It must be hard to be a factory farmer these days.
First there's the problem of finding workers.
If they appear to be legal, how do you know they're not undercover animal advocates with cameras who will make you an overnight animal abuse criminal on the internet?
It's not like people are lining up for jobs with descriptions like "Remove dead animals from 98 degree ammonia-infused pens, $8 an hour, depending on experience." And "sex newborn chick, grinding up males for feed: $6 dollars an hour; chance for advancement."
Even prisoners released to work at Smithfield Packing Co.'s slaughterhouse in Tar Heel, NC quit reported Rick Bragg in the New York Times; "If this is freedom, give me incarceration" their apparent sentiment.
Then there's the public which increasingly wants transparency and humanity in the production of its meat products and won't fall for a paternalistic If-You Want-Our-Product-This-is-Is-How-It's-Made argument either. (Trust us--we're factory farmers.)
Nor does the public fall for the factory-farms-are-just-big-family-farms argument any longer.
People are beginning to realize that farming "contractors" paid by the weight they can add onto the animals provided them--Less Feed--are just latter day sharecroppers with all the responsibility of farming and none of the benefits.
And now--normal magazines that never had an agenda are getting into the act and going "PETA"!
"America's top pork producer churns out a sea of waste that has destroyed rivers, killed millions of fish and generated one of the largest fines in EPA history," blasts an article in the Dec. 14 issue of Rolling Stone called Boss Hog by Jeff Tietz about Smithfield Foods, the world largest pork producer. "Welcome to the dark side of the other white meat."
In an eight page 29-point response Smithfield Foods tries valiantly to refute Tietz' charges of wanton pollution and animal abuse. But it just manages to dig itself deeper manure pits.
Instead of defending the air in hog pens which Tietz says is barely breathable from heat, chemical fumes and uncollected animal excrement, Smithfield writes, "It is extremely rare when mechanical failure of ventilation systems causes death of animals due to indoor air quality."
Instead of defending the Rolling Stone photo of a mountain of dead pigs--still pink and looking eerily like children--found on its borders on ethical grounds, Smithfield says, "We take a great deal of pride in the operation and appearance of our hog farms." Hello?
And its only emendation to Tietz's charge that "Tens of thousands" of pigs perished during Hurricane Floyd in 1999 because of factory farming is that 20,000 is "the official estimate" and, "The vast majority of these pigs died inside buildings and remained there until they were removed by farm managers or owners." Whew!
It's a good thing Smithfield didn't refute Tietz's claim that seven people have drown in manure lagoons on factory farms in recent years; five more died in July on a Rockingham County dairy farm Virginia.
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