Mar 18 2009
Death on a Factory Farm: media reactions
HBO showed on Monday a hidden-camera investigation into an Iowa hog farm that has attracted a lot of media attention. The New York Times wrote a review that takes a rather benign view of animal cruelty at points and sides with the bogus notion that animal rights is about urbane people against farmers, which it isn’t. It’s a movement for justice for the animals, for the planet and for our health as well, which in practice translates into veganism.
Elsewhere, the Celebrity Café wrote: “The point of the show is to point out the cultural divide that animal rights activists have been fighting for years. To some people, these graphic images are simply not upsetting. To others, it is as important as any social movement. The divisive beliefs about the treatment of animals is the biggest obstacle that many activists face. This documentary tries to sway those on the other side of the fence.”
Popmatters also wrote a review of the program: “The farmers see their livestock as just that—commodities to be produced and sold. This premise, Pete surmises, allows them to toss the pigs like sacks into bins and against walls, pile them on top of one another, keep sows in breeding and farrowing crates for months, such that the animals cannot move and develop sores from rubbing against crate walls and suffering the unstoppable demands of their hungry litters. As Pete says on his first day of the assignment, listing the maltreatments, “This stuff looks really nasty, pigs cannibalizing each other and beating little piglets over the head, that kind of shit… I think this is gonna be some nasty nasty work.”
If nothing else, Death on a Factory Farm got people talking about a subject that remains taboo and which many of us would rather not think about. This type of mainstream attention signals that the age of ignorance is truly over.
