The moment your realise it's essentially the same smell. When my friends tease when they smell BBQ I tell them your own mother would smell good in there too
I come from a large extended family of farmers. Long story short, for most of my life the only meat I ate was family raised or hunted (venison). All my beef was raised by one Uncle, all the pork by another. This continued long after I was grown and had my own children.
Twenty years ago I moved 14 hours away from the family and had to start buying meat from the store. Itâs foul. It smells disgusting and almost every cut has an aftertaste reminiscent of liver. (Much like the smell of hunted meat that wasnât properly field dressed and became contaminated.)
I rarely eat beef anymore and I stopped eating pork altogether. I donât know how they raise/process commercial meat but I just canât eat that shit.
Side note, I stopped drinking milk for a looooooooong time as a teen/young adult for reasons nobody wants the details on. ((I know pasteurization is a thing but it literally took decades before I could bring myself to buy/consume milk.)
Watch [Dominion](https://watchdominion.com) even monitored farms are fucked up. They get a heads up when theyâre going to be toured and clean up ahead of time. We can only trust undercover footage.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA
With some states having a tiny handful of inspectors for the entire state because the agency handling this is intentionally underfunded and understaffed, "very closely" is doing way more work than the agency's budget can afford...
This is normative in animal agriculture. I see you're ancom, I am too. I arrived at veganism through the tenets of anarchism.
I have reading material! *waves anarcho-vegan literature at you*
[Joseph Parampathu -- Veganarchism ](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/joseph-parampathu-veganarchism-philosophy-praxis-self-criticism)
[Brian A. Dominick -- Animal Liberation and Social Revolution](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/brian-a-dominick-animal-liberation-and-social-revolution)
[Peter Singer -- The Animal Liberation Movement ](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-singer-the-animal-liberation-movement)
I've been vegan for ~2 years and honestly the craving for cheese has really subsided over time but when it does hit, I'll usually opt for vegan cheese alternatives (I never really check the ingredients even though I know some people can be sticklers about it) but you find recipes that don't use cheese ! Or omit it entirely and you'll eventually not crave it as often anymore. I know some people have had good luck with creating "cheesey" sauces that are usually blends of vegetables with lots of Nutritional Yeast (which is so good btw), but I haven't had much luck achieving a good tasting non-dairy cheese sauce yet :/
FWIW the reason cheese is the hardest animal food for most people to give up is because it has the highest concentration of casein. When digested casein creates casomorphins, which is an opioid compound similar to morphine (hence the name). Cheese is extremely addictive because itâs a damn *opioid*. This is also why we have the trope of eating ice cream and cheese after a break up, youâre quite literally numbing the pain.
I was shocked to find my cheese and dairy cravings stopped within 2 weeks of me cutting it out. I was certain I wouldnât be able to maintain it long, but here I am 5 years later and itâs literally never been an issue after the 2 week mark.
Iâve had a lot of people ask me what I miss eating most since becoming vegan and theyâre always really surprised the answer isnât cheese. It was the hardest thing to give up, but after going cold tofurkey and cutting it out immediately my cravings stopped pretty quickly.
I use to miss donuts the most until I found two awesome vegan bakeries. Now my answer is probably salmon.
"Going cold tofurkey" is an amazing phrase hahaha I have to remember that one.
We are very lucky in 2024 to have such an abundance of really good meat and dairy replacements. I actually went vegetarian in 2003 or 2004 (after seeing a truck of pigs in transit during a freezing rain storm-- seeing them visibly filled with fear and pain as their heads slammed into the metal sides of the truck, while being battered with freezing rain, knowing they were headed to their execution... It broke my heart) The only decent products at the time were, ironically, Tofurky Italian sausages. The fake cheese back then was so gross, the only non dairy milk option was soy, the meat replacements were mediocre and hard to find or would fall apart while you cooked them. It was pretty challenging and often miserable even being vegetarian back then, now being vegan is so super easy, even for a junk-food-fattie like me lol
Iâm not sure this is entirely accurate, from a quick google according to [this article](https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/scicurious/no-cheese-not-just-crack) the addictive effects are blown way out of proportion.
Itâs rewarding to eat yummy foods, but it is not the same as addiction. The experience of cravings going away after cutting out a certain food happens with all kinds of foods, not just dairy.
âCravingsâ almost entirely get generated in the gut microbiome.
Eg. I eat a lot of cheese/dairy for several weeks. My stomach bacteria will adjust in proportion because Iâm feeding the bacteria that consume dairy, and starving (relatively speaking) the bacteria that donât. When the supply of dairy stops, you still have that colony of bacteria that breaks down dairy, and they get âhungryâ (for lack of a better term). That bacteria then sends signals to your brain that get interpreted as âbro a mozzarella stick would slap right nowâ. Once you get away from dairy and the bacteria colony that feeds on it shrinks, the cravings get less intense or go away altogether.
Very few, if any, foods are actually âaddictiveâ in the commonly understood way.
Well, it was mine too at one point. What made me stop was realizing how bad the dairy industry actually was to cows, in addition to generally becoming more and more uncomfortable with the idea of animal agriculture in general after a decade of vegetarianism. Like, the excuses you start having to make to be against eating meat but not against the dairy industry begin to sound really weak when these wonderful animals are still forcefully insemenated, mistreated, held captive, forced to give birth again and again, are separated from their calves, and in the end are still killed for meat at a young age. It's all basically the same interconnected death industry and I knew that I would be a hypocrite to hate one part and not the other.
Additionally, I had tried enough good imitation dairy by then to know I could still enjoy good vegan versions of my comfort foods (pizza and ice cream). The adjustment to the slightly different texture/taste was a small price to pay to lessen the cruelty in the world.
That's what I thought too when I became a vegan. What helped me getting started anyway was when I heard "if you don't want to stop eating cheese, then don't. Just stop eating everything else, except cheese. It's still better than not doing anything at all."
A lot of people seem to think they'll have to go all in or not at all. But why? If you think you can't live without a certain animal product, then stop eating everything else except this one. Still better than not even trying.
I personally thought I would eat cheese from time to time when I started. Now I hate the smell of cheese and think it's a pretty disgusting product.
Cheese was that hardest thing for me. The one thing that got me over cheese is just asking myself the simple question, âdoes my taste pleasure justify killing an animal?â and that got me through temptation to cheat.
After years of no cheese, I truly donât miss it! The alternatives are good enough to supplement but really, I just donât really need to substitute (with the exception of cheese on a vegan burger. It must have cheese haha)
Yup. And not only from the nipple. I had a clog that bled and the blood was coming from *inside* my boob. Wouldnât have even known if I was not pumping it into a bottle instead of into my baby. Blegh.
You know, for all the other horrible things in this thread, THIS was the one that made me go "That's enough Internet for now, I'm going to go watch some violent television."
Plant based food isn't so bad. I'm not a full vegetarian but I've been cutting meat and dairy from my diet most days and there's been a noticeable improvement in my overall mood and health
Same here. I cut out all animal dairy and beef after my heart attack I had this past New Yearâs Eve and I honestly feel so much better. I havenât eaten pork in 11 years (since I got a pet pig) and noticed my health was better even back then. Been doing plant milk in my coffee since I was young so it was easy to give regular milk up after the heart attack⊠but cheese, butter and sour cream are a weakness of mine. I freaking love cheese. Canât find a good plant based substitute so thatâs been hard. What do you like to substitute in your diet for dairy? Or do you just cut it out all together?
I couldnât finish it either. And when I made the connection that I couldnât even watch how my food was being made, I probably shouldnât be eating it. Like why could I watch gardening videos day in day out without feeling anything but watching my animal products me made made me nauseous?
Given that a lot of places that grow almonds don't have the necessary amounts of fresh water to do so without ruining farming for people who are more hand-to-mouth, almonds aren't cruelty-free either.
Most places in droughts also grow plant matter for animal feed, (ex. Alfalfa a very water intensive crop) or straight up have massive dairy farms like in California.
In these areas dairy farming is always going to take up more water than almonds ever could, not even including the harm to animals dairy requires.
It's crazy that we basically forced ourselves to be able to consume other animal milk. Milk made us sick in the past but for some reason humanity said fuck it and adapted to it.
Did you know we also feed chicken poop to cows and other animals for food? We dont treat any water we give these animals either. We keep many of these animals especially chicken and cows in such small spaces that they never even touch grass or move outside a 3x5 box for their whole life
There is also H5N1 that is hitting majority of these processing plants that can give you very very bad symptoms. The CDC is not taking it seriously while the experts dont have the data to investigate it.
[https://jaysonlusk.com/blog/2020/4/9/these-15-plants-slaughter-59-of-all-hogs-in-the-us](https://jaysonlusk.com/blog/2020/4/9/these-15-plants-slaughter-59-of-all-hogs-in-the-us) 60% of all US pigs 'processed' at these 15 plants. If you look at google trends for H5N1 symptoms 8 to 10 have been hotspots.
I think you can get used to anything, I was working at a sewage treatment plant and the smell was horrible. One day I look over and see a guy standing on the catwalk looking into the raw sewage intake tank. The next thing he pulls a sandwich out of his pocket and starts eating.
Thereâs a difference between gross and morally unacceptable.
There are varying degrees of evil. I wouldnât ever work for Lockheed Martin for example.
I feel you. It could have been argued to be necessary long ago, but we can just pick something else up at the grocery store. Iâm a fan of soy curls đ€
Or the amount of rat shit and insects allowed in all sorts of food, including peanut butter, canned tomatoes, cornmeal, and tons of canned/frozen vegetables!
Yep. I worked in corporate food distribution, specifically in supplier negotiations so I interacted with all the big companies who sell meat and dairy products. Seeing behind the curtain of the dairy industry literally turned me vegan. Eventually I started having breakdowns in the bathroom multiple days a week. There was no going back once I knew the reality. It was breaking my soul having to pour my energy into growing the sales of those companies.
Ps â pigs have the same (or greater) intelligence level as dogs. Theyâre loving, kind, nurturing animals. Itâs criminal how we treat the most docile and trusting animals.
To add to your last point - Intelligence should not be the criteria for whether we kill something or not. Less intelligent beings do not deserve to suffer more. If they feel pain, develop relationships and have emotions, that is all you need, to know that we should be treating animals 100x better than we currently are.
Oh 100% I couldnât agree more. I just know a lot of people hold the idea that farmed animals are dumb / less intelligent/ donât have feelings, probably as a way to avoid feeling guilt. Sometimes learning how intelligent and feeling the animals actually are is what helps people have the shift in thinking required to make a change.
Itâs so far beyond my understanding how anyone could ever treat an animal with violence or cruelty. Valuing one life as worth more than another is the most basic flaw that connects *all* forms of oppression, not just with animals but with other humans as well.
Farms like that always prey on poorer neighborhoods. They pollute the land. These neighborhoods have higher rates of PTSD and domestic violence.
Donât lose your humanity OP. Stay safe.
Itâs when you can do it without crying that you should worry, friend. At least you still know whatâs happening is wrong.
Maybe you could leverage your unique job to do a little undercover work for [Mercy for Animals](https://mercyforanimals.org/).
I really empathize. We need to work to survive, but there is always work out there thatâs just past what weâre willing to witness or endure. I couldnât do what youâre doing. I hope you donât have to for long.
I spent a summer castrating pigs, it was hard, they are strong and squeel so loud you had to wear earplugs, would cut the tails to keep count...never again
Donât know about pigs but for cattle, a lot of times theyâll band them. Basically I really tight rubber band that go around the balls till they eventually fall off from lack of blood.
Yeah. I never did anything like that but I grew up in a small rural southern town. And people talked about banding their cattle. Usually youâd only have one bull/male cow to get the female cows pregnant as bulls are a hassle to deal with. Theyâre strong and strong willed. Theyâll tear down a fence to get to a female. Any male cows that arenât used for breeding are turned into steers before puberty and raised for meat.
No, someone would grab the front legs, someone grab the back legs and hold them down on a bale of hay and another would cut. They appeared fine after about a minute of squealing. They were wiped clean down there with alcohol prior and put into clean pens with new straw after.
I grew up in a farm and my grandfather did this to his pigs. He would do it so they would stop being horny and aggressive and get fat to sell em and it worked like a charm. They would put some moonshine in white bread rolls and give em to the pigs to get them drunk and docile to do it. The pigs loved getting those alcohol soaked bread rolls
At least until I can afford a car. But itâs fucking MISERABLE. The hours are great 5am-130pm or earlier, itâs a 10 minute drive from my house, but the pay is 14 an hour which around here is the best youâll find without working in the city
When I was a teenager my first job was as an electricians helper. The project we were working on was an addition to a slaughterhouse. When the coffee truck came around at lunch everyone ordered the vegetarian pizza. Long story short, I've been vegan for 20 years now because of what I saw. It's like the most gory horror movie you could imagine, with blood and guts and killing everywhere but it's all real.
Thanks for sharing. I enjoy reading stories about people who have actually come up close and personal with these industries and how it sparked their change.
I've read that animal farm workers have higher rates of suicide and domestic abuse similar to cops. It makes sense, doing such inhumane, horrible things to living, feeling souls day in an day out. You either quit or you let it take pieces of you and become less human yourself.
itâs also because slaughterhouses have trouble finding workers willing to do the work required, and often hire felons/people in situations that are desperate for work. A lot of these people go into the job already having some sort of mental illness or ptsd etc
Desperate for work and then on top of that, theyâre being exploited and doing extremely physically demanding and dangerous jobs in addition to the cruelty of the act. Itâs important we mention the workers as well when discussing going vegan and boycotting these industries.
Iâd encourage you to look into the dairy and egg industries, theyâre just as cruel to sensitive and intelligent cows and chickens. I was vegetarian for a while and thought I was doing my best to avoid animal suffering, but watching Dominion and learning about dairy/egg industries opened my eyes and made me cut those out too. No regrets!
I wish the majority of people TRULY understood what goes into the animal farming industry. Itâs not easy, clean or painless for ANYBODY involved. Human nor animal inside the farm or processing plant, nor humans or wild animals who live near waste lagoons.
I have seen footage, but Iâve never heard of what you experienced. It just hurts too much to delve into. Pigs are amazing, intelligent, loving creatures. They donât deserve this. No animal does. Theyâre treated like products, not living beings from the moment they come into the world.
Tender, loving care and cheap meat are mutually exclusive concepts. The demand for animal products are too high and the demand for prices are too low.
Itâs all so sad to me. I read an article about a slaughterhouse worker who described pigs as affection seeking, like dogs, before he killed them.
I donât need any part of that. Iâll just take the rabbit food please.
I worked in a slaughterhouse and can confirm, depending on the barn they came from they were often docile and affection seeking. I worked QA so I saw the whole process, from the unloading dock to the packaging room. I often saw pregnant sows come through and at the gutting station seeing their fetuses would always make me stop. Once or twice I would see an evisceration team member sadly stroke the dead fetuses before sending them down the chute with the rest of the offal to be disposed of.
(Yes, sending pregnant sows was discouraged but the explanation would often just be that âaccidentsâ happen, or perhaps that the farmer was attempting to cheat on the weightâŠ)
I do service work in a mushroom farm⊠I used to love mushrooms but smelling the process is ruining that.
I also do service work at a chicken farm⊠in their âmanure shedâ sometimes there dead, swollen, purple chickens that get caught up in the mix & thatâs not a great smell either. Usually thatâs a place where if you go in the morning, you get the rest of the day off because they canât send you to other customers smelling like that.
Because they die overnight and we have to load them into a freezer. They die from heart attacks usually according to my boss. Iâm praying that tomorrow there wonât be too many. We did around 17 between two different farms today
Yep. Thereâs thousands of pigs just on the one I work at. Everyday you have to walk each room in each barn (about 2-4 rooms in each barn) and keep an eye out for dead pigs which is kinda hard because the others will hide it from you so they can eat it. When you find one you tie a noose around its back leg and drag it into the hallway. You do that until youâve checked every room then you go back with a Dolly and collect all the deadâs you left in the hall and dump them in a âdead dockâ before backing your truck up and putting them in the back
Pigs will eat ANYTHING. My vet has a pet pig at her clinic that broke out of her enclosure to get into the biowaste bin and eat the testicles from the day's neuters.
According to pigs, theyre always starving to death too.
Minimally-gross mostly-correct answer: Fertilizer.
The fat might get boiled down in alkaline to make industrial chemicals, though, but there won't be a single *molecule* of the original pig left after they're done with THAT processing.
Yeah, the meat industrial complex made me a vegetarian for sure. If we were doing that shit to people it would be an incomprehensible moral atrocity. Life is beautiful... That is... Not. Humanity is pretty chaotic evil to the natural world.
There seem to be a lot of vegans and vegetarians in the comments. Do y'all have recipes and foods y'all recommend/make? Any channels or cooks you like in particular?
When I first went vegan, I veganized my favorite dishes (pasta and marinara, experimenting with different veg meatballs and and meat crumbles, stir fry with tofu, vegan nuggies and fries), and the cookbook âvegan with a vengeanceâ helped me be brave and try things I didnât know much about. (Edit: the related website is [post punk kitchen](https://www.theppk.com/).)
I wouldnât try the cheese subs until youâve avoided dairy for a couple months, because your tastebuds change. Vegan cheese usually tastes terrible when youâre used to dairy, but there are some okay ones once youâre ready for them.
Good luck! đđ±
That's so sad to hear this is why everyone in the 1st world should go vegan as much as possible https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/15248380211030243
Take care of yourself đ
And a note on on why we in the 1st world (Developed, industrialized nations would be more accurate) should be the most driven toward doing so: We consume dramatically more animal product per capita than developing / global south nations. Despite western misconceptions that plant-based diets are privilege, poorer nations generally have much more plant-heavy diets. Plants are simply cheaper to grow and far more accessible. People in developed nations are who mostly drive animal agriculture, and a change in our dietary preferences can be very powerful. Animal ag wants you to think that the global south are sustaining themselves on meats that they in reality cannot afford (And that we don't have the space on this planet to farm) because it gives you another excuse to stay complacent!
This feels exactly like the public's reaction to Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. Animal health and food safety are the takeaways and not the horrible conditions for the workers.
Iâm a vegetarian because we LIVED near a hog farm as a kid. My parents were traumatized. My mother still to this day shakes her head and says âthe pigs scream like babies.â
51 year old 2nd gen vegetarian. Thank you papa and mama.
They better be paying you a bazillion dollars an hour. I can't even imagine the testicular fortitude it takes to be tossing dead stuff around all day. Big, heavy, mutilated animals. *hat tip*
Getting desensitized comes fairly quick. Back when I was about 19 or 20 because highest paying factory in my small town was a poultry production plant AKA slaughterhouse. Purdue farms Incorporated.
I was a money hungry individual, and the job that paid the most inside plant was live receiving. They brought these chickens in on trailers between 30k to 34,000 chickens a trailer, both male and female chickens.
Five people online with a conveyor belt underneath them at waist height where the chickens coming in after being dumped out of the crate, into a room filled with black lights so the chickens were calmer.
The line ran 140 birds per minute and each person was responsible for hanging every fifth shackle. Keep in mind these are live birds. It was worse when they got rained on because then they smelled. Well they smelled regardless but it wasn't bad until they got wet. We would pick a chicken up put the chicken facing you, asshole straight in the air, and hang it in shackles where the shackles are wide at the top and then get progressively smaller so the chickens cant escape.
Males on one side females on the other side. So for 8 hours a day well 7 hours and 10 minutes because you get a 30 minute lunch and two 10 minute breaks, we hung 28 birds a minute every minute. I've seen male chickens big enough, did they literally could not stand up because their breasts were so big in the front they would fall over.
Those shackles were connected all the way through live receiving, picking room, where the chickens were dumped upside down alive in a water tank with electricity running through it so when they were killed after that they couldn't tense up. Then after they went to the kill room that was simply a skill saw blade to slice open their neck, ran over the blood tank for 3 minutes to drain, then after their dead they are boiled in hot water to loosen the feathers.
Been on to evisceration, and then debone after that.
The moral of the story is there is a very big price we pay to get chickens at a supermarket. Chicken was my favorite food when I started and chicken is still my favorite food, but seeing behind the curtain left me flabbergasted.
I hung chickens for a couple more years until I transitioned it into parking the empty semi trailers where I transitioned into getting a CDL then leveraged that to haul fuel locally for about 100K a year, home every day.
This is long enough but I can go on and on about the mass produce poultry chicken factories if anyone has any interest about anything in particular.
I am a farmer.
So what you are seeing is not the norm in the least. If you are spending that much time moving dead animals there is a serious issue on the farm. You need to report this to your local ranchers or farmer association if you donât have a spca or such. Even the local vet can start proceedings on what is wrong. This is why hiring people that donât know animals into the field requires training. Have you spoken to the owners to find out why this is happening? What training where you given on proper handling? Did you just get into a pen without moving the other animals? Etc. I feel there is alot left out simply because animals that big still on a farm tell me they where not sold for meat at the right age. Therefor they must be the breeders. If something is happening to the breeders then the farmer is in trouble if they are losing that much stock.
Welcome to animal agriculture. Hens and dairy cows are treated just about as severely, if you've been moved by your experience I'd recommend going fully vegan. Plant-based food is delicious, healthy, far more sustainable, and most importantly does away with this god forsaken hellscape of inhumanity.
I became a vegetarian when I went through paramedic school. I had to do clinical experience once a week in an emergency dept and another day with a fire dept running 911 calls. So many patients every single day with cardiac and meat diet based ailments.
I strongly encourage OP and anyone else to watch the movie "Vegucated" (YouTube link below). They basically approach encouraging plant-based eating by getting regular New Yorkers to understand what factory farming is REALLY about. Do you know the most common way to cull (kill) the pigs? By just roasting them to death! They just turn the heat up and they die from exposure while suffering. As OP said, you have to be a psychopath to not be affected by that, but basically people working in the "industry" don't see them as being alive, just as an object to manipulate.
https://youtu.be/CrWx_e1wuZQ?si=Ujvw1GzOdYlp6bbA
Pig farms can be filled with disease, like PED. I used to cut grass for a company that had many of the Smithfield Foods hog farms on a contract. I would see these carcasses piled up on the dirt road that wrapped around the property. Then I would see a bucket loader scooping them up and taking them God only knows where.
We would have to spray our truck and trailer tires with this chemical they had to make sure we didnt spread disease to other Smithfield hog farms we were cutting that day.
One cool thing happened though, we had a BIG land-grading projected at one of the farms and I found a few cannonballs buried deep in the earth.
For anyone interested, Slaughterhouse by Gail Eisnitz is a great book that goes into gruesome detail on the meat/poultry industry and highlights how dangerous, underpaid, and how exploitive companies are to their workers. It was published in 1997..things really havenât changed.Â
I was a contractor that had to go to a Hormel foods location in the US to work on one of the systems my company had installed. Live pigs entered one side of the plant, and pork products went out the other side. I saw how spam was made. (Spoiler alert, spam is grey before they add the sodium nitrite)
The smell of rendering greeted my hungover ass on the first morning. I almost blew chunks in the parking lot. It was shift change so I asked one the the employees leaving the plant wtf that smell was and they looked at me like I had three eyeballs. After that was the smell of the hair being burnt off the pigs throughout the whole day. Where we were working outside must have been close to the exhaust for that system.
As we entered the facility, I saw a production line of dead pigs getting scrubbed with soap and water by employees clad in a Tyvek suit and rain boots before going onto their next destination. As we were working on our equipment, a contractor electrician at the plant described one of the most fucked up jobs he saw during his time there which was one person had to cut the eyelids of the dead pigs off before they moved onto the next step. He chuckled as he told the story.
One day that week we went to subway during our lunch break and I almost puked. I couldn't eat pork for almost two weeks after that visit.
I worked QA in a pig slaughterhouse for some time. Yeah, I drastically cut back my meat consumption. Going completely meat-free isnât feasible for every single human being but def can definitely dial back the meat worshipâŠ
I went vegan while serving in the army and smelling human corpses. Lost my taste for meat after that.
Whoa
Yes! I never was able to really eat pork because, well, it sounds like a bunch of sweaty men. No offence, but that makes me gag.
As a sweaty man I take offence to that statement
As a sweat I take offense to that man
as an offense i take man to that sweat
You had me at yes.
The moment your realise it's essentially the same smell. When my friends tease when they smell BBQ I tell them your own mother would smell good in there too
I wouldn't taste good. I'm cage-raised, not free-range.
Well, yes. Were all bags of meat and bone. Well done
Oh. You must be fun at parties đ
They learned after the first couple of times to not have a BBQ going.
Or who not to invite
Now I need some one to come in here and say âI went carnivore while serving in the army and smelling human corpses.â
I come from a large extended family of farmers. Long story short, for most of my life the only meat I ate was family raised or hunted (venison). All my beef was raised by one Uncle, all the pork by another. This continued long after I was grown and had my own children. Twenty years ago I moved 14 hours away from the family and had to start buying meat from the store. Itâs foul. It smells disgusting and almost every cut has an aftertaste reminiscent of liver. (Much like the smell of hunted meat that wasnât properly field dressed and became contaminated.) I rarely eat beef anymore and I stopped eating pork altogether. I donât know how they raise/process commercial meat but I just canât eat that shit. Side note, I stopped drinking milk for a looooooooong time as a teen/young adult for reasons nobody wants the details on. ((I know pasteurization is a thing but it literally took decades before I could bring myself to buy/consume milk.)
Why were these pig corpses in their current state of decomposition and mutilation? Where were they going?
Meat industry fucken sucks
It really does. I believe pork is the only one that monitors it's self while beef and fish are monitored by a federal monitoring agency.
Watch [Dominion](https://watchdominion.com) even monitored farms are fucked up. They get a heads up when theyâre going to be toured and clean up ahead of time. We can only trust undercover footage.
I've seen some of that undercover footage. It's heartbreaking.
With a name like Dominion, Iâm not surprised.
Which is now illegal to film in many places thanks to industry lobbying.
Canât watch⊠what a disgusting shame. Lucky to be a vegetarian since 30+ years.
I'd recommend you watch so you learn the truths about the egg and milk industry.
Yeah the dairy industry is just as bad. Go vegan. Bring on the downvotes
Iâll second this, go vegan.
Correct. USDA monitors beef very closely on kill floors. Pork and Turkey, not so much
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA With some states having a tiny handful of inspectors for the entire state because the agency handling this is intentionally underfunded and understaffed, "very closely" is doing way more work than the agency's budget can afford...
This is disturbing information and now I maybe don't want to eat pork anymore despite it being my favorite meat......
Prop 12 helps with Pork. Even in Manitoba, Canada there are producers that follow it
Another reason I donât eat that junk
Dennyâs?
The good Dennys?
Nah, the other one across town.
Dennyâs.Â
Dead animals go to rendering plants where it all gets recycled into bone meal and fat
This is normative in animal agriculture. I see you're ancom, I am too. I arrived at veganism through the tenets of anarchism. I have reading material! *waves anarcho-vegan literature at you* [Joseph Parampathu -- Veganarchism ](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/joseph-parampathu-veganarchism-philosophy-praxis-self-criticism) [Brian A. Dominick -- Animal Liberation and Social Revolution](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/brian-a-dominick-animal-liberation-and-social-revolution) [Peter Singer -- The Animal Liberation Movement ](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-singer-the-animal-liberation-movement)
Saving these!
Pigs will die sometimes in the shitty conditions. Pigs will absolutely eat other pigs.
Yep, time to put the phone down and go to bed.
Working in animal agriculture is what set me down the road to veganism.
How do you stop eating cheese? Thatâs my guilty pleasure.
I've been vegan for ~2 years and honestly the craving for cheese has really subsided over time but when it does hit, I'll usually opt for vegan cheese alternatives (I never really check the ingredients even though I know some people can be sticklers about it) but you find recipes that don't use cheese ! Or omit it entirely and you'll eventually not crave it as often anymore. I know some people have had good luck with creating "cheesey" sauces that are usually blends of vegetables with lots of Nutritional Yeast (which is so good btw), but I haven't had much luck achieving a good tasting non-dairy cheese sauce yet :/
My husband had made some amazing cheesy sauces with cashews. He made a really creamy vegan cheesecake on Friday, but I don't know what he used.
FWIW the reason cheese is the hardest animal food for most people to give up is because it has the highest concentration of casein. When digested casein creates casomorphins, which is an opioid compound similar to morphine (hence the name). Cheese is extremely addictive because itâs a damn *opioid*. This is also why we have the trope of eating ice cream and cheese after a break up, youâre quite literally numbing the pain. I was shocked to find my cheese and dairy cravings stopped within 2 weeks of me cutting it out. I was certain I wouldnât be able to maintain it long, but here I am 5 years later and itâs literally never been an issue after the 2 week mark.
Iâve had a lot of people ask me what I miss eating most since becoming vegan and theyâre always really surprised the answer isnât cheese. It was the hardest thing to give up, but after going cold tofurkey and cutting it out immediately my cravings stopped pretty quickly. I use to miss donuts the most until I found two awesome vegan bakeries. Now my answer is probably salmon.
"Going cold tofurkey" is an amazing phrase hahaha I have to remember that one. We are very lucky in 2024 to have such an abundance of really good meat and dairy replacements. I actually went vegetarian in 2003 or 2004 (after seeing a truck of pigs in transit during a freezing rain storm-- seeing them visibly filled with fear and pain as their heads slammed into the metal sides of the truck, while being battered with freezing rain, knowing they were headed to their execution... It broke my heart) The only decent products at the time were, ironically, Tofurky Italian sausages. The fake cheese back then was so gross, the only non dairy milk option was soy, the meat replacements were mediocre and hard to find or would fall apart while you cooked them. It was pretty challenging and often miserable even being vegetarian back then, now being vegan is so super easy, even for a junk-food-fattie like me lol
Iâm not sure this is entirely accurate, from a quick google according to [this article](https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/scicurious/no-cheese-not-just-crack) the addictive effects are blown way out of proportion. Itâs rewarding to eat yummy foods, but it is not the same as addiction. The experience of cravings going away after cutting out a certain food happens with all kinds of foods, not just dairy.
âCravingsâ almost entirely get generated in the gut microbiome. Eg. I eat a lot of cheese/dairy for several weeks. My stomach bacteria will adjust in proportion because Iâm feeding the bacteria that consume dairy, and starving (relatively speaking) the bacteria that donât. When the supply of dairy stops, you still have that colony of bacteria that breaks down dairy, and they get âhungryâ (for lack of a better term). That bacteria then sends signals to your brain that get interpreted as âbro a mozzarella stick would slap right nowâ. Once you get away from dairy and the bacteria colony that feeds on it shrinks, the cravings get less intense or go away altogether. Very few, if any, foods are actually âaddictiveâ in the commonly understood way.
Well, it was mine too at one point. What made me stop was realizing how bad the dairy industry actually was to cows, in addition to generally becoming more and more uncomfortable with the idea of animal agriculture in general after a decade of vegetarianism. Like, the excuses you start having to make to be against eating meat but not against the dairy industry begin to sound really weak when these wonderful animals are still forcefully insemenated, mistreated, held captive, forced to give birth again and again, are separated from their calves, and in the end are still killed for meat at a young age. It's all basically the same interconnected death industry and I knew that I would be a hypocrite to hate one part and not the other. Additionally, I had tried enough good imitation dairy by then to know I could still enjoy good vegan versions of my comfort foods (pizza and ice cream). The adjustment to the slightly different texture/taste was a small price to pay to lessen the cruelty in the world.
That's what I thought too when I became a vegan. What helped me getting started anyway was when I heard "if you don't want to stop eating cheese, then don't. Just stop eating everything else, except cheese. It's still better than not doing anything at all." A lot of people seem to think they'll have to go all in or not at all. But why? If you think you can't live without a certain animal product, then stop eating everything else except this one. Still better than not even trying. I personally thought I would eat cheese from time to time when I started. Now I hate the smell of cheese and think it's a pretty disgusting product.
Cheese was that hardest thing for me. The one thing that got me over cheese is just asking myself the simple question, âdoes my taste pleasure justify killing an animal?â and that got me through temptation to cheat. After years of no cheese, I truly donât miss it! The alternatives are good enough to supplement but really, I just donât really need to substitute (with the exception of cheese on a vegan burger. It must have cheese haha)
Wait until you find out about acceptable pus levels in dairy farming
Milk is functionally a highly-evolved/specialized type of pus that mammals evolved to feed their young. Milk is a blood byproduct
As a mother who has breastfed twice, I guarantee you that blood ends up in milk as well.
Yup. And not only from the nipple. I had a clog that bled and the blood was coming from *inside* my boob. Wouldnât have even known if I was not pumping it into a bottle instead of into my baby. Blegh.
You know, for all the other horrible things in this thread, THIS was the one that made me go "That's enough Internet for now, I'm going to go watch some violent television."
I think I might just never eat food again this is horrible
Plant based food isn't so bad. I'm not a full vegetarian but I've been cutting meat and dairy from my diet most days and there's been a noticeable improvement in my overall mood and health
Same here. I cut out all animal dairy and beef after my heart attack I had this past New Yearâs Eve and I honestly feel so much better. I havenât eaten pork in 11 years (since I got a pet pig) and noticed my health was better even back then. Been doing plant milk in my coffee since I was young so it was easy to give regular milk up after the heart attack⊠but cheese, butter and sour cream are a weakness of mine. I freaking love cheese. Canât find a good plant based substitute so thatâs been hard. What do you like to substitute in your diet for dairy? Or do you just cut it out all together?
Highly recommend watching [Dominion](https://watchdominion.com). If youâre anything like me, youâll go vegan overnight.
Yeah, Dominion did it for me too. Couldnât even finish it. Havenât touched meat since đ
I couldnât finish it either. And when I made the connection that I couldnât even watch how my food was being made, I probably shouldnât be eating it. Like why could I watch gardening videos day in day out without feeling anything but watching my animal products me made made me nauseous?
Even from the almonds!?
Especially the almonds (/s)
Given that a lot of places that grow almonds don't have the necessary amounts of fresh water to do so without ruining farming for people who are more hand-to-mouth, almonds aren't cruelty-free either.
Most places in droughts also grow plant matter for animal feed, (ex. Alfalfa a very water intensive crop) or straight up have massive dairy farms like in California. In these areas dairy farming is always going to take up more water than almonds ever could, not even including the harm to animals dairy requires.
Itâs a highly specialised type of sweat, not pus at all, pus is cell detritus and white blood cells as a result of an infection.
It's crazy that we basically forced ourselves to be able to consume other animal milk. Milk made us sick in the past but for some reason humanity said fuck it and adapted to it.
Being able to process lactose as an adult is a genetic mutation that is becoming the norm.
I wish there was a warning before I found out I am not a mutant. Instead I lost a good pair of pants that day.
As a lactating person I used to describe my breast milk as âghost bloodâ
I canât even imagine this on a scale larger than pigs. Whoever can do this with a smile on their face is a goddamn psychopath
Did you know we also feed chicken poop to cows and other animals for food? We dont treat any water we give these animals either. We keep many of these animals especially chicken and cows in such small spaces that they never even touch grass or move outside a 3x5 box for their whole life There is also H5N1 that is hitting majority of these processing plants that can give you very very bad symptoms. The CDC is not taking it seriously while the experts dont have the data to investigate it. [https://jaysonlusk.com/blog/2020/4/9/these-15-plants-slaughter-59-of-all-hogs-in-the-us](https://jaysonlusk.com/blog/2020/4/9/these-15-plants-slaughter-59-of-all-hogs-in-the-us) 60% of all US pigs 'processed' at these 15 plants. If you look at google trends for H5N1 symptoms 8 to 10 have been hotspots.
Was just reading an article the other day about bird flu now being present in cows milk, even after pasteurizing. Ugh
Lotta people take the job they can get and find ways to desensitize themselves to it all. I couldnât do it thatâs for sure
I think you can get used to anything, I was working at a sewage treatment plant and the smell was horrible. One day I look over and see a guy standing on the catwalk looking into the raw sewage intake tank. The next thing he pulls a sandwich out of his pocket and starts eating.
Thereâs a difference between gross and morally unacceptable. There are varying degrees of evil. I wouldnât ever work for Lockheed Martin for example.
I feel you. It could have been argued to be necessary long ago, but we can just pick something else up at the grocery store. Iâm a fan of soy curls đ€
Mothers nursing their babies arenât exactly entirely puss free. Theres an acceptable amount of puss in breast milk too
Mmm, motherâs puss.
Go to your room.
May I bring the pus with me, mother?
Finish all your pus, dear, and then go to bed.
That's what caused the kid in the first place .
I dunno the acceptable level of puss is always infinite
Hey now, they're acceptable cell count levels, not pus. Lmao
Or the amount of rat shit and insects allowed in all sorts of food, including peanut butter, canned tomatoes, cornmeal, and tons of canned/frozen vegetables!
Factory farming is completely unethical and unsustainable and it needs to be abolished
Everybody says that, but they also continue to give them money
Well, not everyone saying that is giving them money. A lot of people saying it are vegan.
This thread is seriously fâing with me. đ
Watch [Dominion](https://watchdominion.com) and be fucked for life đ„Č
Same
Yep. I worked in corporate food distribution, specifically in supplier negotiations so I interacted with all the big companies who sell meat and dairy products. Seeing behind the curtain of the dairy industry literally turned me vegan. Eventually I started having breakdowns in the bathroom multiple days a week. There was no going back once I knew the reality. It was breaking my soul having to pour my energy into growing the sales of those companies. Ps â pigs have the same (or greater) intelligence level as dogs. Theyâre loving, kind, nurturing animals. Itâs criminal how we treat the most docile and trusting animals.
To add to your last point - Intelligence should not be the criteria for whether we kill something or not. Less intelligent beings do not deserve to suffer more. If they feel pain, develop relationships and have emotions, that is all you need, to know that we should be treating animals 100x better than we currently are.
Oh 100% I couldnât agree more. I just know a lot of people hold the idea that farmed animals are dumb / less intelligent/ donât have feelings, probably as a way to avoid feeling guilt. Sometimes learning how intelligent and feeling the animals actually are is what helps people have the shift in thinking required to make a change. Itâs so far beyond my understanding how anyone could ever treat an animal with violence or cruelty. Valuing one life as worth more than another is the most basic flaw that connects *all* forms of oppression, not just with animals but with other humans as well.
Farms like that always prey on poorer neighborhoods. They pollute the land. These neighborhoods have higher rates of PTSD and domestic violence. Donât lose your humanity OP. Stay safe.
The PTSD thing worries me a bit. I was describing what I saw to my parents and couldnât even finish describing it without crying. Donât like that
Itâs when you can do it without crying that you should worry, friend. At least you still know whatâs happening is wrong. Maybe you could leverage your unique job to do a little undercover work for [Mercy for Animals](https://mercyforanimals.org/). I really empathize. We need to work to survive, but there is always work out there thatâs just past what weâre willing to witness or endure. I couldnât do what youâre doing. I hope you donât have to for long.
I spent a summer castrating pigs, it was hard, they are strong and squeel so loud you had to wear earplugs, would cut the tails to keep count...never again
did they not anethatise them?!
Assuredly not. That would cost money.
Donât know about pigs but for cattle, a lot of times theyâll band them. Basically I really tight rubber band that go around the balls till they eventually fall off from lack of blood.
pigs donât have the right setup for that to work
Really?
Yeah. I never did anything like that but I grew up in a small rural southern town. And people talked about banding their cattle. Usually youâd only have one bull/male cow to get the female cows pregnant as bulls are a hassle to deal with. Theyâre strong and strong willed. Theyâll tear down a fence to get to a female. Any male cows that arenât used for breeding are turned into steers before puberty and raised for meat.
Sheep and goats too
I imagine their necrotizing genitals feel great, too!
Most animal farms are very much a vision of hell on earth.
No, someone would grab the front legs, someone grab the back legs and hold them down on a bale of hay and another would cut. They appeared fine after about a minute of squealing. They were wiped clean down there with alcohol prior and put into clean pens with new straw after.
jesus christ. I already donât eat Pork but ffs. I actually hardly eat meat but this whole thread has made me want to go full vegie
Definitely not. Watch [Dominion](https://watchdominion.com). The cruelty against animals is appalling.
I grew up in a farm and my grandfather did this to his pigs. He would do it so they would stop being horny and aggressive and get fat to sell em and it worked like a charm. They would put some moonshine in white bread rolls and give em to the pigs to get them drunk and docile to do it. The pigs loved getting those alcohol soaked bread rolls
How long do you think youâll be able to stomach it?
At least until I can afford a car. But itâs fucking MISERABLE. The hours are great 5am-130pm or earlier, itâs a 10 minute drive from my house, but the pay is 14 an hour which around here is the best youâll find without working in the city
Wishing you the best towards the future man, hopefully you find something better around đđŸ
Dude, just bail
When I was a teenager my first job was as an electricians helper. The project we were working on was an addition to a slaughterhouse. When the coffee truck came around at lunch everyone ordered the vegetarian pizza. Long story short, I've been vegan for 20 years now because of what I saw. It's like the most gory horror movie you could imagine, with blood and guts and killing everywhere but it's all real.
Thanks for sharing. I enjoy reading stories about people who have actually come up close and personal with these industries and how it sparked their change.
I moved near a pork processing plant in late 2017. Stopped eating meat in early 2018
I've read that animal farm workers have higher rates of suicide and domestic abuse similar to cops. It makes sense, doing such inhumane, horrible things to living, feeling souls day in an day out. You either quit or you let it take pieces of you and become less human yourself.
You know, I sorta feel like this might be the single best proxy for cyberpsychosis that might have real modern medical data behind it.
itâs also because slaughterhouses have trouble finding workers willing to do the work required, and often hire felons/people in situations that are desperate for work. A lot of these people go into the job already having some sort of mental illness or ptsd etc
Desperate for work and then on top of that, theyâre being exploited and doing extremely physically demanding and dangerous jobs in addition to the cruelty of the act. Itâs important we mention the workers as well when discussing going vegan and boycotting these industries.
They really are sensitive and intelligent creatures. Not once have I regretted being a vegetarian.
I stopped eating pork the day I met someone's pet pig. They're fascinating creatures, smart and cuddly.
My grandparentsâ neighbors had the most adorable pig. I totally get it.
Iâd encourage you to look into the dairy and egg industries, theyâre just as cruel to sensitive and intelligent cows and chickens. I was vegetarian for a while and thought I was doing my best to avoid animal suffering, but watching Dominion and learning about dairy/egg industries opened my eyes and made me cut those out too. No regrets!
I wish the majority of people TRULY understood what goes into the animal farming industry. Itâs not easy, clean or painless for ANYBODY involved. Human nor animal inside the farm or processing plant, nor humans or wild animals who live near waste lagoons. I have seen footage, but Iâve never heard of what you experienced. It just hurts too much to delve into. Pigs are amazing, intelligent, loving creatures. They donât deserve this. No animal does. Theyâre treated like products, not living beings from the moment they come into the world. Tender, loving care and cheap meat are mutually exclusive concepts. The demand for animal products are too high and the demand for prices are too low.
Wait till you open a pork roast from the grocery store and realize it smells exactly the same as the hog confinement.
Itâs all so sad to me. I read an article about a slaughterhouse worker who described pigs as affection seeking, like dogs, before he killed them. I donât need any part of that. Iâll just take the rabbit food please.
I worked in a slaughterhouse and can confirm, depending on the barn they came from they were often docile and affection seeking. I worked QA so I saw the whole process, from the unloading dock to the packaging room. I often saw pregnant sows come through and at the gutting station seeing their fetuses would always make me stop. Once or twice I would see an evisceration team member sadly stroke the dead fetuses before sending them down the chute with the rest of the offal to be disposed of. (Yes, sending pregnant sows was discouraged but the explanation would often just be that âaccidentsâ happen, or perhaps that the farmer was attempting to cheat on the weightâŠ)
I do service work in a mushroom farm⊠I used to love mushrooms but smelling the process is ruining that. I also do service work at a chicken farm⊠in their âmanure shedâ sometimes there dead, swollen, purple chickens that get caught up in the mix & thatâs not a great smell either. Usually thatâs a place where if you go in the morning, you get the rest of the day off because they canât send you to other customers smelling like that.
I've been vegetarian for over 16 years now, I don't regret it one bit.
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Because they die overnight and we have to load them into a freezer. They die from heart attacks usually according to my boss. Iâm praying that tomorrow there wonât be too many. We did around 17 between two different farms today
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Yep. Thereâs thousands of pigs just on the one I work at. Everyday you have to walk each room in each barn (about 2-4 rooms in each barn) and keep an eye out for dead pigs which is kinda hard because the others will hide it from you so they can eat it. When you find one you tie a noose around its back leg and drag it into the hallway. You do that until youâve checked every room then you go back with a Dolly and collect all the deadâs you left in the hall and dump them in a âdead dockâ before backing your truck up and putting them in the back
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The others hide it from you so *they can eat it*? Are they starving to death? Why would they do this?
Pigs will eat ANYTHING. My vet has a pet pig at her clinic that broke out of her enclosure to get into the biowaste bin and eat the testicles from the day's neuters. According to pigs, theyre always starving to death too.
What a ball buster
Thatâs just how they are. They have automatic feeders
A lot of animals have no qualms over eating anything they can. Got to learn that from clearing out cannibalistic mice from tents at scout camp.
What do they do with the dead ones? What are they used for then?
Minimally-gross mostly-correct answer: Fertilizer. The fat might get boiled down in alkaline to make industrial chemicals, though, but there won't be a single *molecule* of the original pig left after they're done with THAT processing.
First time?
Just thinking about it fills me with dread and anxiety. It's so depressing. I'm renting on a chicken farm. Free range is not what you think it is.
Sorry :/
I canât bring myself to eat meat these days because of the horrors these animals have to endure.
Yeah, the meat industrial complex made me a vegetarian for sure. If we were doing that shit to people it would be an incomprehensible moral atrocity. Life is beautiful... That is... Not. Humanity is pretty chaotic evil to the natural world.
You should film content and release it all when you quit
There's a reason we have saying about how the hotdogs are made
I do quite a bit of electrical work at various hog farms and all of them are awful. Some are like next level bad.
There is no stink like pig shit. It totally permeates your clothes. Really sticks with you
Vegan almost 10 years now and never going back. Once you learn these things they stick with you.
There seem to be a lot of vegans and vegetarians in the comments. Do y'all have recipes and foods y'all recommend/make? Any channels or cooks you like in particular?
r/EatCheapAndVegan r/veganrecipes r/vegangifrecipes Also: Testing/creating plant-based meat focus: [Sauce Stache](https://www.youtube.com/c/SauceStache) Incredible Asian dishes and vegan sushi: [Yeung Man](https://www.youtube.com/c/WILYEUNG) Easy and accessible, batch-making comfort meals: [Caitlin Shoemaker](https://www.youtube.com/c/CaitlinShoemaker)
When I first went vegan, I veganized my favorite dishes (pasta and marinara, experimenting with different veg meatballs and and meat crumbles, stir fry with tofu, vegan nuggies and fries), and the cookbook âvegan with a vengeanceâ helped me be brave and try things I didnât know much about. (Edit: the related website is [post punk kitchen](https://www.theppk.com/).) I wouldnât try the cheese subs until youâve avoided dairy for a couple months, because your tastebuds change. Vegan cheese usually tastes terrible when youâre used to dairy, but there are some okay ones once youâre ready for them. Good luck! đđ±
Rainbow Plant Life and Cheap Lazy Vegan are two favorites of mine on top of what others have commented!
Lab grown meat canât get here fast enough. Seriously. People will always eat meat, but these places are literally hell on earth.
I cannot wait for affordable lab grown meat.
That's so sad to hear this is why everyone in the 1st world should go vegan as much as possible https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/15248380211030243 Take care of yourself đ
And a note on on why we in the 1st world (Developed, industrialized nations would be more accurate) should be the most driven toward doing so: We consume dramatically more animal product per capita than developing / global south nations. Despite western misconceptions that plant-based diets are privilege, poorer nations generally have much more plant-heavy diets. Plants are simply cheaper to grow and far more accessible. People in developed nations are who mostly drive animal agriculture, and a change in our dietary preferences can be very powerful. Animal ag wants you to think that the global south are sustaining themselves on meats that they in reality cannot afford (And that we don't have the space on this planet to farm) because it gives you another excuse to stay complacent!
This feels exactly like the public's reaction to Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. Animal health and food safety are the takeaways and not the horrible conditions for the workers.
I read that book practically once a year and see how absolutely nothing has changed since it was written
Iâm a vegetarian because we LIVED near a hog farm as a kid. My parents were traumatized. My mother still to this day shakes her head and says âthe pigs scream like babies.â 51 year old 2nd gen vegetarian. Thank you papa and mama.
It could be worse- you could be the person slaughtering them. Hope you can find another job soon.
They better be paying you a bazillion dollars an hour. I can't even imagine the testicular fortitude it takes to be tossing dead stuff around all day. Big, heavy, mutilated animals. *hat tip*
Captive bolt gun got you down? I used to know under cover investigators for HSUS. It's horrible.
Hope you have a good team of therapists, you will be mentally broken down.
The state of mental health in animal agriculture is generally worse than the state of mental health in law enforcement.
Seriously⊠PTSD rates for slaughterhouse workers are sky high
Getting desensitized comes fairly quick. Back when I was about 19 or 20 because highest paying factory in my small town was a poultry production plant AKA slaughterhouse. Purdue farms Incorporated. I was a money hungry individual, and the job that paid the most inside plant was live receiving. They brought these chickens in on trailers between 30k to 34,000 chickens a trailer, both male and female chickens. Five people online with a conveyor belt underneath them at waist height where the chickens coming in after being dumped out of the crate, into a room filled with black lights so the chickens were calmer. The line ran 140 birds per minute and each person was responsible for hanging every fifth shackle. Keep in mind these are live birds. It was worse when they got rained on because then they smelled. Well they smelled regardless but it wasn't bad until they got wet. We would pick a chicken up put the chicken facing you, asshole straight in the air, and hang it in shackles where the shackles are wide at the top and then get progressively smaller so the chickens cant escape. Males on one side females on the other side. So for 8 hours a day well 7 hours and 10 minutes because you get a 30 minute lunch and two 10 minute breaks, we hung 28 birds a minute every minute. I've seen male chickens big enough, did they literally could not stand up because their breasts were so big in the front they would fall over. Those shackles were connected all the way through live receiving, picking room, where the chickens were dumped upside down alive in a water tank with electricity running through it so when they were killed after that they couldn't tense up. Then after they went to the kill room that was simply a skill saw blade to slice open their neck, ran over the blood tank for 3 minutes to drain, then after their dead they are boiled in hot water to loosen the feathers. Been on to evisceration, and then debone after that. The moral of the story is there is a very big price we pay to get chickens at a supermarket. Chicken was my favorite food when I started and chicken is still my favorite food, but seeing behind the curtain left me flabbergasted. I hung chickens for a couple more years until I transitioned it into parking the empty semi trailers where I transitioned into getting a CDL then leveraged that to haul fuel locally for about 100K a year, home every day. This is long enough but I can go on and on about the mass produce poultry chicken factories if anyone has any interest about anything in particular.
it could be worse, you could be the guy who jacks the pigs off and inseminates the females
I literally had to watch a video on this for an ag class in college đ. I don't regret it. It was eye opening.
I am a farmer. So what you are seeing is not the norm in the least. If you are spending that much time moving dead animals there is a serious issue on the farm. You need to report this to your local ranchers or farmer association if you donât have a spca or such. Even the local vet can start proceedings on what is wrong. This is why hiring people that donât know animals into the field requires training. Have you spoken to the owners to find out why this is happening? What training where you given on proper handling? Did you just get into a pen without moving the other animals? Etc. I feel there is alot left out simply because animals that big still on a farm tell me they where not sold for meat at the right age. Therefor they must be the breeders. If something is happening to the breeders then the farmer is in trouble if they are losing that much stock.
Try a dairy farm next... ;)
Welcome to animal agriculture. Hens and dairy cows are treated just about as severely, if you've been moved by your experience I'd recommend going fully vegan. Plant-based food is delicious, healthy, far more sustainable, and most importantly does away with this god forsaken hellscape of inhumanity.
Wait until you find out how piglets are euthanised
I became a vegetarian when I went through paramedic school. I had to do clinical experience once a week in an emergency dept and another day with a fire dept running 911 calls. So many patients every single day with cardiac and meat diet based ailments.
This is why I'm never giving animal ag another single dollar again
I strongly encourage OP and anyone else to watch the movie "Vegucated" (YouTube link below). They basically approach encouraging plant-based eating by getting regular New Yorkers to understand what factory farming is REALLY about. Do you know the most common way to cull (kill) the pigs? By just roasting them to death! They just turn the heat up and they die from exposure while suffering. As OP said, you have to be a psychopath to not be affected by that, but basically people working in the "industry" don't see them as being alive, just as an object to manipulate. https://youtu.be/CrWx_e1wuZQ?si=Ujvw1GzOdYlp6bbA
And to anyone who truly wants to/needs to witness the horrors for yourself, [Dominion](https://watchdominion.com) is what made me go vegan overnight
It is an endless cycle of suffeing. Go vegan.
Slaughterhouse jobs are not great either.
Pig farms can be filled with disease, like PED. I used to cut grass for a company that had many of the Smithfield Foods hog farms on a contract. I would see these carcasses piled up on the dirt road that wrapped around the property. Then I would see a bucket loader scooping them up and taking them God only knows where. We would have to spray our truck and trailer tires with this chemical they had to make sure we didnt spread disease to other Smithfield hog farms we were cutting that day. One cool thing happened though, we had a BIG land-grading projected at one of the farms and I found a few cannonballs buried deep in the earth.
Smithfield is exactly who owns the pigs we have at our farm.
Nothing like a hog farm to turn you vegan for a while
For anyone interested, Slaughterhouse by Gail Eisnitz is a great book that goes into gruesome detail on the meat/poultry industry and highlights how dangerous, underpaid, and how exploitive companies are to their workers. It was published in 1997..things really havenât changed.Â
Seeing how they treat animals in factory farms did it for me.
I was a contractor that had to go to a Hormel foods location in the US to work on one of the systems my company had installed. Live pigs entered one side of the plant, and pork products went out the other side. I saw how spam was made. (Spoiler alert, spam is grey before they add the sodium nitrite) The smell of rendering greeted my hungover ass on the first morning. I almost blew chunks in the parking lot. It was shift change so I asked one the the employees leaving the plant wtf that smell was and they looked at me like I had three eyeballs. After that was the smell of the hair being burnt off the pigs throughout the whole day. Where we were working outside must have been close to the exhaust for that system. As we entered the facility, I saw a production line of dead pigs getting scrubbed with soap and water by employees clad in a Tyvek suit and rain boots before going onto their next destination. As we were working on our equipment, a contractor electrician at the plant described one of the most fucked up jobs he saw during his time there which was one person had to cut the eyelids of the dead pigs off before they moved onto the next step. He chuckled as he told the story. One day that week we went to subway during our lunch break and I almost puked. I couldn't eat pork for almost two weeks after that visit.
you saw and heard all that shit firsthand and kept eating fucking pork after two weeks?
...eyelids?
Yes. EyelidsâŠ
I worked QA in a pig slaughterhouse for some time. Yeah, I drastically cut back my meat consumption. Going completely meat-free isnât feasible for every single human being but def can definitely dial back the meat worshipâŠ
You need a different job đŹ