Food

Animal Abuse, Ethical Eating And Ingham’s Tortured Turkeys

This week, we were exposed to the reality of factory-farmed turkeys on our home soil. Why do humans abuse animals, and how can we stop it from happening?

by Amelia Schmidt 22 March 2013

Want more Junkee in your life? Sign up to our newsletter, and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook so you always know where to find us.

Just days after Burger King announced the breathtakingly exciting news that they would be trialing turkey burgers as part of their “healthy” options menu overseas, Australia was unceremoniously exposed to the reality of factory-farmed turkeys on our own soil.

This CCTV footage aired on Lateline on Wednesday night, showing workers at an Ingham’s processing plant kicking turkeys to death, slamming them against cages, and stomping on their heads. The footage had been handed anonymously to animal rights group Animal Liberation. ‘‘Hanging upside down, their legs are already brittle, and we’ve got footage as well where their legs have actually ripped off from their bodies … and the legs have been tossed around,’’ said Emma Hurst, the campaign manager at Animal Liberation. ‘‘You can see a total disrespect of these animals … The workers are screaming, jumping about, dancing, picking up the turkeys, dancing while holding onto the turkeys, throwing them onto the shackles, and just that whole mentality as though these animals don’t have feelings, that they’re objects.’’

Animal cruelty and horrendous factory farming conditions are generally accepted as the status quo for the meat and dairy industries in Australia, but this video was picked up by the media, largely thanks to the confronting nature of its content: extreme violence and human-inflicting cruelty on a helpless, shrieking creature. It seems deranged and completely unnecessary.

Ingham’s have released a statement, saying the company “does not tolerate the mistreatment of its livestock”, and will be fully cooperating with the police investigation. Meanwhile, Greens MP Cate Faehrmann told the media, “the Greens have a bill ready to go that could prevent acts of cruelty like this in the future”. The bill demands mandatory CCTV in abattoirs, which Faehrmann says will solve the problem. Unfortunately, though, there’s more than one problem.

Why do people abuse animals?

Violent animal abuse – and situational, neglectful animal abuse (poor living conditions, lack of space, hormone treatment and poor diet) – come from the same place as almost every other example of cruelty among humans: the perpetrator’s assumption that the victim is unlike them. “The justifications for eating animals and for not eating them are often identical: we are not them,” wrote Jonathan Safran Foer in Eating Animals.

And it is absolutely true. The reason why children are abused, why generations of Aboriginal children were forcibly removed from their families, why the Holocaust happened and why gay marriage is such a huge problem is actually all the same reason in the end: humans tend to draw a tight circle around themselves, and claim that anything outside of that is “Other” and should be treated differently as a result.

The Other, a term made popular by Edward Said in Orientalism, is defined so that we can feel part of a group of ‘not that thing’ people. Othering allows us to distance ourselves from things we don’t want to associate ourselves with – things which, for whatever reason, we find embarrassing, distasteful or frightening.

But taken to an extreme level, Othering allows humans to remove a bunch of qualities from other entities: from intelligence and sensitivity to the basic right to a torture-free existence. It is true, of course, that turkeys cannot speak, solve complex puzzles or wear clothes. They don’t work desk jobs and they don’t deserve the right to get married or the right to affordable healthcare. But the reason why animal activists like to tell you facts that make turkeys seem more adorable, intelligent and friendly than a tree is that it brings them closer towards your definition of “like me” rather than “not like me at all”. And the more like you something is, the less likely you are to be horrible to it (see: all of AI). Hence why we don’t like eating cute lil kitties, no matter how fat they get, and why Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall suggesting that an organic, high-welfare puppy farm could yield edible meat sparked so much outrage.

PS. Turkeys love having their feathers stroked and sing along to their favourite tunes.

PPS. Every thanksgiving, the US President pardons a turkey.

–

Why hasn’t it been stopped?

It’s obvious from watching the Lateline clip (and countless others that you can ruin your night with at peta.org) that animal cruelty is totally unacceptable. The workers themselves know that much, as evinced by their furtive glances.

The big reason why animal abuse continues is pretty uncomfortable, but worth understanding. It comes down to economics. It’s cheaper to disregard the welfare of animals in the process of providing their products to supermarkets. With a global population of close to 7 billion, humankind demands quite a lot of protein to stay alive, and eating meat is the easiest way for a lot of people to get it. And so factory farming evolved: a far cry from the cottage farm of storybooks and packaged meat labels, factory farming values efficiency over empathy and quantity over quality, and as a result it is easier for a lot of people to eat enough protein to be healthy in the developed and developing worlds.

To invest in larger farms, higher quality feed, staff training and natural breeding would result in a smaller yield of animal products accompanied by a much higher cost for most farmers, which would essentially send a lot of people bankrupt. It’s a situation similar to “why don’t we have green power for everyone yet?”: it requires investment, legislation and restructuring, and on top of that it’s not 100% guaranteed to increase sales of the product, considering the general levels of apathy towards animal treatment in the food industry.

Are we making any progress?

Just recently, the European Union made a bold move to ban the sale of all cosmetics tested on animals. For a huge power like the EU to make a move like this really puts pressure on the industry, and begins to set a global standard. So that was a huge step forward.

Part of the reason why the EU ban went ahead is that science has advanced to a point where animal testing is not really necessary for cosmetics anymore. Animal testing was a heavy-handed approach, testament to a lack of understanding of safe chemicals and processes in a booming industry.

Unfortunately the food industry hasn’t really figured out any alternatives to factory farming yet. The high capacity, machine-powered farms that house chickens, pigs, cows and turkeys may some day be replaced by lab-grown synthetic meats, but until that time, the power held by big animal food product companies prevents legislative action against animal cruelty issues like this one.

The CCTV bill will have a lot of economic pressure against it, and it will struggle against the prevailing attitude that animal cruelty is an infrequent aberration in an otherwise vanilla working environment. The reluctance of factory farmers to open up their premises to the media, and the absence of animal welfare statements in their marketing (see: Ingham’s website), hints at a darker truth: that the systems of factory farming are set up to wilfully ignore animal cruelty, rather than in any way prevent it.

Where does that leave us normal, kind humans who wish to eat humanely slaughtered, not tortured, preferably healthy and delicious meat?

Living in the first world, we rarely have contact with our meat, and most omnivores will admit to squeamishness at the thought of slaughtering their own. Similarly, it’s obvious that not everyone has the time or money to visit local farmers’ markets to buy their more expensive produce.

Resources like the Sustainable Table and the Shop Ethical! consumer guide make ethical eating a little easier, but it’s hard to thoroughly research everything you buy when it’s 6pm and you’re hungry. It’s basically laziness, sure, but not without justification: if we could trust supermarkets to stock quality meats (in the same way that EU citizens can now trust their stores to stock cruelty-free cosmetics), it would be a lot easier for the average person.

Ingham’s media scandal comes only days after their announcement that had sold their poultry business for $850 million to US-based private equity group TPG Capital. It points to a larger issue of food suppliers being owned by big companies with profit priorities: TPG Capital also owns Tiger Airways (a super high quality business…), China Grand Auto and multiple biotechnology companies under its huge portfolio of 263 companies. Big companies aren’t by default any worse than small ones, but they do tend to have more political power and more sway in the commercial sphere: from influencing legislation to out-stocking and undercutting independent competitor products, corporate-owned food products find their way to dinner tables by being the cheapest, the most recognisable and the easiest to find.

Vegetarianism and veganism almost seem like easy options compared to the effort it takes to scope out suppliers for all your meaty needs, but at the same time require a whole new sort of effort to keep your diet up to standard and avoid malnutrition and anaemia. But this is usually balanced out by a lower risk of stroke, heart disease and a lower average BMI.

The best thing you can do is raise your awareness.

Inflammatory and controversial stunts tend to draw attention only to the spectacle of activism, while preaching to the converted. It’s videos like the CCTV footage, on the other hand, that disturb and shock the public, who go on to remember that Ingham’s turkeys live tortured lives. Revulsion is powerful: a video that makes people sick is more likely to have an impact on eating habits than a rally.

But like most shocking things, the effects tend to diminish over time: although this video will inspire many to rethink their turkey sandwiches for at least a short while, there’s a lot more to be done. The only real way forward is through education, which means not only learning which companies are ethical, but also learning how to cook both vegetables and meat in a sustainable, ethical, healthy way.