> When talking about farm help, they may hold a grudge against the animals they are working with. A friend would work his uncle's farm every saturday to help clean up after the pigs. His job was basically shoveling pig poop for 8 hours (or other equally not-fun jobs). It would take a day before he smelled normal again. Doing this kind of work can make some people resentful of the animals they work with.

Working in a call center, I resented every customer I dealt with. At no point did I electrocute, scald, maim or torture them. Not just because of the distance, but because I'm not a fucking psychopath. People who abuse living creatures do not need any defense; on the contrary, they're immoral, depraved and indefensible.

Animals do not have the rights we accord to people who phone call centers. But should they? That's where discussion of this issue most frequently breaks down.

It's not really about farming or filming. The issue comes down to whether people think it is moral to eat meat. (or meat raised on a factory farm, or meat they did not kill themselves, or some other gradation on the vegan-carnivore scale)

It is not about whether it's moral to eat meat. We have laws that protect these animals from unnecessary cruelty. Their murder is permitted for food production. Kicking them, taunting them, housing them in unbearable conditions - these are all illegal under the law. There is no reason why filming such abuse in undercover investigations should be made illegal, let alone an act of terror. This simply makes it easier for these people to commit crimes.

As of a couple of years ago, the average job tenure of an employee working in a slaughterhouse was 6 months. Many people lasted half a day to three days. The emotional stress and trauma of witnessing living animals being put through the kind of things factory farming does to them is emotionally overwhelming to even the most hardened people.

The people who have to witness that day in and day out frequently end up with extreme emotional turmoil/psychological trauma similar to PTSD and it is these traumatized employees who end enacting much of the crueler practices talked about in these videos.

It's very challenging for a person to witness what goes on in a slaughterhouse and to maintain their sanity. Trying to keep the idea that these are living creatures with rights but also that it is perfectly fine for them to suffer the horrible treatment they are subjected to requires a tenuous mental gymnastics that apparently seems to break down after only a couple of months of exposure.

  | factory farming

Slaughterhouses aren't just for 'factory farming.' It's mandated by law that only licensed/register abattoir can kill animals used for meat, so even the animals coming from 'humane' farms go through the same process.

Also, I remember reading some statistics about how domestic violence is higher among slaughterhouse workers. Too lazy to look it up, but IIRC it was after they started working there (not necessarily that violent people were attracted to the trade).

This depends on the animal. My recollection was that one must process cattle through a USDA approved facility, but there were no such restrictions on pork or poultry.

(The lack of a poultry restriction is obvious to anyone who's bought an organic bird from a local farm.)

Further, as the local eating movement grows, there's an increase in the number of "boutique" (if you will) slaughterhouses. http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2012/06/04/153511889/small-...

Seems backwards. Why are we justifying the cruelty that results from a mindset necessary to witness cruelty? Perhaps the workers won't strike; let's ask the animals.

I'm not justifying the cruelty. At least that wasn't my intent. My intent was to outline how horrifying that cruelty is that human beings cannot even witness it for a 6 month time frame without suffering strong emotional trauma.

Very similar things can be said of prison guards or soldiers; Zimbardo thoroughly documented what can happen when good people become part of a bad system.

The key preventative is supervision and scrutiny. Abu Ghraib happened primarily because a group of people in a position of power were left unsupervised. It's a matter of keeping good men honest.

> This is not meant to defend cruel people, I just want to raise a few points about farms.

You seem to have some sympathy with farm workers, but the points you raise have had the opposite effect on me - I am now more inclined to want laws which specifically allow videotaping animal cruelty, even at the expense of privacy/trespass rights.

> Farmers and farm help see animals as money, so they won't do anything that could jeopardize being paid (won't damage the product).

That's true, but aren't there also situations where greater suffering of the animal would lead to greater profit for the farmer? For example, keeping a pig enclosed in a very small cage, or weening piglets at a very early age?

We may have different images in our minds when we talking about animal cruelty. There are different things people can do to be cruel to their animals and they may do it for different reasons.

Honestly, I can't talk on this subject all that well. I've never had to work a farm, but I've had a number of friends over the years that grew up on farms and I got to hear lots of fun stories about it. Seeing and hearing these interactions with animals may change your opinion on the subject (either to help you understand why farm hands act the way they do, or to make you a vegetarian).

My main point is: being a farmer is hard, the pay isn't all that great. Try to understand what a farmer has to do on a daily basis. See how they look at their animals. Put yourself in their shoes. But to really do this, you need exposure to see what they deal with. This could be in-person exposure or a detailed run-through in a book or documentary.

The media likes to report the scandalous issues about farming, but there are many farmers that treat their animals properly. Don't base your opinions on farming from the few that are cruel.

>My main point is: being a farmer is hard, the pay isn't all that great. Try to understand what a farmer has to do on a daily basis.

That's no excuse to mistreat animals.

> but there are many farmers that treat their animals properly.

And there are others who don't. They are the reason why laws need to be in place to ensure animals are treated fairly and why videotaping them being cruel should not be outlawed.

This is one of the main reasons that I moved from loose vegetarianism to strict veganism. For the longest time, I convinced myself that dairy cows and egg laying hens didn't have it so bad. But as long as animals are seen as replaceable parts in a machine, they're going to be abused.

When you hear people throwing around terms like "humanely slaughtered beef", you know that we've hit a point of exceptional self deception as a society.

>When you hear people throwing around terms like "humanely slaughtered beef", you know that we've hit a point of exceptional self deception as a society.

I disagree; I think there are in fact humane meat processors, like the one shown in this video: https://vimeo.com/22077752

In relative terms, there are more and less humane ways to slaughter. Obviously, causing less suffering is better than causing more suffering. So if they called it "more humanely slaughtered beef", I'd have less of an objection.

But to call the unnecessary destruction of lives for the sake of profit "humane" is an insult to humanity. Then again, perhaps it is a well-deserved one.

I disagree. Not to get too pedantic here, but since we're discussing the meaning of words, the dictionary definition of humane is relevant: "characterized by tenderness, compassion, and sympathy for people and animals, especially for the suffering or distressed." There is no reason that the "unnecessary destruction of lives for the sake of profit" could not be done in a way that is accurately described by that definition. In fact, I believe the video I linked is a perfect example of someone behaving in that way.

There's no such thing as humane killing. If you kill something, it's not humane.

I suppose you've never had to end something's life to cease its suffering?

While that is a valid objection to nilved's overly general statement, it is irrelevant to the question at hand. This isn't a case of choosing the lesser of two evils. It's a case of killing an animal so you can sell his or her body.

I very strongly recommend the book "Eating Animals" by Jonathan Safran Foer in relation to this topic.

He covers the desensitization of abattoir workers, as well as documenting some of the cruelties (and just day-to-day work) that is involved throughout the life of the animals we eat (with a particular emphasis on factory farming).

From the article: > "The videos may seem troubling to someone unfamiliar with farming, said Kelli Ludlum, the group’s director of Congressional relations, but they can be like seeing open-heart surgery for the first time."

I completely disagree with using this as a reason not to show what is really going on. Personally, I think people should know exactly what goes on to produce the food they eat - and at that point decide whether you think it's ok or not.

HN circa 1813: s/animals/slaves/g

This is not meant to defend cruel people, I just want to raise a few points about slave owners.

While I have only been to small plantations, I have definitely seen what some people would consider slave cruelty. But I think it's important to understand the mentality of people that work with these slaves.

Slaves on plantations are seen as property, not an employee in any way. Most owners and workers of slaves distance themselves from the slaves to keep themselves mentally healthy. When distance yourself from a a slave, you won't be treating it as nicely as you would your hired hand.

Plantation owners see slaves as money, so they won't do anything that could jeopardize being paid (won't damage the product).

When people are disconnected with the slaves they are working with, it is easier for some people not to be so nice to those slaves. This isn't to say that all people working with slaves will be abusive towards them, but it creates an opening for those people that aren't as nice to take their anger out on the slaves.

So you are equating human beings with pigs and cows, here?

It's really only an accident of history that there's such a sharp division between humans and other animals in terms of intelligence and advanced culture. If we'd developed technology while there were still intermediate species like Australopithecus and Homo Habilis around, it would have lent greater clarity to the fact that we are just a branch of a varied tree.

Choose any random cow or other livestock animal. You and Bessie have at least one common ancestor.

Yes. Or, more properly, equating pigs and cows with human beings. I've yet to see a logical reason not to.

How about insects?

Pigs and cows are mammals with central nervous systems much more similar to ours than any insect.

I don't eat them either.

That's precisely why we need to change this sort of thing. When good people do bad things, there might be a bigger problem. Perhaps meat is not meant to be cheap.

He is not describing good people. Good people can reason that hurting others is not how to improve mood.

You seem to be missing a crucial point. As far as our whole history and our current system are concerned, (food) animals are not people. That's the crux of the issue.

When you say "others" you're implicitly ascribing personhood to those animals.

I'm not arguing whether this is right or wrong, but it's where we are now as a society. In general, most people do what's socially acceptable and avoid doing what's not. It is socially acceptable to kill animals, which involves some level of cruelty. It is not, except in war, socially acceptable to do that to humans (although we concoct all kinds of excuses for special circumstances).

> It is socially acceptable to kill animals, which involves some level of cruelty.

Yes, but its not socially acceptable or lawful to be excessively cruel and torture them. Animals aren't people, and most people don't think they are. However they are alive, they do feel pain, and they do deserve to be treated with some level of kindness and respect.

> its not socially acceptable or lawful to be excessively cruel and torture them.

For better or worse, that seems to depend entirely on the animal in question. Nobody laments the treatment of sea-sponges, the fact that they are animals instead of plants is basically just a curiosity of biology as far the majority is concerned when considering the ethics of them. Moving up from there: few (though probably more than in the case of sponges) worry about how we treat insects. We kill them with industrial grade chemicals (this concerns people, though not for reasons that are relevant), electricity, lasers, etc. There is little thought put into determining how to kill them ethically. Continuing on, rodents, snakes, and other medium sized pests: I would say that probably most people don't care how these are killed. Glue traps are very popular for instance, even though they are very cruel. These are the animals that we really start to see people caring in numbers worth paying attention to; humane killing devices and even live-capture traps are becoming increasingly popular for these sorts of animals.

Once you get larger than rats and snakes it seems most of the general public becomes fairly concerned about how the animals are killed. We have laws about what sort of traps trappers of small animals are supposed to use, and even most trappers are very serious about the ethics of what they are doing (for instance, they are typically very strict about how often they check their lines, so that animals are never trapped for excessively long periods of time.) As you get bigger and cuter more and more people start to care.

Of course all of this is basically just my observations of American cultures. The knobs on these different value settings are turned one way or the other for other cultures (in particular I think you can probably point to examples of both extreme settings of these values in various Asian cultures).

It's not about cuteness, it's about (perceived) level of consciousness.

Then how do you explain the discrepancy between dogs and pigs?

I think thats a culture thing, in china a dog is no more valued than a pig i think. But generally i don't think there's things would be considered cruel to do to a pig but not to a dog.

Are there things that would be considered cruel to do to a dog, but not a pig? I suspect most people in western cultures would say "slaughter". That might not be the most well thought out position (though it is not a position I hold, so it may be unfair for me to say that), but I suspect it is a common position nevertheless.

Anyway, as I said in another comment, my take on it is that we are all performing the same mental calculus (Americans, Vietnamese, French; Vegan Americans, Omnivore French, ... Everyone.) but we are going into the calculation with different values. Some Asian cultures have the "willingness to eat it" cranked way up so that they are more willing to eat animals that could be considered cute (sparrows, dogs, etc), while at the same time other Asian cultures have "willingness to eat it" cranked way down. The calculation is the same, only the values and weights assigned to things differ.

If you started to dial down the "willingness to eat it" I suspect that "creepy things" (snakes, bugs) might be the first to be spared, followed closely by whatever things that culture finds cute. Maybe the other way around.

I suspect the Vietnamese treatment of dogs is an outlier, which doesn't invalidate the general rule. People think dogs are their friends, that they have stronger and more pronounced feelings and emotions than pigs (which may or may not be true - most people, including me, have never had pigs as pets). The same can be observed with cows in India - I suspect hurting a dog would be less of a crime than hurting a cow there.

Anyways, I wasn't talking about eating animals - I was talking about being cruel to animals. That's where the perceived consciousness plays a role - you don't want to hurt something that you see as more or less similar to you and capable of the same thoughts and emotions like you.

P.S. The fact that I'm talking like these are all facts and statistically proven theories is just for style. In reality I'm talking out of my a$$.

That's exactly the opposite of my point.

Sounds more like you are defending hypocrites/unprincipled people. By your argument, it's more ok for me to hurt you (from whom I am distanced by the fact that we have never met) than my girlfriend.

It's a question of rights, not convenience or qualifications.