It’s been a while since I’ve seen a PETA video. I’d forgotten how much they show. That was a pretty terrible twelve minutes of my life. Upon reflecting on the video after the initial shock, I feel that it was an important reminder of what we as humans will do to increase profit. I do realize that there wasn’t really much information given on what companies were committing the acts shown in the video, but non the less, the acts were indeed being committed (I suppose that’s an assumption, but it seems like it would be difficult to stage some of the things filmed). I’ve been on the fence about dairy products, as I do enjoy cheese and ice cream. With this video, I believe that I’m going to be straying from dairy in the near future.
As for the article about the cost of chicken, I felt that it was quite informative, but the second half seemed to be strictly about how bad Tyson Foods is. While it is important to know the ethical standpoints of the company that one purchased meat from, Tyson is not the only producer of chicken in the country, nor at the market for that matter. In the article, the Delmarva Peninsula is brought up, but no mention of Perdue is given. According to their website, “The PERDUE® brand is the number-one brand of premium fresh chicken in the eastern U.S.” My father helped to build a processing plant for Perdue, and my family lived next door to now-chairman Jim Perdue. I had the opportunity when I was younger to snoop around in the chicken houses on a Perdue farm near my home and can say that the treatment of chickens there was almost identical to what is described in the article. Although the article hit Tyson pretty hard, it seems that the factory farm industry has an overall reputation of being ethically sub-par, and will show this to us not of their own will, but of their own ignorance when we all must have a fine glass of bottled water with our drumsticks in our recently fumigated dining rooms.
Book Recommendations:
Bekoff, Marc. Animals matter : a biologist explains why we should treat animals with compassion and respect. Boston: Random House, 2007.
Pollan, Michael. The omnivore's dilemma : a natural history of four meals. New York, New York: Penguin Press, 2006.
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I agree that it was rather strange how only Tyson was so consistently named. However, their reputation is not necessarily a good one: my dad always refused to buy Tyson, though I never really understood why until I read this article. Good to know that I should avoid Perdue if I ever see it in the store.
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