Torturing pigs for food and profit

Headline: Pigs notch animal cruelty win at US Supreme Court.

From Daily Kos:

....Americans have a bifurcated view of animals. The public was horrified when it emerged NFL QB Michael Vick enjoyed betting on dogs ripping each other apart. The news that hundreds of dogs died during Dr. Oz’s experiments has hurt him badly. And most Americans think that the Asian custom of eating dogs is barbaric.

But these same warm-hearted people are uninterested in the pig's journey from birth to plate.

Why? Pigs are intelligent and affectionate. They have the same range of emotions as the family dog. And they equally feel pleasure and pain. Why are we indifferent to their lives of unrelenting misery and torture?

....breeding pigs are in cages so tiny they cannot even stand or turn around? What kind of sick bastard can run a business that does that to sentient beings?

....complying will increase costs by 9%. For starters, that is the industry number. I am sure the actual imposition is less than half of that. Why not conduct a poll and ask people if they would pay 4% more for humanely raised pigs?

....Pork producers are already getting away with not paying for the cost of treating pig waste. On average, a sow produces 44 times more feces than a human - about 11 pounds daily. Unlike human waste, farmers do not have to process pig effluence through a waste treatment plant.

Some hog facilities are home to 10,000 sows. This means that there are pig farms with the equivalent waste production of a city of 440,000 people — which stash that shit wherever. And that does not include the waste produced by the piglets destined for the dinner plate.

Industrial Food has confessed to torturing animals. Not that they have said, “we torture animals.” They have admitted their guilt by lobbying for “ag-gag” laws. These laws — pushed by their enablers in sadism, the GOP — make it a crime for people, whistle blowers and animal activists, to video the abusive practices of slaughterhouses and factory farms and show it to the general public.

Corporate farm operators know their horrific treatment of billions of animals would revulse the public.

I realize that Americans have come to expect their food to be cheap. But as the explosive growth in dining out and ordering in has shown, they will spend far more to eat than they need to.

If meat costs a little more because it comes from an animal that could walk around and act in the way God created them, so be it. And anyone who disagrees with that should go sit in a small cage for a while and reflect on their inhumanity.

Senator Feinstein's first day back

In the Los Angeles Times: 

An hour into a Senate Judiciary hearing on Thursday, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein was wheeled into the chamber by a staff member. She grabbed his arm tightly to steady herself as she rose to her feet and received a standing ovation after she made the short walk to her seat.

The San Francisco Democrat’s first day back at the Judiciary Committee after an extended absence recuperating from shingles was short. 

She said little beyond voting on three nominated district court judges who lacked Republican support and thus required backing from every Democrat to advance to the full Senate.

“I’m glad to welcome our colleague, Sen. Feinstein, back to our committee,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said, before adding that she was abetting “several nominees who are so extreme and so unqualified that they couldn’t have a prayer of getting a single Republican vote on this committee.”

The moment of partisan rancor, which followed less biting greetings from her other colleagues, felt almost welcoming in a forum where she has spent decades sparring over judicial nominees. 

But Feinstein’s nearly three-month absence and homecoming has prompted debate over whether the 89-year-old, who appeared frail when she arrived at the Capitol, should leave before the end of her term....