WANTED BY THE FBI: TWO PIGLETS

KEY POINTS

• Three years ago the FBI search warrant and raid in search of two dying piglets rescued from a factory farm illustrates the lengths the government will employ to protect the animal agriculture industry.

• Non violent animal rights activists are often designated as “terrorists” and are treated in the court system as such, even when no human beings are hurt and the economic loss is minimal.

• The factory farm industry and its armies of lobbyists wield great influence in the halls of federal and state power, while animal rights activists wield virtually none.

• The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is typically dominated by executives from the very factory farm industries that are most in need of regulation.  The politics of the U.S.  means there are massive forces arrayed behind factory farms, and very few in support of animal welfare.

• Undercover investigations at the Westland/Hallmark Meat Company in California filmed workers forcing sick cows, many unable to walk, into the “kill box” by repeatedly shocking them with electric prods, jabbing them in the eye, prodding them with a forklift, and spraying water up their noses.

• At a Vermont slaughterhouse operated by Bushway Packing,  days-old calves were filmed being kicked, dragged, and skinned alive.

• An  undercover investigator at E6 Cattle Company in Texas filmed workers beating cows on the head with hammers and pickaxes and leaving them to die.

• Sparboe Farms in Iowa was exposed when undercover investigators documented hens with gaping, untreated wounds laying eggs in cramped conditions among decaying corpses.

• Claims by the animal industries of ‘distorting the evidence’ are even more untenable now that activists are using virtual reality technology.

• But the animal rights movement, despite receiving relatively scant media attention and operating under the threat of federal prosecutions for terrorism, boasts some of the nation’s more effective, shrewd, and tenacious political activists who have forced into the public consciousness the knowledge of how this industry imposes suffering, abuse, and torture on living beings on a mass and systematic scale, all to maximize profits.

• There are serious health risks posed by the fecal waste produced in factory farms, and the excessive, reckless use of antibiotics breeds treatment-resistant, potentially deadly, bacterial strains.  Industrial farming also exacerbates climate problems.

• There is a temptation to turn away from and ignore this mass suffering and cruelty because it’s so painful to confront.  We should all feel gratitude to animal activists for their increasing success in making us see what we are enabling when we consume the products of this barbaric and sociopathic industry.

 

Read the full Intercept Article Here