The Video That Started Me Blogging Again...

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.

Back After a Hiatus to Blog as Much as I Can..

You may have noticed that I disappeared for a while. Judging from my last Blog post - in August 2013 - it has been nearly a year.

Good blogging is not easy. It requires a lot of time and thought and energy. I've been writing a lot over the past year. Alas, not much of it has been about animals. I've turned my attention to my fiction, which has, I'm pleased to say, really taken off.

But the plight of animals haunts me. Specifically, the horrific treatment of animals by human beings continues to vex me. I can't outrun it. I can't get away from it. I lose sleep over the treatment of animals.

One of the reasons I stopped blogging last year is because so much of what I blog about here is tragic. I'd always make an effort to post something happy, but in the end - let's face it - the giant historical record of human interaction with animals has been, on the whole, one filled with ghastly nightmares and unspeakable horror shows, and acts of kindness have been drops of water in the ocean, and grains of sand on the beach.

To deny this is to deny an essential truth about human beings. Whatever good comes of the human species, it is offset by giant factories and huge storage warehouses and massive tanker ships full of cruelty. There is no escaping human sadism when it comes to animals.

Those of us who are sensitive souls can do one of two things. We can run away from it, or try to shield ourselves from it.

Or we can reluctantly march into battle, a battle we'll lose, but one we ought nevertheless to fight, against our fellow human beings who are inflicting this cruelty.

Part of the battle, it seems to me, is to show the positive and healthy ways in which a growing number of human beings are interacting with animals in this day and age.

But it would be a lie - a big lie - to emphasize these happy interactions at the expense of more disturbing truths.

I'll blog as much as I can about animals, as much as my psyche and stomach and soul will allow. Blogging is one way to fight against the cruelty. Another is to educate ourselves. And still another is to take some sort of action to help the animals. Even little steps, small things, make a big difference.

I like to hope things are changing, moving in a positive direction. I'm not always sure of it. But I am sure of one thing. I want to return to the march to sanity. Because when I take part in it, I feel better. I feel engaged in something bigger than myself. Fighting for animals is one of the few things that makes me feel fully human again.