Comments on: Factory Farms Are Repeat Offenders

By: Steve Baker

Steve Baker — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 01:50:12 +0000

I am a U.S pork producer in Ohio are hogs are not mistreated. We keep sows in gestation crates where they don’t have to fight over food and they are happy. If an animal is not happy they are not productive. People need to back off farmers and let us produce food because people will always eat meat. Agriculture is the biggest employer in the United States and brings alot of money in to local,state,and the federal goverment. People should not let peta and other animal rights groups fill there heads full of lies about what goes on in farms. Most farms treat there animals well god put animals on earth for people to eat and I don’t agree with Animal abuse those farm that abuse animals should be shut down.

By: Bob

Bob — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 18:06:42 +0000

I live about 10 miles from the Holden site in Dexter, mn. and i have been in the pork industry myself my entire life. Instences like the fire that occured and the livestock’s deaths are very tragic and no one is arguing that. It was not holden’s fault. If you had any idea of the amount of money lost over the fires you would understand that having facilities burn to the ground is not in Holden’s best interest. Meat production is a buisness and an industry. It is the way it is and will be!! People need to eat. Just like anything else there are right ways of doing things and wrong ways. Corporate sized farms generally cannot hire the quality of management required to opperate in the same way as more local family owned opperations. Size of facilities, number of head in each room, weather all the pigs have a name or not does not separate a humane opperation over one that is not. I have seen the bad raps on the news, most people do not understand that the number of farms opperating inhumanely is very few! But if one farm makes it on the news saying 400 sows burned in a building it appears that everyone assumes that every other producer wants wants to engauge in malpractices on some 3 million sows nation wide. completely rediculious. If livestock is not healthy happy and content they are not eating they are not growing and the producer is not making money they are soon out of business. Poor management will not survive. reguardless if a fractional percentage wants to stop eating the most abundant sorce of potien available. i could go on all day but im done here. take it first hand from a quality pork producer if you have a problem with the way the entire industry is opperated chances are you are highly uninformed of the majority and you just saw a news program that singled out a bad manager and stereotyped the entire insustry.

By: Berkana

Berkana — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 01:28:23 +0000

@ William

You may be right that we have to buy SOME things from big business, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to have an impact by avoiding what we can. There’s no excuse for what big business does, but there’s also no excuse for us to sit around and do nothing.

We can ALL make a difference, but with an attitude like yours, nothing will get better.

By: William

William — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 19:55:50 +0000

Of course big business is the devil with a parking lot. But there is no way to continue our way of life (especially if you like bacon and burgers) without it. Try to go for one month without buying ANYTHING from a big business, including gasoline. You will end up paying more and getting less for your money. It is unfortunate that we have to give in to it, but that’s life. I try to support ‘mom&pop’ merchants as must as possible. However, there are some things you have to buy from big business. By the way, this article and every post here was written on a computer that was assembled by sweat shop workers in China (unless you have an Alienware computer), be careful what you protest and who you point fingers at…we are ALL guilty! P.S. Alienware is a perfect example. I am writing this right now on a Toshiba laptop that was made in China (sez so on the bottom). It cost about $500. It is your average laptop: Pentium Dual-Core, 1.86 Ghz, 160 GB, dvd burner, 15.4 widescreen, etc…An equivalent laptop from Alienware (which would be their cheapest one–bone stock) is about $2000. Yeah, they’re made in Florida by adults. But if we, Americans, really cared about humanity why do we overcharge for it?

By: Lee Hall

Lee Hall — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 03:52:36 +0000

Thank you for the article, Martha; and I appreciate the follow-up discussion. (Hoorah for the new DV website!) A few additional thoughts to add to Serafina’s, regarding respect for migrants.

Border walls and border violence take a terrible toll on migrants — be they non-human or human beings. Borders deceive us. They serve as proof that the country exists and divide our lives into us and them and rob us of our freedom to travel over the face of the earth. Borders dictate which side one is on and enable wars to take place, and wars may depend on seeing the non-citizen as illegal, or as non-persons. The idea that some are fully human and some are something less often dictates who will be killed or caged. The wealthy can, in some cases,
buy proof of their humanity and the freedom to travel but most cannot, so borders punish the financially poor. As animal-rights activists, we have something unique to say about seeing through borders and about the false basis of social arrangements built on the idea of imagining us and them.

By: Serafina

Serafina — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 14:21:44 +0000

Martha – Thanks so much for this important article. I work with many undocumented mushroom farm workers in PA – and though it might not be the flesh industry – we live and see all the connections you make about the abuse of power that happens to the animals, the workers, to women, to the environment – it is an interconnected web of oppression that can not be seperated – anyone concerned with one of these issues must be concerned with all to truely allievate the suffering and injustice.

I appreciate that you use the word undocumented and not the “right-wing” term “illegal ” to describe workers who have crossed a border to toil here. In doing this you help humanize a group of people that the US government and many others are treating without regard to their humanity – similarly to how they deem animals should be treated.

By: bozhidar balkas

bozhidar balkas — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 16:49:40 +0000

i eat little meat. i wld eat less or stop eating meat if i can persuade my wife to buy just enough meat for self.
however, she cooks pounds of it every day. i can’t throw it away.
she’s 77 now and no longer of listening age. thank u

By: cg

cg — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 16:26:06 +0000

“As long as there are slaughterhouses there will be battlefields.”
Leo Tolstoy

“For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love.”
Pythagoras

“The time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men.”
Leonardo da Vinci

“What is it that should trace the insuperable line? …The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?”
Jeremy Bentham

“Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances of survival for life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.”
Albert Einstein

“You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

By: Rich Griffin

Rich Griffin — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 15:39:51 +0000

Thank you for yet another excellent article!!!

My hope is that more and more human beings will recognize the ethical, environmental, and health benefits of a vegan diet. It is frustrating when human beings continue to stay deluded and cling to their eating habits without thought to how it impacts on others. One person at a time, one day at a time, I can imagine a world where we no longer behave so insanely.