It's a horrible business, and that undercover guy is really cool for risking going in those places to take the footage.
Thanks JAnnieC for the post, as well.
I thought for a minute about the organic free-range chicken* I have been buying the family, and then I thought about how they are slaughtered all the same (as Strand pointed out) and I wished to be veg again. I was vegetarian for 12 years, but have been eating some meat for at least a decade.
*note that much of the "free-range, or "cage-free" methods have been shown top be deceptive, so you really have to research the farm
My mother's family raised chickens, primarily to sell eggs, for a number of years, and in the years I had stopped eating meat, I got my mother to give up red meat, but she claimed she didn't mind the thought of the chicken's death at all. Apparently she had grown to hate them. I was never able to change her mind.
Now, I would nver want to excuse the vile behavior of those workers in the Butterball (or other) poultry factory, but one of the things I noticed in the video was that the factory was unfit for birds,
and humans. I think if we had seen a prison with the same conditions the video would have shown similarly awful violence to the prisoners, because, yes, humans are often hateful and nasty. I don't want to know what compels someone to take a job in that Hell.
I
do want to know why/how I see see signs for hamburger 99cents, or even 1.99 cents—prices from my childhood in the seventies! It's agri-business: we eat too much, pay too little, and they make to much money. I have been fortunate in that I live in a county where there are many options for buying directly from farmers. It IS more expensive, in my experience.
I DO natter on, don't I?
Anyway,
this site has been really useful:
http://www.localharvest.org/
Here is a page with info about Con Agra the parent company of Butterball. There is a note about the PETA investigation, and then a list of the companies many food brands.
http://www.coopamerica.org/tools/pri...ile.cfm?id=206