"Hey honey, look! Pork shoulder for $.89 a pound! I wonder how they can produce it that cheap..."

This is how food is produced when no one cares about anything but price pound.

Now is a better time than ever to release such a video! MFA's investigation shows just what we have to lose if we don't defeat the bill. The video is not only shocking for the abuse, but the fact that it's all normal to most pig farms. People need to be able to see where their food comes from.

I still don't these think of stories (animal rights stories) belong this "food safety" site. Sure... Living conditions certainly impacts the flora of microbes living in, on and around a food animal, this story is clearly about the suffering that the author seems to perceive that the animals are experiencing, not food safety. More specifically, it's about the topic of introducing private, and governmental controls on how people may raise food animals - controls that are for the purpose of increasing animal welfare, not food safety.
I think it's a marriage of convenience by two advocacy groups trying to emotionally manipulate people into supporting their causes... Animal rights activists use to bogeyman of "food safety" to scare people into supporting them, and food safety advocates* use stories of filthy, sad animals to pull on peoples' heartstrings and get people interested in their topics.

Of course I think most animals "should" have plenty of space, social interaction with their species, and appropriate "stuff to do", but it's a dirty trick to pretend that's a "food safety" issue any more than it's an environmental, economic, or other related issue.

*Unfortunately, many local food advocates use this emotional trick, as well.

Cases of animal abuse are widespread and well-documented and they are not isolated incidents. And in this latest incident, Kroger and Costco must have thought the video showed abuse because they have suspended purchases from the supplier in the video.

Any time someone turns on the video camera, they can find abuse because it is standard industry practice--and for a very good reason. Abusing animals adds a large percentage to the profits of factory farmers. The more animals are crammed into smaller spaces, moved quicker through assembly lines, and treated as machines instead of the creatures they are, the more money they make. That's why the tail-docking, castration, debeaking and overcrowding are standard practices. It's cheaper that way.

Last year several spokespersons for the egg industry admitted that grinding live male chicks up in a wood-chipper-machine or suffocating them in plastic bags was standard practice. That they can advocate this with a straight face-- while denying abuse -- tells us about the depths of their inhumanity.