“One potato, two potato, three potato, pork.” “Life is like a bowl of pork chops.” “I scream, you scream, we all scream for pork loin.” The new advertising campaign for pork has caught America by surprise. But try this one?I scream, you scream, we all scream at a videotape of a man who raises a 40-pound pig above his head and smashes it against cement.
Last week, Alejo Pena, a former Oklahoma pig-farm manager, was charged with felony animal cruelty for beating and smashing to death pigs being fattened for slaughter. The charges stated that Pena and other workers beat pigs with a hooked end of a metal rod and a hammer, left fatally sick pigs to die and killed some young pigs by raising them above their heads and slamming them against the floor. The charges were based on videotapes supplied by a private investigator for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
The videotapes raise controversy about the growing pork industry. PETA asserts that large animal factory farms foster cruelty to animals, while pork producers maintain that they self-impose strict standards for the treatment of their animals. While some feel that such strict standards are irrelevant for animals that are going to be slaughtered anyway, most feel that animals are entitled to decent conditions while alive.
Whatever you might feel about the morality of eating animals that it is clear that animals should be treated justly and fairly while they are still alive. There is absolutely no reason why someone, unless that someone were a total nutcase, would slam a pig against the floor.
While it is fortunate that this inhumane behavior was stopped in Oklahoma, Oklahoma is one of the few states that allows charges of animal cruelty to be brought against offenders. Most states could have done nothing to prevent Alejo Pena to do what he considered his doing his job. The Oklahoma charges are a step in the right direction. The remainder of states need to develop laws so that animal abuse?even against animals destined to die?cannot happen again.
