Blogging About Critters Since 2007

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Pork Industry Moving into Defensive Mode

It's in response to the HBO film "Death on a Factory Farm."
The Pork Board has planned delegate meetings at the {annual Pork Industry} forum to discuss quality assurance rules including animal handling, and how much money to allocate to promote animal welfare.

"Our Pork Quality Assurance Plus and Transport Quality Assurance Programs are designed to demonstrate the care we are giving to our animals everyday on our farms," Cunningham said.

"It's not as much about what the animal rights activists are saying about how we are raising pigs as opposed to us demonstrating that we do care and we are giving the best possible care" she said.

Uh huh. I have a hard time with the logic of that statement. The pork industry does not make money from happy pigs, but from dead carcasses. There is no economic motivation to treat them well or to care about their wellbeing. The only real concern comes from the spread of illness to humans from eating diseased meat, but they only need to provide minimal care to avoid that.

1 comment:

Bea Elliott said...

Good Post! I blogged about Drover's "damage control"... Really, the whole of it is totally skewed from American's ideal of how to treat animals. The more who make the connections, the better off things will get.

I'm always amused by their line: "best care possible" - When the whole process isn't profitable till the animals are killed. What double speak! People I meet are beginning to see right through it :)

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