No one is saying the livestock industry as a whole is perfect. It is driven by profit, operated by humans who don't make a lot of money in their jobs, and can be a shock to those not involved in the industry. A lot of these films you see are of farms or processing plants who are sorry at their jobs. They try to make you think all are like that, while that simply is not true. I had a neighbor with poultry houses who was drunk half the time and only went into his houses every other day, allowing the mortality to just rot on the floor. Needless to say, the Tyson people eventually took away his contract. That's the exception, though, and that is the kind of farms these films find so as to inflame the public. Can you find any films of clean, healthy operations? Do you really believe they don't exist? Get with the county extension agent in your county and go visit farms with him. I think you would come away feeling a lot different about farms.
PETA is not what they always claim to be, either. Check out these links.
http://www.petakillsanimals.com/petaTrial2.cfm
http://www.consumerfreedom.com/news_...d-its-a-felony
http://www.thisistrue.com/peta.html
http://www.consumerfreedom.com/press...g-dumping-dogs
Do I think all of PETA is like this? No, but for some reason people see videos of bad farms or processing plants and think they are all like that.
As to the profit driven aspect, the integrators are the ones making the money. My wife taught school while I ran the farm. Our utility bills and bank payments amounted to about $10000 per month. We averaged around $24,000 per flock and raised an average of 7 flocks per year. I was on the farm 24/7 while chickens were in the houses and had usually 10-14 days between flocks to clean out and get ready for the next batch. If you do the math you will see it wasn't a highly profitable business for the investment in time and money for us. We were paid 4.25 cents per pound of live weight and that would vary depending on how much feed per pound went into each chicken. The less feed used, the more we made. They started paying this in or around 1994. We sold our farm in 2002. I spoke to the man who bought it earlier this year and they are still paying the grower the same amount, although poultry prices have almost doubled on the retail market since 1994.
It's easy to see from top to bottom that all the money is at the top. Don Tyson and Bill Clinton are good friends and he was able to get a lot of favorable bills passed through his lobbying efforts. One example is that the poultry growers were not allowed to form any kind of union in order to try to get higher prices per pound on what they grow. They successfully lumped it in with the Sherman Antitrust Act and we could have been arrested for price-fixing. I personally think the farmers are treated much worse than the livestock they raise.
Does the industry need fixing? I'd say changes can be made for the better, but if it is ever done to the satisfaction of the few who are so vocal about it be prepared to pay exorbitant prices for all food, because the livestock market is tied into the rest of the food chain in this country.
Maybe then I can successfully lose weight and keep it off.