NEW YORK, April 26, 2011 (by Mark Bittman for the New York Times): Kirt Espenson, who owns the E6 Cattle Company in western Texas, had his employees caught in the act, secretly videotaped performing acts of unspeakably sickening cruelty to cows. The video sparked a discussion that went two ways: one one hand, Esperson apologized and terminated the contract with those employees; but the other side was that people have mobilized to prevent this (the video, not the cruelty) to ever happen again. If some state legislators have their way, horrific but valuable videos like that one will never be made.
The problem is the system that enables cruelty and a lack not just of law enforcement but actual laws. Because the only federal laws governing animal cruelty apply to slaughterhouses, where animals may spend only minutes before being dispatched. None apply to farms, where animals are protected only by state laws.
And these may be moving in the wrong direction. In their infinite wisdom the legislatures of Iowa, Minnesota, Florida and others are considering measures that would punish heroic videographers like the one who spent two weeks as an E6 employee, who was clearly traumatized by the experience.
The biggest problem of all is that we’ve created a system in which standard factory-farming practices are inhumane, and the kinds of abuses documented at E6 are really just reminders of that. If you’re raising and killing 10 billion animals every year, some abuse is pretty much guaranteed.
There is, of course, the argument that domesticating animals in order to kill them is essentially immoral; those of us who eat meat choose not to believe this. But in “Bengal Tiger,” a Broadway play set at Baghdad Zoo, the tiger — played by Robin Williams — wonders: “What if my every meal has been an act of cruelty?” The way most animals are handled in the United States right now has to have all of us omnivores wondering the same thing.