Posted on 11/29/2014 2:56:06 PM PST by ObamahatesPACoal
“There are a lot of Food Luddites (to borrow a term coined by Steve Forbes), who are intent on destroying the largest, most efficient food producing machine the world has ever had. “
I was eating at McDonalds with an artsy woman from an art-type community in Arizona. She said in horror that margarine was an “industrial product.” I starting counting off the things we ate that are also industrial products. She was aghast. According to my MBA research not a single chain restaurant makes its own food. Almost every meal is factory made, flash frozen and shipped. Think about the fancy stuffed shrimp you get at Red Lobster. Do you really think they made them onsite in twenty minutes? Just about every restaurant uses the McDonald’s factory model or they aren’t in business for long. An employee of one of the big meat processors told me that the firm “harvested” 12 million chickens a day, from farms that are individually owned. Those chickens are genetically engineered, fed a scientific diet and filled with hormones to bring them to market weight in the most expeditious, cost effective manner possible. That is why chicken is still dirt cheap. Can you imagine what chicken would cost if it was all “free range?”
If we went entirely to boutique foods our entire budget would be consumed by food and we’d still starve. God bless the mass farmers and factory workers who feed 330 million Americans and probably half of the world every day.
Mike Rowe speaking about his realization that PETA was wrong.
http://fora.tv/2008/12/12/Mike_Rowe_on_Discovery_Realization_and_Lamb_Castration
I hear you. A few years ago the voters of Florida passed some stupid CONSTITUTIONAL amendment....mandating how much space a PREGNANT PIG on a farm had to have....
That ignorant amendment was one motivating factor behind another one—the one that changed the threshold for Constitutional amendments from 50% +1 to 60%.
Not just Iowa; Gays, LGBTQXYS's, latinos, baby killers...the list goes on.
The “pregnant pig crates” which were banned by CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT in Florida (admittedly not a major swine production locality), have been the object of various legislative initiatives by the supposed “protectors” of some amorphous “animal rights” agenda.
I have worked in and around swine at various times in my life, and believe me, the crates DO have a purpose. Newborn piglets are about 1-2 pounds in size, and beside a 300-pound mother, they do not stand much of a chance if she shifts just a little too far over. The crates simply give the piglets a fighting chance to get past the first week of life.
Rude reality: Every pig born is meant to die a violent death, I have never seen one die of old age. Disease, intramural pig fights, and predators are just a few of the hazards awaiting a pig, and should all these dangers be somehow bypassed, the butcher shop and the disassembly into pork chops, hams, roasts, pickled pigs’ feet and pigskin is the fate that becomes of them.
The preservation of sufficient number of newborn pigs spells the economic viability of swine farming, which is a most excellent way to sell home-grown grains (in Iowa, that means corn).
And besides, the consumption of pork just makes the Muslims all the more outraged with the “decadence” of the Westerners. I try to eat a little pork every day, bacon, or sausage or whatever.
Agree wholeheartedly. I also have been around the pig farming business a little and know how it works. What these others don’t understand is that the crate is a very temporary thing to allow the piglets to survive the first few weeks of their life. I grew up on a farm and we had our own way of protecting the piglets by building hiding space around mama’s bed so they could scoot under and keep mama from mashing them to death. All animal production business, even milking operations has some aspects that the average person cannot grasp. All they do is go to the grocery store and to them it magically appears. Farming is hard work. Too bad we have lost a lot of our small farms and now big business is taking its place.
Christie, please... don’t run... you are needed in NJ. Ted Cruz, Mike Pense, Mitch Daniels, Mike Lee,Brian Sandoval (thou I would love to see him run against Funeral Director Harry Reid), Susan Martinez, Tim Scott or Paul LePage.
yes,but those are different things. We are voluntarily doing it in Iowa
Did Joni weigh in on porcine comforts?
Ponit taken.
Thanks for posting an actual picture and showing that “crates” are a poor word to use in describing the situation. “Piglet protection barrier” would be far more accurate.
Grew up raising hogs.
If you don’t put the sows in crates, they tend to eat their young. If you allow them to roam freely, the other sows will eat them.
They seem less stressed in crates during farrowing also. Even our “war devil” sows, calmed right down when we put them on the trailer and moved them to the farrowing house. Getting those monsters out was another issue. The sows would bite, charge, and throw you around. I had one get her nose under my panel and toss me on top of the crate. Another took a chunk out of leg while trampling me.
That is why I became an engineer.
Very similar to the ones we had. Brings back a lot of memories. I had an old shepherds crook that I used to catch the babies in order to give them shots. The sows would get rather angry the first time they heard one squeal
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