Cattle Trailer

@étranger: I think the obvious answer is fear that if people saw how some of their food gets to the table, many of them would either stop eating it, or demand the process be changed --and the impact this would have on profits. I'm not sure how well founded that fear is, but knowledge has certainly changed my eating habits. I hope the people that profit from animal cruelty burn in Hell.

@Ronnie 2¢: They say the two things people don't want to see being made are sausages and laws. I think that these days, the latter process may be even more horrific.

@Observing: I'm afraid it's much worse than that --at least in this country. There is plenty of outright cruelty, from shocking sick and terrified animals, to shoving them with fork-lifts, to outright and very disgusting torture. Not that it's anything new, except for the more horrible treatment before slaughter in factory "farms" --treatment that can only be reasonably described as torture. The general attitude towards animals is very aptly depicted --intentionally or not-- in the classic 1933 movie "King Kong." Every time I watch that movie, or the even more emotionally disturbing version by Peter Jackson, it makes me ashamed to be a human being.

@sherri: Yes, I always find the look in their eyes somewhat troubling --whether it's something more like trust, as it is here, or like fear and panic I see when they have been brutally jammed into a trailer that is 50% too small for the number of cattle being transported.

@JoeB: I don't think there even are any slaughterhouses around where this was taken, but I don't really know. There are cattle auctions in the area --and that may be where they were headed.

@dj.tigersprout: Well, like I said, these particular cattle looked pretty well treated.

@danthro: I don't think we know for sure one way or the other, but personally, I don't care much for the idea of consuming animal products from animals that have been injected with hormones and antibiotics --there's already enough of that in the drinking water. Not to mention the how completely irresponsible it is to build bacterial resistance to antibiotics for no other reason than to increase marginal profits.

@MadScientist: In this case I think it is actually pretty innocent. Probably a small rancher moving cattle he just bought or is taking to sell. Generally speaking, I don't think these small ranchers abuse their animals. I'd guess 99% of the abuse takes place in these factory farm torture centers and slaughterhouses. The normal everyday routine treatment of animals in these factory farms is abuse and torture by any reasonable definition of the words. An animal spending its life in a cramped pen, shot full of antibiotics to prevent infection from standing ankle deep in its own shit (and shot full of hormones), is being tortured. Furthermore, it's downright depraved and self-destructive for a society to allow these big corporations to shoot animals full of antibiotics, routinely, for no other reason than profit maximization --thereby putting the entire world at risk from the evolution of antibiotic resistant bacteria.