It’s totally legal to force-feed a duck for foie gras.
And baby cows can be tied up in cages so we can eat veal.
Whether these practices are ethical has been debated in recent years with animal rights groups shooting undercover videos to highlight what they see as abuses.
But some of the shocking images that come out of these investigations don’t reveal anything illegal, according to this video from Vox, which says that our horror at the treatment of livestock comes from our disconnection from the production of meat.
That comes from the fact that fewer Americans work in agriculture than ever before, and big farms keep getting bigger.
“That means there’s a lot that we don’t understand about what goes into making our meat affordable,” the narrator says.
The issue of whether the gruesome preparation of meat is illegal was highlighted locally in 2013, when animal rights organization People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals targeted lobster company owner Linda Bean, saying it uncovered abuses of shellfish at her Rockland lobster processing facility.
The undercover video showed lobsters being torn apart alive, and a PETA rep said workers would “slam the live [crabs] face-first onto metal spikes to break off their top shells, and then force the animals’ exposed organs and flesh against rapidly spinning stiff bristled brushes.”
Here’s the thing: the Department of Marine Resources at the time said the video showed nothing illegal, and the Rockland district attorney declined to charge anyone.
The Vox video highlights the question of whether these kinds of revelations will actually change peoples’ minds.
“It’s easy to stand against clearly gratuitous abuses, but the battle over undercover videos is really a preliminary fight in a much larger question,” the narrator says. “Should the American public know how their food is made? And once they do, will they accept it?”