For those of you who haven't seen the tragic footage inside of a North Carolina Butterball turkey processing plant, I highly recommend watching it. Hard as it is to witness, it is important to see this kind of footage so we understand precisely what we're up against.
The facility, near Fayetteville, has been the scene of some of the most horrific conditions imaginable. Abuse includes dropping baby turkeys alive into meat grinders, throwing them, and mishandling them in various ways.
Predictably, Butterball brought in hired goons with academic credentials - the worst kind of defenders of evil, because they hide behind their expertise to perpetuate injustice - to defend their vile practices. Butterball's Orwellian "Animal Care and Well-Being Advisory Council" (a.k.a., the War is Peace, Slavery is Freedom, Violence is Kindness Council) has a group of academics on call who trumpet Butterball's "humane" treatment of animals (and in the process, these folks render the word "humane" completely meaningless).
For the record, their board of "Experts" includes Dr. Temple Grandin (Colorado State University), Dr. Jesse Grimes (North Carolina State University); Dr. Michael Martin (North Carolina State University); Dr. Yvonne Thaxton (University of Arkansas) and Dr. Joy Mench (University of California-Davis).
Apparently, Dr. Mench drew the short straw and stepped forward to defend this ghastly form of assembly-line murder. Said she:
The undercover hatchery video I reviewed did not depict animal mistreatment. As with any operational process, there is always room for learning and improvement, which is why our council encourages Butterball to continue its ongoing associate training programs to ensure top-notch turkey care. (source)That's too sickening even to be a joke. "Top-notch turkey care"??? Are you serious. HELLO: This is a facility where they throw living beings into grinders. I've got a question for Dr. Mench: How would you like to be tossed into a giant grinder that slices and dices and hacks you up into mincemeat? Since you wouldn't characterize that as "mistreatment," I'm sure you would voluntarily take that plunge? What a load of rubbish!
And what has been the response of Butterball and their government supporters in North Carolina? There is now talk about strengthening anti-whistleblower laws even more. Never mind the horror show that is happening inside of the Butterball plant. These lovers of "free enterprise" want to go after animal rights activists who go to work in these plants and film these nightmarish conditions. Why? Because they realize the truth of Paul McCartney's words: "If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian."
The men and women who take great risks to film these conditions are the heroes and heroines of our times. They deserve the highest praise possible. They are revealing the truth, despite the efforts of those in power to build the walls higher and thicker, to keep the outside world from seeing their ultra-violent mass extermination machines that are called factories.
This is why I'm back on the blogging circuit. Indefinitely. To keep quiet while this sickening orgy of death is continuing unabated is just too painful. As long as I have a voice, and as long as I can use it, I'm going to speak out against this madness. It is the worst kind of profiteering of all: the kind based on misery, violence and, ultimately, death. Even if speaking out against it does not stop it, we still must do it. Because looking the other way at these crimes is too painful, and too inhumane.
Corrupt...I like the bit I'm going to copy here from wikipedia: "The word corrupt when used as an adjective literally means "utterly broken".[1] The word was first used by Aristotle and later by Cicero who added the terms bribe and abandonment of good habits.[2] Morris,[3] a professor of politics, corruption is the illegitimate use of public power to benefit a private interest. Economist I. Senior[4] defines corruption as an action to (a) secretly provide (b) a good or a service to a third party (c) so that he or she can influence certain actions which (d) benefit the corrupt, a third party, or both (e) in which the corrupt agent has authority."
ReplyDeleteI remember the first (that I can recall) instance of corruption that played out on the (U.S.) national scene. It was the "controversy" created by the tobacco industries slick use of purchased physicians, scientists and academics to object to the idea that smoking was harmful. That marked (for me anyway) the first profound smack on the head regarding any notion that academia and/or science and/or medicine operated (even though these areas purport to do so) on any plane of behavior and/or understanding superior to or different from anyone else. Humans are involved hence the risk (and fact) of corruption exists.
I have to rein myself in, I feel a rant straining to escape and this isn't the place for that. How about this...it is problematic that we human animals seem to have serious difficulty figuring out that whenever money is involved...invariably...corruption occurs or is more likely. That seems to escape us again and again....and yet again.
I used to have a much higher opinion of academia and academics or science and scientists or medicine or physicians. The cigarette/tobacco brouhaha dealt a serious blow to that idealizing. Young people now are getting their own initiation into corruption via the climate change "controversy" (and the fracking "controversy") where often even the pretense of credentials for presenting an informed opinion are abandoned and any yahoo with an agenda is treated as having equal standing.
Maybe it's me. Maybe I don't get it. To me it is clear...don't listen at all to anyone anywhere who has a financial interest of any kind in something. Period. At least don't listen to them about whether something is ok or not, or good or not. Listen only to those outside the arena of money...and even then don't abandon your own perceptions without strong and clear and abundant evidence.
If something causes harm or pain or suffering or death...don't do it. Period. If something might cause harm or pain or suffering or death...don't do it. Period...without profound and compelling and clear and abundant evidence that the suffering, pain, misery and death is absolutely necessary in order to prevent greater suffering, pain, misery or death. Money should never ever be a reason for any of that stuff...ever.
And...if, like the academic you reference (Dr. Mench), someone says something absurd (and given the visual evidence presented anyone who says there's no "mistreatment" is a purveyor of absurdity) then they should immediately be stripped of their credentials and returned to the stock of deranged yahoos who seem to make up a large proportion of any group of human animals.
By the way, anyone with a first name of Jesse who's also from either of the Carolinas, should never be listened to about anything except as a guide to what not to do. (in deference to the legacy of the king of yahoos, Jesse Helms)
Welcome back and thanks for speaking...we all have to speak otherwise we offer tacit approval...and the crap isn't going to slow down until the disapproval outweighs the approval (and maybe not even then...but at least we aren't standing with the harmers and their silent cheerleaders)