Flies, Maggots, Rats, and Lots of Poop: What Big Ag Doesn't Want You To See

[Pharaoh]

What's it like inside a factory farm? If the livestock and meat industries have their way, what little view we have inside the walls of these animal-reviewing facilities may soon be obscured. For the second year in a row, the industry is backing bills in various statehouses that would criminalize undercover investigations of livestock farms. The Humane Society of the US, one of the animal-welfare groups most adept at conducting such hidden-camera operations, counts active "ag gag" bills in no fewer than nine states. Many of them are based on a model conjured by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a corporate-funded group that generates industry-friendly legislation language for state legislatures, Associated Press reports.

To understand the stakes of this battle, consider this 2010 Food and Drug Administration report on conditions in several vast egg-producing facilities in Iowa owned by a man named Jack Decoster. I teased out some highlights at the time of its release; in short, it involves flies, maggots, rats, wild birds, tainted feed, workers ignoring sanitary rules, and lots and lots of chickenshit. The report portrays the facilities as a kind of fecal nightmare, with manure mounding up in eight-foot piles—providing perches for escaped hens to peck feed from teeming cages—overflowing in pits, and seeping through concrete foundations.


More............


http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2013/03/ag-ag-illegal-undercover-film-livestock

[Lint Head]

1. ALEC needs to be dismantled! Whatever it takes to bring down ALEC should be done for the

common good of the country. They are and have always been a threat to the nation. ALEC should be declared a criminal organization and seized.

[flvegan]

2. Goodness, gracious. Google the AETA if you don't want to see that.

The Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act is...um, Terrorism. Or something. I think I need to say 9/11 here. Because anyone watching is TOO FUCKING STUPID to get it.

Yeah, that was in caps. Morons.

Big Ag, we get it. You're all compliant, and it doesn't matter. Nutrition is a lost art that nobody cares about, and those in charge wouldn't know if it ran them over with a battleship. You complicit fucks, paid to be idiots. Congratu-fucking-lations.

Before you ban this post, prove me wrong. Gauntlet thrown.

[KurtNYC]

3. Consumers can see hock burns on chickens if they look for them in the store

To their credit, my local city council has just voted to allow up to 6 chickens per backyard. Chicken poop is good for the garden, plus you get eggs.

Another sign that a chicken is factory farmed: it costs $5

[FirstLight]

4. so much to say

and so little time and brain power...
Look, anything you can produce yourself is going to be the way. It's f-in crazy that i can buy a lb of bacon cheap at Grocery Outlet, and then come home to see tumors in the tissue... ewwwwww!

My grandma sold eggs for extra money for bread, sometimes she traded...sorry to say we may have to return to that way of life. We chose to remove ourselves from the process, and when the "factory" breaks down, we will have to remember what it is to cultivate, commune, and much more. sorry, but that's my pollyanna post for the week.

[DollarBillHines]

5. Know your sources

Buy everything you can at the local Farmers Market.

If you are drinking common wine, you are drinking ear-wigs...

and rats...

and birds...

and snakes and lizards...

[Berlum]

6. Inch by inch

row by row