
Glenn Greenwald: Mass Extermination of Iowa Pigs Amid Pandemic Revealed - ma2rten
https://theintercept.com/2020/05/29/pigs-factory-farms-ventilation-shutdown-coronavirus/
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natrik
>Under this method, pigs at the company’s rural Grundy County facility are
being “depopulated,” using the industry’s jargon, by sealing off all airways
to their barns and inserting steam into them, intensifying the heat and
humidity inside and leaving them to die overnight. Most pigs — though not all
— die after hours of suffering from a combination of being suffocated and
roasted to death. The recordings obtained by The Intercept include audio of
the piercing cries of pigs as they succumb. The recordings also show that some
pigs manage to survive the ordeal — but, on the morning after, Iowa Select
dispatches armed workers to enter the barn to survey the mound of pig corpses
for any lingering signs of life, and then use their bolt guns to extinguish
any survivors.

Truly disturbing. Increasing cruelty and suffering in order to minimize
monetary loss of profits.

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eutropia
I don't think there's a way to tastefully draw a parallel between thousands of
pigs being suffocated out of convenience and unarmed civilians being murdered
by the police...

But all I can think of right now is "I can't breathe"

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saltedonion
The people deserves to know the externalities of such practices of the animals
agriculture business.

Why is it that main stream news is so afraid of exposing stuff like this ?

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thephyber
> afraid of exposing

They are afraid of losing their audience and/or advertisers. Not that hard to
figure out.

Same reason why I tune out Facebook posts like this -- I have a visceral
reaction to pictures of destroyed animals when I see pictures/videos. I would
argue it's the news consumers that have a problem with it, not investigative
journalists.

Also, there are laws in many of the states which specialize in factory
livestock that criminalize gathering evidence, so it's difficult to report.

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ta17711771
They don't need to flash the gore to make the report.

Murders are reported without showing the body with holes in it, etc.

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thephyber
I don't think people react the same to murders even of different classes of
people, let alone all animals. I don't make up the rules; I only observe them.

Humans have heuristics. I suspect the more we can personally identify with a
victim, the more we are likely to be interested in hearing about it. Why don't
news programs continue to post about all of the Pakistanis, Afghanis, Somalis,
Libyans, etc that are killed either by terrorists or US drone strikes? There's
only so much people will tolerate before their attention moves elsewhere.

I trust that news outlets will follow the money. If it was low risk of being
sued, not terribly expensive to cover (as in didn't piss off advertisers), and
got viewers to pay attention (without vomiting during dinner time), news
programs would cover it.

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saltedonion
Good point. Compared to murder, animal cruelty segments will be a lot of
cruelty without generating much sympathy.

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mrlonglong
This shows how broken the farming model is in the States. Slaughter is pretty
much the same, people have to work too quickly to despatch, often resulting in
animals surviving as they go on the line to be cut up.

It would have been far more humane to use carbon dioxide instead, this is
standard in Europe. It induces unconsciousness without much trouble.

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theCodeStig
This is why I’m mostly vegan.

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rajekas
Truly, despicably evil.

