The way we treat farm animals in this country is a crime - well, actually, it's not, because our animal cruelty laws don't apply to farm animals. This is really convenient for the livestock producers who cram their cows and chickens into those industrialized concentration camps known as CAFOs (confined animal feeding operations) and force them to live out their short, miserable lives in pain and filth.
You can't imagine how awful the lives of these animals are, and if you're a fast food aficionado, you don't want to. But I'm determined to penetrate that deep-fried crust of complacency that's coating your tender, inner self like some kind of karmic Chicken McNugget. So I'm asking you to please take five minutes to watch "Overlooked: The Lives of Animals Raised For Food," the latest video from The Humane Society.
Narrated by James Cromwell, who played the farmer in "Babe," the video poignantly documents just how oxymoronic the term "factory farm" is. Back in the day, a farm meant acres of open pasture where animals had unlimited access to sun and fresh air. A factory is the antithesis of a farm, with its hard concrete floors, fluorescent lights, and--in the case of the CAFOs--stalls or cages so confining that animals are restricted within an inch of their lives for their entire lives.
Before the advent of industrial agriculture and its economies of scale, lambs and calves got to gambol and graze; chickens could roll in the dust and fluff their feathers; pigs could go rooting around in the soil; in short, they led a natural life right up till their unnatural death at the hands of man.
A factory farm or CAFO's very design denies the fact that these animas are living, breathing creatures capable of feeling both physical and emotional pain.
People sometimes ask me, "Why does it matter how we treat animals if we're just going to kill them and eat them, anyway?" You can argue that we shouldn't be eating animals at all, and treating them well doesn't mitigate the wrongness of slaughtering innocent creatures because we like the way they taste.
Here's the thing, though; the vast majority of Americans, something like 95% of us, are meat-eaters. And, as Mark Bittman noted in Sunday's New York Times, we eat an awful lot of it, to the detriment of our bodies and the planet. But many folks just can't imagine giving up their beloved burgers or bacon.
"Overlooked" encourages people to shift to a plant-based diet, but the Human Society's strategy is ultimately about harm reduction. PETA's militant anti-meat advocacy may persuade some people to go vegan, or at least vegetarian, but the Humane Society's campaign to educate consumers about the barbaric conditions in factory farms has the potential to get a far wider group of people to stop buying factory farmed meat, poultry, dairy or eggs and seek out more humanely raised alternatives.
The success of this approach has been born out in Britain, where celebrity chef Jamie Oliver raised a ruckus-and consumer awareness--with an expose on factory farmed chickens for his tv show "Jamie's Fowl Dinners." Since the program aired, along with a show by another well-known British chef, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, who compared an industrial poultry farm with a free-range operation, sales of organic, free-range chickens have shot up dramatically in Britain. Animal rights activists have been heartened by the response, as the Daily Express reports:
Dr Julia Wrathall, head of the farm animals department at the RSPCA Science Group, told trade magazine The Grocer: "When it comes to the chickens we eat in Britain I am beginning to think we may be on the verge of a revolution."
There's no reason to think that American consumers wouldn't react the same way, if, say, Rachel Ray decided to use her star wattage to shine a light on one of the darker aspects of our food chain. But look at what happened to Oprah when she badmouthed burgers. Who wants to get flayed by the meat mafia? They'll defend their inhumane way of doing business by any means necessary. Still, I'm holding out for a Ray of hope. Maybe someone can get Rachel Ray to give "Overlooked" a look? Anyone who can watch this video and still eat meat from a feedlot must have a heart hardened by clogged arteries.
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