AO_Undercover

It would not be wise at all, haha. That's why the president of Animal Outlook, Erica Meier, kindly offered to provide proof for me so I can maintain my anonymity. Thanks!

Thank you for that question, it's one that has been on my mind for a long time. I think the best thing that could be done is letting people see what is actually going on. People who have watched undercover footage from factory farms usually all have a visceral reaction to the content because it is shocking to them. In some cases, people have no idea that animals are being abused on farms because they have been shown this idyllic image of a happy farm where animals are free to roam and have "one bad day" when they're slaughtered, but that couldn't be further from the truth.

I think that if people can see just where their food comes from and how cruel the process can actually be, they'll be empowered to be more conscious of their decision making when going to the grocery store or they might even pursue those changes themselves! We are all more influential than we give ourselves credit for.

That's a great question. I have looked over some of my investigations and had the memories come flooding back. I mostly remember the reactions the animals had to any cruelty or standard practices like how the calves react to having hot irons pressed against their skulls during disbudding/dehorning. In some cases, they would even grind their teeth to brace themselves against the pain... sometimes I can still hear that sound if I think about it hard enough. I think that hit me the hardest and to this day, I still cry when I think about it.

That's a really great question. A lot of standard farming practices are pretty cruel in nature. Take disbudding/dehorning. Young calves have their skulls burned with hot irons to remove their horns and on one of the dairies we investigated, they performed this procedure without anesthesia, so the calves felt every ounce of the pain and the role of the farm worker there involved administering that pain, essentially. There was no malicious intent there, the farm worker was doing that job and it is standard practice to disbud or dehorn the calves, but the calves suffer in the process.

When much of standard practice on farms dictate that animals must suffer through the processes, the farm workers can become desensitized to causing animals pain, since it happens pretty often through standard practices, anyway. This could make acts of cruelty seem like not much of a big deal to them. I think this was best summarized by the supervisor at the hatchery owned by Cooke Aquaculture, where we conducted our investigation into fish farming. He can be seen in the investigation video, talking about how the fish there were killed by suffocating them, saying, "It's rough. Over the years, you kinda get desensitized."

That's a really good question. As I've mentioned in a previous reply to a question earlier, I empathize with factory farm workers. Most of them are immigrants or people who live in low income communities who are just working to feed their families. The large corporations who employ them should be held accountable, as the workers are not the ones forcing these animals to live in cruel confinement, they aren't the ones insisting that cows be milked twice a day and calves be taken away from their mothers, the industry dictates that these standard practices take place to provide the product they profit from.

As someone who is Hispanic and the descendant of immigrants, I understand what it's like to have no other options for employment and taking whatever you can get. I've seen many of my family members do the same, taking whatever job they could get. That's how many of these workers came to be in the positions that they're in. They also are forced to work long hours for little pay and work in filthy, dangerous environments that are breeding grounds for illness and disease. Factory farming is cruel and inhumane at every level. The animals and humans in those conditions are suffering in different ways, but at the end of it all, they're all suffering. And if we want real change to happen, we need to be campaigning against large corporations like Nestle and Tyson, not attacking the workers these companies take advantage of.