Open the Slaughterhouses

NY Times Op-Ed ^ | 4-8-2013 | Jedediah Purdy

[Sir Napsalot]

IN 1999, as a writer for The American Prospect, I went into a slaughterhouse undercover, with the help of some rebellious employees. The floor was slick with the residue of blood and suet, and the air smelled like iron. A part of my brain spent the whole time trying to remember which of Dante’s circles this scene most resembled.

Today, under legislation being pushed by business interests, that bit of journalistic adventure could earn me a criminal conviction and land me on a registry of “animal and ecological terrorists.” So-called ag-gag laws, proposed or enacted in about a dozen states, make, or would make, criminals of animal-rights activists who take covert pictures and videos of conditions on industrial farms and slaughterhouses. Some would even classify the activists as terrorists.

The agriculture industry says the images are unfair. They seem to show cruelty and brutality, but the eye can be deceiving. The most humane way of slaughtering an animal, or dealing with a sick one, may look pretty horrible. But so does open-heart surgery. The problem with making moral arguments by appealing to revulsion is that some beneficial and indispensable acts can also be revolting. With gruesome shots of cadavers, a skilled amateur could make a strong emotional case against using them to teach anatomy in medical school.

....

Opponents might compare this proposal to bills that require women to view images of their fetuses before having an abortion. The resemblance is misleading. Those laws intrude on intimate, difficult decisions involving a constitutional right.

In contrast, open-slaughterhouse laws would not force anyone to look at anything. They would just increase our resources for thinking and arguing.

[Sir Napsalot]

Jedediah Purdy, a law professor at Duke, is the author, most recently, of “The Meaning of Property: Freedom, Community, and the Legal Imagination.”

And of course, in the law professor's view, "images of fetuses before an abortion" is not the same as seeing 'open slaughter' of animals (or babies).

[Sir Napsalot]

Prof Purdy: "I still don’t feel that I know what it means, morally, when an animal’s life ends in exchange for our sustenance"

Simply thank the workers doing what is necessary to spare the rest of humankind in preparation of its sustenance. And leave the idle rich discussing the ethics of eating meat at dinner tables and the rest of us in peace.

[KrisKrinkle]

Since they would be on video constantly available to the general public, would the workers have to wear masks to keep from being harassed or otherwise harmed by the less reasonable members of the general public?

[Sir Napsalot]

It is not about protecting the workers in the slaughterhouse.

So two (logical) outcomes - these will be targeted by misguided yutes or they will quit due to safety reasons.

End result will be the same.

[a fool in paradise]

I was just about to post a question asking why Jedediah wasn’t concerned about shining light on abortion practices in America.

[a fool in paradise]

Those laws intrude on intimate, difficult decisions involving a constitutional right.

So we don't have a constitutional right to eat bacon???

[nomad]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3005778/posts Only if we can open the other slaughterhouses.