Undercover footage taken by Farm Watch shows dozens of rats crawling over living and deceased pigs in wet, filthy and cramped enclosures.  The fact that the meat from this farm is certified under New Zealand’s pork care label demonstrates that these labels are meaningless.  A TV news station in New Zealand ran an excellent in depth story about the farm, the regulators and the broken system.

Factory farms, or concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), are inherently inhumane because the animals are treated like commodities.  In CAFOs, pigs, chickens and cows are mutilated, confined, kidnapped, beaten and deprived of the ability to do anything that comes naturally to them.  If you oppose animal cruelty, then please go vegan and educate others about the horrors of factory farming.

In response to ag gag laws which criminalize undercover photo and video from being taken in factory farms, animal rights activist Will Potter launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise money to buy drones to legally photograph factory farms from above:   “In my new project, I am going to use new investigative journalism tools to help expose what some corporations want to keep hidden.”

Agribusiness is moving mountains to stopping animal cruelty inherent in factory farming from being exposed, but Will Potter is staying one step ahead.  While the drones might not capture cruelty, they will show the destructive impact that factory farms have on the environment.  To learn more about and support his effort, please visit his Kickstarter page, Drone on the Farm: An Aerial Exposé

In a thorough story about the pork industry’s slow phase out of gestation crates, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports on many aspects of the change, including the vast financial resources of large companies like Cargill, Smithfield Foods and Hormel  that will enable them to make the switch from crates to group pens; the concern among small contract farmers that the added expense won’t translate into added revenue; the risks and benefits of having pigs in group pens; and the growing demand from the public to eliminate the most intensive forms of confinement.  According to the National Pork Producers Association, about 20 percent of U.S. sows are in group sow housing; the rest are kept in crates.  “Gestation stalls became common in the 1970s and early 1980s, as hog producers got bigger and moved their animals indoors. The stalls generally measure 2 feet by 7 feet.  Canada recently banned the continuous housing of sows in gestation crates, following the European Union.” Dallas Hockman, industry relations VP at the National Pork Producers Council, defends the intensive confinement of sows, stating, “It’s not about right or wrong, it’s about choice. The type of housing does not dictate animal welfare.”

Gestation Crates

Thanks to undercover footage taken in concentrated animal feeding operations (aka factory farms), consumers largely oppose the intense confinement of the animals who they eat.  Of course, animal rights activists oppose it too.  The challenge we face as a community is whether or not we advocate for incremental reform, such as the change from crates to shared pens, or to push for the only humane option, which is the abolition of all forms of animal farming and slaughter.  Shared pens might be better, but they are still cruel, as they deprive the pigs from the opportunity to roam freely in the outdoors.   And the shift to pens from crates doesn’t change the fact that the piglets have their tails sliced off without anesthesia and that sick piglets are killed by slamming them against the floor. While we might disagree on strategy, we can agree on our message when consumers are listening — the eating animals in modern day times is inherently inhumane.

According to the NY Times, a city in southern China is “trying to lower the profile of its much-criticized dog-eating festival. The feasting is expected to go ahead as scheduled this weekend, but local officials have taken steps to deflect outside attention from the annual event, at which thousands of dogs are consumed.”  The article goes on to say that, “the dog meat trade has become a key target for Chinese animal rights advocates. In 2011, a group blocked a truck transporting nearly 500 dogs to a slaughterhouse and paid $18,000 to free them.”

Photo: China Network/Reuters

This NY Times article provides us with a hook to ask our dog-loving, meat eating friends why we should be any more disturbed by people eating dogs instead of pigs, cows and chickens.  As Mercy For Animals asks in its  campaign, “Why love one and eat the other?”  That said, ending or compromising any animal eating event is a victory, especially for the victims.

Lawmakers in a French National Assembly committee voted to officially change the legal status of animals from “personal property” to “sentient living being.”  The law still must pass the full Assembly and Senate.  The current law states that animals have no more rights than objects.  The 30 Million Friends Foundation collected 700,000 signatures to petition for the change. A recent poll found that 89 percent of the country approves of the change.  Since 2009, the European Union governing body has officially considered animals sentient beings under the Lisbon Treaty, but many national governments have not yet updated their laws.

Foie Gras: Product of Terroir (the land) or Product of Terror?

If animals are reclassified as “sentient living beings,” will their circumstances improve?  Foie gras (fatty liver of ducks or geese), a staple in the French diet, is so cruelly produced that it is described by activists as a “delicacy of despair.”   Is this change merely symbolic (which is better than nothing, I suppose) or will regulations be changed in animal enterprises that will actually require the businesses to treat them as living beings instead of inanimate objects?