farmfacts

                        Continuing my blog from yesterday, I don’t even know exactly where to start with the topic of CAFOs. There’s so much to talk about that people are unaware of that I’m not sure exactly which topic to start with. The food is bad and laced with hormones and steroids, they pump these animals with antibiotics which are then passed on to us, the conditions these animals live in are horrible and inhumane, and they just pile up the dead pigs outside of the barns.

            I guess I’ll start with the dead pigs. Each pig is kept in a crate so small that they can’t even turn around and can barely lie down. They have to urinate and defecate right there in the crate and it falls into a pit underneath them. However, most generally the gaps in the boards are not wide enough for the feces to fall through, so they stand and lay in it. When they are forced to have the feces near their bodies, they begin to develop sores and their hooves rot. I don’t know about you, but I want to be clean after I go to the bathroom.

            Because of this, and other things, the pigs get diseases that spread throughout the barn, infecting the other hogs. Not only that, but many times they will get such horrible infections that there’s nothing that can be done. When either of these happens, the pigs become incapacitated and start to die. The barn workers drag them out, usually still alive, and pile them up in some location on the property. There’s usually a designated area where they put the dead. They just pile them up, as the picture shows, and leave them there to die. It can take days for them to finally die. That pile of pigs just sits there, rotting and rotting, until there’s nothing left but bones. They don’t bury them, they don’t shoot them and put them out of their misery; they just let the flesh and meat decay, becoming rancid. The smell is so horrible that you can’t really even drive by it without being disgusted.

            The other thing that happens sometimes is the owners of these barns recognize that a sow has an atrocious sore or that she is getting ready to die so they hurry up and butcher her. Now, I don’t think that you would want to eat this ham if you knew that the pig had an infected sore when it was butchered. I know I’m always concerned about cooking meat to temperature so that it kills the bacteria, but I’m also making the assumption that the meat is not riddled with infection and disease. We trust these producers to process food that is safe for human consumption and they are not doing it 100% of the time. Yes, most of the food is fine, but there are times when it’s not.

            Let me tell you a story. One of our friends we telling us one day just recently that he knew a guy that worked in a processing plant. He didn’t specify, but I was under the assumption that this plant dealt mostly with cattle. He told us that one day the health inspectors were watching the grinder as the meat was thrown in to become ground beef. These animals would come through with huge goiters on their stomachs and legs and the guy would have to hurry up and shove the meat through without letting the inspectors see it because, obviously, this is a violation and they’ll make the plant throw out all of the meat in the grinder. Now, that is coming from a person who worked in the plant, so what else do you think they do that they get away with?

            Back to the piles of dead pigs. The laws state that any dead animal must be buried at a certain depth to prevent water and soil contamination. These factory hog barns are not doing this. Gee, I guess that means that OUR WATER AND SOIL ARE CONTAMINATED! Not to mention the air, too. What are these people thinking?!?!?!? Do they have any respect for the people that are buying their food and keeping them in business? Apparently not! I will provide a list for you of companies that engage in these practices soon.

Happy Eating!

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