Horrible Things: Animal Rights Activists’ Peek Inside Pork Plant

Posted by The Editorial Desk / Thursday, June 30th, 2011

Hey, a can of worms. I wonder what’s inside…. Oh.

Warning: Horrifying Content

I’m no vegetarian, and I’m certainly no activist, but we can all pretty much all agree that industrial animal farming is about the worst thing in the world, right?

Shot by animal rights group Mercy for Animals, the above video highlights a series of rather troubling, gory images that go on every day in one of Iowa’s many sunless, hellhole pork production facilities—and it ain’t pretty. There’s botched castrations, prolapsed uteruses, and people saying that it’s okay to toss a piglet because they bounce when they hit the ground.

Coming to terms with how we treat the animals we eat can be difficult. Factory farming provides affordable food to millions, but when you factor the cost (human, environmental, economical), man can this get tricky. There are a lot of meat eaters in the world, most of whom eat too much of it, and it’s insanely easy to separate what we get pre-packaged from the grocery store from living, breathing creatures.

Still, industry lobbyists are trying their damndest to get geek show footage like the one above banned, and they’re getting pretty close—and that is messed up. Sure, they’re gross and biased and have a clear aim to take down the meat industry as a whole, but they also alert meat eaters like myself into remembering what went into that mediocre ham sandwich I had for lunch.

It also keeps animal abusing morons, or people who protect animal abusing morons, in line, and I like that. Nobody should punt a pig, even if it’s going to wind up with an apple in its mouth this weekend.

At the end of the day it all boils down to people, like me, who want to eat meat but not feel like a total monster at the end of the day. That probably isn’t possible, if I had to kill a sow on my own I would probably cry, so I get people to do the dirty work for me. But come on, Iowa pig farmers, at least keep the intestines inside the piglet.

In any case, there goes my barbecue plans for the weekend.

- Kris King

Tags: animal rights, bad legislation, cognitive dissonance, horrible things, industrial farming, lobbyists, mercy for animals, pork, time to ruin your day, unappetizing