Tuesday, September 16, 2008

sad. too sad to speak much of.


I stopped eating pork almost 2 years ago.

I LOVED German sausage and sausage in foods like wedding soup. My friends in Florida actually used to give me a hard time about how much I loved summer sausage.

That was until I moved to North Carolina.

This land of God-fearing, religious people in the Bible Belt has piglet trucks that track back and forth across the state from breeders to slaughterhouses.

These are 18 wheelers stuffed with baby piglets (like Babe) who are crammed in so tight that their legs, tails, and noses stick out the side of the trailers. I started crying one day when I looked over at the truck which was passing me and saw all the cute piglets stuffed therein.

I won't be a part of it. I won't pretend I don't know it happens. In seeing those piglets I knew I could not in good faith eat pork again.

CNN has a story up about another factory farm and abuse. Why can't American's face the truth about the meat on their tables and being served them in restaurants?

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/09/16/abused.pigs.ap/index.html?iref=mpstoryview


Several excerpts:
At one point on the video, an employee shouts to an investigator, "Hurt 'em! There's nobody works for PETA out here. You know who PETA is?"
...
"I hate them. These [expletives] deserve to be hurt. Hurt, I say!," the employee yells as he hits a sow with a metal rod. "Hurt! Hurt! Hurt! Hurt! ... Take out your frustrations on 'em." He encourages the investigator to pretend that one of the pigs scared off a voluptuous and willing 17- or 18-year-old girl, and then beat the pig for it.

"At one point in the video, workers are shown slamming piglets on the ground, a practice designed to instantly kill those baby pigs that aren't healthy enough. But on the video, the piglets are not killed instantly, and in a bloodied pile, some piglets can be seen wiggling vainly. The video also shows piglets being castrated, and having their tails cut off, without anesthesia."

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