ADN:
WARFORDSBURG, Pa. – Police are investigating the deaths of more than 900 pigs inside a barn at an abandoned southcentral Pennsylvania farm.
Bacher tells The Philadelphia Inquirer that necropsies are being conducted on some of the carcasses after they were found in various states of decay. He says he’s never seen an apparent act of cruelty like this in his career.
Authorities say the farm’s owner left the property in August. The animals appear to have been dead for several months.
Why is this an act of cruelty? Because the pigs did not end up on our plates? Humans need to get a grip.
Because it looks like a massive case of neglect, Charles. That’s why. If he didn’t bother to clean up the carcasses after they died, it stands to reason that he wasn’t taking awesome care of them beforehand.
It’s not the death, silly, it’s the suffering, silly.
No, Charles, it’s not an act of cruelty because humans were deprived of all that good bacon. It’s an act of unspeakable cruelty because those who care for animals for the purpose of feeding us our bacon have a responsibility to the animal to raise, care for, and slaughter that animal humanely.
That precludes letting them starve to death, locked up with no hope of escape, and being left to cannibalize each other while dying a slow and agonizing death.
Most humans have a pretty good grip on what’s right and what is wrong in this situation.
I just took a moment to explicitly hope that when it’s my turn to go it’s not by slow starvation locked in a shed full of other starving people..
Presumably they were found dead under conditions that clearly indicated that they were abandoned alive and left to die slowly, of hunger, thirst or disease. If 900 pigs were packed into one warehouse, they were already in cruel conditions anyway, but that doesn’t mean the additional cruelty is insignificant.
I know the folks over at PETA don’t see it this way, but there is a difference in the ways in which farm animals being raised for meat can be treated. I’ve seen pigs being slaughtered in a humane as possible way and it looked like a much better way to go then starving to death. It’s a good sign that this is being investigated and taken somewhat seriously. Just because we eat animals doesn’t mean we have to torture them.
PETA might think they can get everyone to go vegan, but I think that would work about as well as a blanket ban on booze or weed.
Did anyone read “John Dollar” by Marianne Wiggins, about 8 girls who are stranded, in a Lord of the Flies-esque setting, and slowly eat the legs of one of the adults, who has become paralyzed from the waist down? Ew.
Was there any point to this beside a little trolling and to get a rise off of some people?
Surely the point is that mass slaughter and inhumane conditions represent business as usual, particularly as high-density pig farms are basically what you’d come up with if you were trying to run an epidemiological experiment to create the maximum number of new diseases via evolution alone.
You people are all high. Look up “sow gestation crates,” which are used on MOST pigs in this country. They make starving to death in a barn sound like paradise.
Jesus Christ, Chuck, you disgust me this morning more than usual (which is saying something). I’d be tempted to write this off as just trolling, but based upon things you’ve said before, I think you really don’t understand why it’s wrong for people to cause (through neglect or otherwise) animals to feel pain.
You’re a sociopath, do you understand that? You only care about the things that can provide benefit to you, and you show absolutely no empathy to other people or a sense of responsibility outside of your own selfish needs.
Didn’t Charles kill a horse due to his own serious neglect?
@9, no, Charles is specifically asking why it’s cruel — the animals were bred for a purpose, and a fine one: to be food. That’s how things have been for tens of thousands of years. It’s the order of things. To suggest though that letting the animals starve to death isn’t cruel is ludicrous and cruel in and of itself. It’s our compassion and empathy that defines us as humans. It’s not inhumane to grow a pig to feed you, or a thousand, or a million. It’s cruel to set even one aside to starve to death for no good reason, however.
Sow gestations crates are pretty gross, but the reports said these pigs were in a confinement barn. It’s a different situation, but the starvation and neglect is still just as bad.
@13, I interpreted it as one of his dialectics: why is this (neglect & starvation) cruel and that (industrialization of flesh) not cruel? I also don’t find your argument that “it’s the order of things” particularly compelling.
Cruel to waste all that bacon.
…i didn’t know trolls could get jobs like this.
also:
@6 99% of farmed animals in the US aren’t raised in any humane way. it’s called factory farming.
did you not see Avatar?
The Death of a Pig
by E. B. White
http://www.theatlantic.com//ideastour/an…
I’m going to be the devil’s advocate here and say that the article doesn’t actually say anything about how the pigs died, so how does anyone even know if they died humanely or not? Was the sheriff saying it was cruel because he thinks they starved to death or because their carcasses weren’t cleaned up after they died? In all, that “article” doesn’t really say anything much and leaves a lot more questions than answers.
Also (still devil’s advocate, sorta) @17, many factory farmed animals only spend the last 6 months or so of their lives in shitty conditions. Before that, they’re pretty much like non-factory animals. Cattle, for example, are still raised on fairly typical ranches and only brought to the feedlots about a half a year before slaughter.
Not that I’m condoning feedlots and factory farming – I’m not, I think the food industry is atrocious – however, it’s good to have the facts straight.
Meat eaters are delusional, and flip out when challenged. Nearly every animal raised for food in the US is part of the factory farming system, and it’s incredibly inhumane.
Um, Charles, really? Something’s not right if you find a mass of dead animals in a locked enclosure. I have to think your question and “get a grip” comment were not phrased well. Locked enclosure + 900 dead creatures = something terribly gone awry.
Full disclosure: I’m a vegetarian. I hate PETA because they make us all look crazy.
@15: Both are cruel. I assume many people don’t consider the factory farm conditions pigs live in to be cruel because people need to eat and they believe animals are there for us to eat. So they put the terrible conditions out of their minds.
But even if you eat meat and are accepting of factory farming, you’d have to believe that letting that whatever led to all these animals being found dead in their barn would be cruel.
“factory farmed” is a pretty loose term. Under some perspectives, that includes every animal that didn’t wander up your door and give you an engraved invitation to eat it. CAFO’s, gestation crates are horrible, but it’s important to be clear in terms so as to not reduce the natural power of your argument.
I prefer my meat to be tortured before I eat it.
Troll-lalalala….
@22 — I’d like to think that Mr. Mudede is intentionally being an dickhead in order to make a point about the cruelty inherent in what most Americans eat; this post I believe is meant to imply the small difference between suffering of the typical factory farm animal and the suffering involved in this catastrophe.
@25,
It makes the meat more tender.
Charles – you are going to die eventually so what is wrong with me locking you in a room with no food in water? Obviously there is no difference in the outcome…
Sarcasm.
lol no food AND water.
This from a guy who froze a horse to death.
the only way i see charles’ post working for him is if he’s trying really hard to be sarcastic…or ironic. or something. like he does acknowledge that factory farmed pigs already suffer, even without being abandoned to suffocate? so to be shocked at this event is sorta useless? or even hypocritical?
otherwise, i can’t figure out why he’d want to seem like a garden-variety troll.
charlie, you’re so seelee.
Pretty sure you all just got trolled.
@4- I got a fortune cookie that said that was going to happen to me. But then later I got one that said I’d die in a bocci mishap, so we’ll see how it goes.
I don’t think farmers should be allowed to do this, it is cruel, to raise up an animal and then leave it to die with 900 of it’s friends who he also raised. He raised these animals with the intention to do something with them, but instead left behind biological creatures who are completely unable to fend for themselves. Granted, the farmers reasons are probably more economic, maybe the pigs had a disease that made walking away look like a better option than killing them all and trying to raise new ones. I find it hard to imagine that the farmer raised these pigs with the intention of leaving them like this, but what options did the farmer have? Was someone nearby ready and/or willing to take these animals on? Either way, don’t raise the animals if you can’t care for them, that’s why we hate puppy mills remember?