Beyond Belief: November 2008 Archives

PETA:

While working at a series of Aviagen factory farms in West Virginia, PETA's investigator documented that workers tortured, mutilated, and maliciously killed turkeys. The following are just a few of the documented offenses: 

• Employees stomped on turkeys' heads, punched turkeys, hit them on the head with a can of spray paint and pliers, and struck turkeys' heads against metal scaffolding.

• Men shoved feces and feed into turkeys' mouths and held turkeys' heads under water.

• Another bragged about jamming a broom stick 2 feet down a turkey's throat. 

• A supervisor said he saw workers kill 450 turkeys with 2-by-4s. 

• One man said he saw a coworker fatally inject turkey semen and sulfuric acid into turkeys' heads.

  


Look at those "real men" go. Oftentimes, when we are lacking in other areas of our lives, we search out those opportunities to strong arm the helpless. It's what Gary Francione calls a "bully-ish mentality." It's not ethical, but more than that, Francione is getting to something deeper here. Such overt over-compensation suggests something fundamental about our nature.

From wantonly killing insects, to eating turkey flesh, to disciplining your dog slightly more than necessary, there's an ethical sickness endemic to our species. We lack real power, as defined within our society, and no matter how unethical it may be the paradigm of animals-as-property allows us to compensate for this absence by dominating another feeling being (he or she must feel and experience what we are doing or else we wouldn't get any pleasure from it) and not caring about it. It's just like the most blatant patriarch who controls his daughter; the result is often the same.        

It's probably just an isolated incident...maybe not though, given the following:

PETA's investigator repeatedly brought abuses to a supervisor's attention. The supervisor responded, "Every once in a while, everybody gets agitated and has to kill a bird." PETA also brought the abuse to the attention of Aviagen, and although the company made assurances and instituted some new rules, the cruelty did not stop.

PETA's investigator also saw disgusting, cramped conditions. The rotting remains of about 70 hens were left amid live birds--who had to climb over the dead--for more than a day. A supervisor urinated in turkey pens, and workers spat tobacco in the pens as well. The suffering typically found on factory farms was also routine in Aviagen's sheds: Hens' beaks were cut with pliers, massive birds collapsed and died of exhaustion or heart attacks, and turkeys were thrown into transport cages.

Who is Aviagen Turkey, Inc.? The self-proclaimed world's leading poultry breeding company.

I find it odd that it is the animal rights movement that is derided as "extreme." If this isn't extreme, I wonder what is? If it is, however, what are we to think of those who purchase the products of this abuse? 

We could be angry because it is often these incidences that predict future act's of violence against human animals. Or, we could be angry because those thousands upon thousands of turkeys are subjectively experiencing this world which we have created for them: every head stomped is felt; being confined that tightly is internalized; they are conscious when thrown through the air, and they experience the crashing.

It's the latter that really ought to enrage moral animals.  
 
For more information visit Animal Rights - Change.org