Seriously?!? It just might interest you to know that the vast majority of the pigs (that are noticeably more intelligent than – and just as self-aware as — your beloved dog, by the way) that go into your bacon were born into truly horrific conditions — tails sheared off and teeth cut out and testicles torn away without any anesthesia; kept mostly separate from their mother’s embrace or consolation; confined to overcrowded pens or cages, wallowing in the unbearable stench of their own urine & feces; witnessing the barbaric murder of their friends & relations; and ultimately being strung up by their hind legs and having their own throats slit (often while still partially or fully conscious) …

 

And that is what happens to the pigs that are profitable for the pig farmer. The unwanted piglets meet an equally vicious fate — they get “thumped”, where workers pick them up by their hind legs, whirl them over their shoulders, and bash their heads onto a concrete floor. Here is a slaughterhouse worker describing this standard practice: ”We just swing them, thump them, then toss them aside. After you’ve thumped ten, twelve, fourteen of them, you stack them up. If some are still alive, you do it all over again … There’ve been times I’ve walked in and pigs would be running around with an eyeball hanging down the side of their face, just bleeding like crazy, or their jaw would be broken. I’ve seen them with broken backs still trying to get up. Some of these guys thump them, then just stand on top of their throat, smashing their jaw and everything, until they die. If you get a pig that can’t move, you take a meat hook, stick it into his anus and drag him backwards. A lot of times the meat hook rips out of the bunghole … If the pig collapses near the front, you shove a meat hook into his cheek and drag him forward. I’ve seen sows being beaten with gate rods, stomped on, and dragged having their throats slowly cut with a tiny scalpel while they were still fully conscious and moaning.”*

 

All this just because you want to eat bacon?

Again, I ask earnestly: Seriously?!?

 

Current status of this Myth: Discredited
Justification it provides for eating animals: NONE

 

*excerpt from Gail Eisnitz’s book Slaughterhouse: The Shocking Story of Greed, Neglect, and Inhumane Treatment inside the U.S. Meat Industry, a work that “penetrates the veil of psychic numbing that keeps us oblivious to the real truth behind modern meat. If you want to remain a prisoner of your own ignorance, don’t read it. It will make you aware. It will wake you up. It will change your life.” (quote from John Robbins)

Filed under: Minimizing the Myths of Meat by Scaughdt