Kill the pigs: too expensive to keep alive
"a whistleblower employed by Iowa Select has provided extensive details to The Intercept about the extraordinary methods now being employed to kill pigs — agonizingly and over the course of many hours — in increasingly large numbers."
" 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."
"it first experimented on a smaller group of hogs by just shutting off the airways into their barn and turning up the heat. Other employees told similar stories to DxE investigators. After those experiments failed — the oxygen-deprived pigs survived over the course of many hours, the whistleblower said, due to a failure to increase "the heat to fatal levels — Iowa Select decided to begin injecting steam into the barns, to accelerate the accumulation of heat and humidity. "
"they are slaughtering these now “worthless” animals in vast numbers as fast as possible, using extermination methods that cause sustained suffering and agony, to avoid the costs of keeping them alive."
"The quickest and most merciful way to induce death for so many animals at once — shooting them in the head one by one — would be too emotionally traumatizing even for factory farm employees"
"the hidden audio recorders placed in the barn as part of DxE’s investigation, sustained screams of distress and agony are audible as the heat fills the building while the air supply is shut down."
"pigs are social animals at least as intelligent and emotionally complex as dogs, who experience the full range of emotions from life — joy, playfulness, love, connection, pain, loss, suffering and grief ... bred by industrial agriculture to live in extreme deprivation, which often includes being confined for years in cages so small they can never even turn around, living in festering disease, and being genetically modified to be more profitable to the point that their own distorted bodies cause constant pain "
"the pandemic, while having no effect on the inherent moral value of these sentient beings, has stripped them of their commercial worth. And that has resulted in the industry using extermination methods outside of the standard processes, producing new ethical and moral horrors in an industry that was already suffused with them."
"Iowa Select Farms brands itself as an ethical, animal-friendly company, and its website repeatedly emphasizes the company’s ethical concern for its animals. "
"Iowa Select claims, in the words of one of the industry newsletters, that “veterinarians and production well-being professionals are overseeing the process to ensure accordance with the American Association of Swine Veterinarians and American Veterinary Medical Association.” "
"The Iowa-based American Association of Swine Veterinarians (AASV) receives ample financial support from corporations with involvement in the industrial agriculture. The AASV did not respond to inquiries from The Intercept about its relationship to the pork industry or to its role in Iowa Select’s use of ventilation shutdown."
" the AASV, at exactly the time Iowa Select discovered that its mass extermination of pigs had been recorded by animal rights investigators, publicly decreed that ventilation shutdown could be justified given the exigencies of the coronavirus pandemic."
“physical methods usually require a more direct association of the operator with the animals, which can be offensive to, and upsetting for, the operator.”
“Those making the decision to depopulate must be mindful of the emotional impact of the procedure on owners of the animals, laboratory technicians, conservation managers, emergency response personnel, veterinarians, and the community at large.”
Read the thing if you have the stomach:
https://theintercept.com/2020/05/29/pigs-factory-farms-ventilation-shutdown-coronavirus/The last two paras i quoted depict a touching concern for human killing the pigs. What about the pigs ? My opinion of the AASV is that they should try ventilation shutdown for themselves.
sidd