourn when their friends die. They rejoice in the warmth of spring. They feel deep love for their babies — and total anguish when their babies are taken away. They are capable of altruism, of planning, of displays of genuine cleverness and compassion. I have shared so many stories that demonstrate all these things and more, but it seems as though no one is listening. So I stopped writing, because I’m not sure I can say it any differently than I already have. I don’t seem to have the magic words that will make people feel something for these animals, and perhaps make a choice to live a little bit differently.

But someone lit a fire under me today. So tomorrow I will tell you why I don’t “just give it a rest.”

December 1, 2017

Rethinking the Boycott

A lot of vegans and vegetarians are upset that Maple Leaf Foods has bought Field Roast, maker of delicious vegan food, and are declaring a boycott. But here’s why they shouldn’t: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, and then you win.” (Gandhi, if you’re unfamiliar with the quote.) Maple Leaf Foods can see which way the wind is blowing, and like any smart business, they want in on the action. It’s understandable why people who don’t eat animals don’t want to support them; Maple Leaf Foods, after all, is Canada’s largest “food producer” and also operates in the U.S. and Asia. By default this makes them responsible for a staggering amount of animal suffering, every minute of every day. But if you know how large business works, then you know that Field Roast will become a subsidiary of Maple Leaf Foods, as NYX, Kiehls and other companies against animal testing are subsidiaries of L’Oréal, and MAC et al are subsidiaries of Estée Lauder. All the money that comes in does not go into one big pot. Each business is managed separately and money, therefore, is also managed separately. When we support good companies owned by larger ones whose ethics or policies we disagree with, we are showing them what is sustainable and encouraging them to put more focus there. We are showing them where the money is. If we boycott and profits fall below expectation, we will ultimately damage vegan brands and instead of flourishing, they will wither. Supporting animal-friendly subsidiaries of large companies is, in the long run, the right thing for animals.

August 1, 2017

Bring on the CCTV

I came across a great op-ed in The Guardian (UK), by Chas Newkey-Burden, reminding British citizens of the commitment Prime Minister Theresa May made to put CCTV in all slaughterhouses.

This is a move that should be free of controversy in any country. Virtually everyone is against animal cruelty and in favour of “humane slaughter” (leaving aside for the moment the inherent contradiction of such a phrase). Every time horrific abuses are exposed at a slaughterhouse, the owners and managers unfailingly claim it’s an anomaly, that they weren’t aware and that mistreatment of animals will not be tolerated. It’s a flat-out lie. When abuse is consistently exposed in every investigation, that’s not an anomaly, it’s the norm. And because it’s the norm, those in charge at slaughterhouses know it goes on and they clearly condone it. They don’t care. But they say they care, and so they should have absolutely no problem with CCTV, monitored by an independent body. There is simply no excuse to oppose such a move, and it should be happening in every country that considers itself civilized.

September 21, 2015

Op-ed of the month!

This morning I read an op-ed in the L.A. Times by Bruce Friedrich, Farm Sanctuary’s director of policy and one of the most intelligent voices in the animal rights movement.

It speaks to the myth of humane slaughter and is such an important read that I am duplicating it here. Every animal Bruce writes about could be someone you or I know, someone I’ve written about…and that’s the whole point: each animal, each of them, is someone. They are intelligent, they feel both physically and emotionally, and they have a vested interest in their own lives. In that respect, there is no fundamental difference between them and the animals with whom we share our homes and our beds. The calves Bruce writes about could be Julie; the pig could be Esther.

There is a Humane Slaughter Act in the United States and while I would argue that humane slaughter is itself an oxymoron, what little protection the act is supposed to offer farmed animals is useless, because it is ignored and no one in authority seems to care.

Horrible abuses occur in slaughterhouses every day, everywhere, all the time. It doesn’t have to be this way. If you eat animal products and are complicit in this, I implore you to reconsider your choices. If you don’t, I am asking you to act. Support change in whatever way you can, whether by asking politicians to vote down ag-gag laws, signing petitions, or educating others.

The cruelty behind your ballpark hotdog

Late last year, a government inspector paid a visit to Clougherty Packing, the Vernon slaughterhouse responsible for killing the animals that, in the afterlife, become Dodger Dogs and Farmer John-brand meats. With the inspector watching, an employee tried to render a lame pig unconscious, a procedure that should require one shot to the head with a stun gun. Because the pig was not properly restrained, however, the employee had to shoot her multiple times.

Later, the inspector witnessed another botched stunning: the employee had to “pull out the stuck rod from the skull and reload the captive bolt” before he finally succeeded. In both cases, there was no backup stunning device available.

Such sloppy work amounts to “egregious” illegal activity under the Humane Slaughter Act, which declares that livestock must be slaughtered “only by humane methods.” The U.S. Department of Agriculture — according to its own policy directives — is supposed to suspend plant operations in response to such infractions. It can also refer abuse for criminal prosecution or, in extreme cases, effectively shut down a poorly run plant by withdrawing its grant of federal inspection.

Yet official records that I received through the Freedom of Information Act show that after the Clougherty Packing debacle, as well as similar incidents across the country over the last two years, the USDA declined to punish the perpetrators, issuing administrative warnings instead.

USDA inspection records chronicle workers running over crippled animals with construction equipment, animals regaining consciousness after having been shot through the head with a captive bolt, and workers intentionally abusing injured animals. Dozens of slaughterhouses either can’t or won’t follow the law. But the USDA allows them to continue operating.

At a Minnesota slaughterhouse, a plant manager repeatedly electrocuted a cow that was trapped in the stunning box with a hole in her head. For more than 15 minutes, the worker tormented this cow with electric prods, trying to force her from the pen “despite this being physically impossible.” When she was finally killed and extracted from the box, this poor animal had four freshly broken ribs and multiple deep wounds where her “hide had been forcefully ripped off, varying in depth but in some regions down to the [muscle] beneath.”

Over less than eight months, this plant was cited 14 times for humane slaughter violations and its operations were suspended on multiple occasions, but it was not shut down and no one was criminally prosecuted.

At a plant near Fresno, a worker unloading animals from a truck dropped a crippled calf from a height of about three feet onto the concrete floor of the slaughter pen. “This calf landed on its body and remained recumbent on the concrete.” The worker continued, pushing four more calves “off the trailer, chin first onto the concrete.” Although plant operations were briefly suspended, the worker was not charged for this intentional and criminal cruelty.

As if such documented brutality weren’t bad enough, undercover investigations consistently find that abuse is even worse than is indicated in the USDA’s official records.

At a slaughter plant in Chino that processes large numbers of crippled dairy cows, the Humane Society of the United States secretly documented workers beating animals, shocking them, ramming them with forklifts and using high-power hoses to shoot water into their nostrils — all in an attempt to force them to stand. USDA inspectors were in the plant during each incident, but they never cited the plant for abuse.

The USDA’s own inspector general warned in 2013 that Humane Slaughter Act enforcement was both “inconsistent” and “lenient.” In a random sampling of inspection reports, the inspector general found 10 egregious violations of the law that did not result in plant suspension, including a captive bolt lodging in a conscious pig’s skull for at least four minutes before the animal was killed, a pig being boiled alive and a forklift operator driving repeatedly into a crippled pig.

If the USDA is going to follow its own policy directives and enforce the Humane Slaughter Act, it should consider two crucial reforms.

First, all egregious violations of the law should automatically result in at least plant suspension. Over the years 2013 and 2014, I documented dozens of examples of such violations that resulted in mere warnings. That simply makes no sense; an egregious infraction deserves a stern response.

Second, the USDA should refer intentional abuse for criminal prosecution. The Humane Slaughter Act is a criminal statute and violations can — theoretically — result in fines and jail time. Not only is criminal prosecution a suitable punishment for animal abuse, but the predictable threat of prosecution would act as a deterrent, discouraging mistreatment in the first place.

Personally, I see no ethical difference between eating a chicken or a cat, a pig or a puppy; I don’t think slaughtering animals for one’s dinner can ever be humane. But, for now, the Humane Slaughter Act is all we have; the least the USDA could do is enforce it.

~Bruce Friedrich