Victory? Not on your life - or theirs

The pork producer Smithfield Foods, Inc., has announced that - after lots and lots of pressure from animal welfare advocates - it will no longer keep pregnant female hogs in gestation crates. "VICTORY!" proclaimed a headline on Change.org. "Smithfield Will Stop Using Gestation Crates."

Those who put pressure on Smithfield Foods to abandon gestation crates, particularly the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), have good reasons to be pleased. Their efforts paid off. Now, female pigs will no longer be confined to areas that are so small, they can't even turn around in a circle.

But before anybody celebrates, let's take a cold hard look at how little things have changed.

Female pigs will still give birth to babies that will be torn away from their mothers. The babies will grow up in darkness, fattened up to eventually be murdered and cut apart for their meat.

And if you listen to the rhetoric of the HSUS, the struggle is over. The good fight has been won. The forces of darkness have been vanquished. "Smithfield's recommitment is an important and welcome move," noted the HSUS president/CEO Wayne Pacelle. "With the company back on track with its phase-out, we're getting closer to the day when the cruel confinement of pigs in gestation crates will be a bygone era for the entire hog industry."

But the real question we face is: Does this step bring us closer to the day when humanity sheds is barbarism and stops exploiting and murdering sentient beings?

I'm not certain the answer is "yes."

What it will mean is that one of the outrages that resulted in animal welfare groups taking hidden cameras into pork producing companies is now gone. Animal welfare advocates have emerged from this struggle feeling very proud of their accomplishments. Self-congratulation, unfortunately, leads to passivity and acceptance. Mass murder will continue behind walls, inside of cold, brutal killing plants. The only change is that a mother pig now has more space to move.

I recall when I first became a vegan, I used to read Gary Fancione dismissing these kinds of animal welfare triumphs as "meaningless," and I'd think, "He's being pretty hard on animal welfare proponents. After all, every little step forward is an improvement. Change is gradual. Victories come in small steps. The end result is a world without animal exploitation, without violence, without meat and leather jackets and cow's milk in our refrigerators."

But I've since learned that as long as tens of billions of land animals are murdered each year, we have no reason to celebrate. As long as our oceans are being depleted of aquatic life, any rejoicing is hollow and meaningless. As long as baby calves are torn away from their mothers to produce milk that human beings have no business drinking; as long as horses are being slaughtered (a cruel act blessed by a Democratic-controlled White House); as long as baby seals are being mercilessly clubbed for fur that human beings don't need to wear to keep warm; as long as the very foundation of a huge segment of our economy is based on mass killings, there is never a reason to applaud or find joy in "triumphs."

What happened at Smithfield is not a victory. It is a droplet of insanity that has been removed from a merciless sea that churns with psychosis, denial and violence. Only by drilling down to the roots, and dramatically altering the worldview that says the mass murder of animals is acceptable, will we have reason to cheer.

Why We Fight

Every war involves propaganda, even the war for the rights of animals.

Big corporations that make animal products have been under assault from both Animal Rights and Animal Welfare groups. Not long ago, the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) produced a stark video about leading pork producer Smithfield Foods. The video, called Undercover at Smithfield Foods (click here to see it), is a damning indictment of how the huge corporation treats its pigs. The first half of the video is shocking and heart-wrenching. Sadly, the second half is a plea for improving conditions in pork production, rather than a desperately needed argument on behalf of ending all forms of animal exploitation.

Now, Smithfield has fired back with a propaganda video called "Taking the Mystery out of Pork Production at Smithfield Foods" (included above). Please take out a little time to watch it. If we're going to challenge the likes of Smithfield Foods, it's crucial to first hear and consider their arguments. The video isn't very long - nine minutes and fifty-nine seconds - and it is interesting to see the company putting a positive spin on pork production.

This pro-pork propaganda is not always easy to watch, for totally different reasons than videos of brutality and slaughter. For starters, it depicts the pigs as being well cared for and seemingly happy with their lot in life. At one point, Dr. Mary Battrell, a North Carolina-based veterinarian who takes care of Smithfield's pigs (and is seen in the video holding a piglet), assures viewers that the pigs have "the best care that we can make available to them."

Everything in the video is portrayed as idyllic, from the rolling green pastures surrounding the "climate-controlled facilities" to the inside of the buildings where the pigs are kept, which are bright and airy. The video shows Smithfield using "green" (i.e., environmentally friendly) methods to take care of their pigs, and Dr. Battrell tells the audience that pigs are not injected with any sort of hormones. The pigs shown in the video appear happy and carefree and full of spunk. Dr. Temple Grandin turns up as a talking head in the video, commenting at the beginning about being happy that she was asked to appear in it.

In the end, the video - not surprisingly - is a spirited defense of Smithfield.

Which takes us back to the HSUS video, insisting that Smithfield treated its pigs horribly. One might pose the question: Which one is correct? But that is not the question that ought to be posed.

The question that we ought to be asking is: Do human beings have the right, even under the best and most idyllic of circumstances, to transform sentient beings into food?

The problem with Animal Welfare arguments is that they rest on the assumption that getting rid of the worst abuses and excesses will finally lead to a more just and tolerable situation for animals. Really, all that does is pacify the consumer of animal products - lulling them with a false sense of justice that everything is fine, that animals are being protected, that it's OK to consume animal products.

We can sit here and tick off all the horrible ways that pigs are treated in most factory farms. Their tails are "docked" - or hacked off - without pain killers. They are cramped together into dark spaces. They live short lives full of noise and anxiety and stench, only to have their throats severed. This picture here, taken of a pig farm in North Carolina by University of North Carolina epidemiology professor Steven Wing, shows what sometimes happens to pigs at these kinds of facilities. The rest are cut up into meat and sent off to market.

But it's not enough to talk about the appalling conditions in many pig farms, because there will always be some state-of-the-art facilities where pigs are treated better.

What needs to be said is that no matter how clean, no matter how sanitized, no matter how bright and sunny and surrounded by rolling green hills these pig farms may be, the violence they perpetuate against sentient beings is always unjust. The end result is death - violent death - whether the facilities are pleasant or horrific.

Alas, the Humane Society - as wonderful and heroic as it often is - missed a golden opportunity to make that statement in its video showing the appalling conditions at a Smithfield facility. The HSUS video even praises Maxwell Foods and Cargill for being "gestation crate free."

Which is why Smithfield's response - in the form of a cheery and optimistic "Morning-in-America"-type video - represents an effective, although hokey, counter-argument.

They wouldn't have such an easy time responding to a more principled Animal Rights position. Being voices for the voiceless requires that we adopt that position and argue it over and over and over again, until we're blue in the face.

A Video That is Powerful in the First Half, Not so Good in the Second... And Here's Why...

Please watch this devastating video, made by the Humane Society of the United States, depicting the horrific conditions inside Smithfield Foods, with a focus on the company's use of gestation crates. The video is both powerful and disappointing. And you'll see why when you watch it.

I applaud this HSUS video in some respects and disagree very strongly with it in other ways. The part of the video I like best is the first half, where the HSUS very bravely exposes the deplorable practice of gestation crates inside of Smithfield and documents exactly just how horrible and destructive these narrow confined spaces really are.

The second part of the video is less impressive. HSUS spokesman Paul Shapiro praises other pork producers in the U.S. and the E.U. for getting rid of gestation crates. When the video quotes Temple Grandin two minutes in, then it really begins to go downhill.

The real crime is not gestation crates, and the HSUS needs to be reminded of this. Gestation crates are a symptom, not the root, of the problem. The root of the problem - and I know I'm preaching to the converted when it comes to most of you who read this Blog, but what the hell? I'm going to say it anyway - the real root of the problem is the violence inherent in all industries that produce animal products.

Suppose all pork producers get rid of gestation crates, which, as this HSUS video points out, has happened already throughout much of the industry. It is still killing machine that destroys the lives of millions and millions - ultimately billions of pigs - each year.

So yes, let's dismantle all remaining gestation crates. But let's not stop there. What is happening in this racket is, in the words of John Steinbeck (from The Grapes of Wrath) "a crime that goes beyond denunciation." Tinkering won't change it. Reform won't change it. This is a Lernaean Hydra we're talking about here, and the only way to stop its rampage of destruction and terror is to sever all of its heads. Nonviolently, of course. But if you stop at gestation crates, the monster will live on, and will continue to devour innocent beings that deserve to live.