The Eyes And Ears Of The Public
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Animal agribusiness can’t be bothered to do their own investigations and verify references on employment applications. So instead they want to make it a crime for anyone to investigate them.
A recent New York Times article explains:
Rose Acre Farms, an egg producer based in Indiana, did not realize that it had been infiltrated until the Humane Society called a news conference a year ago.
The spy was identified as a young man who had worked 15 days caring for the hens at egg producing facilities in Madison County, Iowa. He had been quiet and diligent and then stopped showing up.
Afterward, the company realized that his application mixed truth and lies. He gave his real name and Social Security number. But he listed false references, which the company had not called. [...]
“My purpose there isn’t to interfere or do anything, my purpose there is to work and record,” [the undercover investigator] said. “My purpose is to be the eyes and ears of the public.”
That video showed rows of crowded wire cages, some containing injured and disfigured hens, as well as rotting, dead birds. Employees were seen throwing the birds into bins and talking about how their wings or legs sometimes fell off in the process.
Curious about the video? Here it is:
The investigator documented the following abuses:
- Broken bones: Workers roughly yank pullets from their cages in growing sheds and load them into cages for transport to battery cages, resulting in a mass of twisted bodies.
- Cruel, extremely rough handling: The HSUS investigator videotaped workers pulling young hens from the mobile cages and stuffing them into battery cages.
- Cruel depopulation methods: The HSUS investigator documented workers grabbing hens by their legs, then cramming them into gassing carts where they’re killed with carbon dioxide.
- Prolapsed uteruses: Hens suffer from “blow-outs” that go unnoticed and untreated.
- Trapped birds unable to reach food and water: Battery cages can trap hens by their wings, necks, legs and feet in the wire, causing other birds to trample the weakened animals, usually resulting in a slow, painful death.
- High mortality in layer and pullet sheds: The HSUS investigator pulled dead young hens, some of them mummified and rotting for weeks, from cages every day.
- Failure to maintain manure pits: According to one worker, the manure pit under a pullet shed had not been cleaned in two years. Workers claimed that some hens are blinded from ammonia.
- Abandoned hens: Some hens manage to escape from their cages and fall into manure pits.
You decide. Do people have a right to know the truth? Or does animal agribusiness have a right to privacy?
Even if I were not an animal advocate, these laws that attempt to restrict the public’s access to information would concern me. The public (aka the consumers) has a right to know everything they considers pertinent about how the food and other products they buy are generated. And producers have an obligation to be honest and open about their operations.
Farmers have gotten extremely secretive about what they are doing. No surprise there I guess. Farming has become a dark and clandestine business. Truth should be the basis of a free market system, but ours is riddled through with deception.
These people who go undercover to get evidence about farming practices are my absolute heros. The work is very dangerous and disturbing and they are showing incredible courage in doing it.
Our nation has great history of muckraking journalism. It’s why the free press and free speech amendments exist.
Muckraking is part of how all societies make progress. It’s simply giving the public the uncensored information it needs to make sound decisions when voting.
God bless.