Horrifying documentary offers peek at food industry

By Kam Williams

If you’re considering becoming a vegetarian, you might like to check out Our Daily Bread, a documentary that offers an inside peek at the lethal logistics of the high-tech food industry. Welcoming you to a world of callously-efficient production from conception to harvest, and all for the benefit of human consumption, this emotionally detached expose’ makes its case against cruelty to animals, and without reliance on an editorializing narrator or on judgmental commentary of any kind.



Photo still from the movie Our Daily Bread.
Photo: http://www.ourdailybread.at

Simply allowing authentic workplace acoustics to serve as the soundtrack, the film effectively positions the viewer inside the killing fields of assorted futuristic slaughterhouses as an almost involuntary eyewitness to the callous butchery. Our Daily Bread graphically depicts, not merely death, but the mistreatment doled out to these unfortunate factory animals at every stage of their lifecycles.

What could be more shocking than to see a baby calf birthed, not from its mother’s womb, but from a gaping, man-made hole arbitrarily gouged in the cow’s side? Maybe the sight of baby chicks being jettisoned out of pneumatics tubes at breakneck speed onto conveyor belts that then drop the bewildered newborns into crates, which, in turn, cart them off to another equally mechanized, indoor environment for fattening.

Then, there are the scenes of fish, hogs and cattle being shuttled to their fates, to be drawn and quartered assembly line-style, with their carcasses carefully hacked away in a fully-automated process that makes use of virtually every bit of their bodies besides the tail. The few employees featured in the film have deadened eyes that ostensibly reflect their having long since capitulated spiritually to their soul-draining line of work. None exhibits even an ounce of compassion for any of the creatures in their care.

Our Daily Bread also devotes its attention to the present-day, antiseptic approach to agriculture, depicting the goings-on inside airport hangar-size greenhouses where fruits and vegetables are grown entirely under artificial light and sprayed with pesticides by what resembles astronauts in protective jumpsuits and headgear outfitted with gasmasks.

With wide-angle panoramas every bit as beautiful as Koyaansqatsi (1982), Our Daily Bread does that cautionary environmental classic one better, because it evokes a sense of urgency in the audience rather than allowing us to remain aloof. Thus, as un-indicted co-conspirators in an ethical compromise of unthinkable proportions, the picture prods you to prevent agri-business from leading the planet down a path to complete moral and ecological collapse.

For, if we have already rationalized treating plants and animals in this awful fashion, it couldn’t possibly be that big a jump to turn a deaf ear to the implementation of mass genocide.

A most perturbing experience guaranteed to haunt you for meals to come.

© Copyright 2006 FCN Publishing, FinalCall.com
Direct Source: http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/article_3094.shtml

Click link below to:

Our Daily Bread (OurDailyBread.at)

Well....I am a vegetarian. And this is ONE of the reasons. There is NOTHING humane about the meat industry. We slaughter more than we need in this country and there's nothing humane in the slaughter. Because they have to process so many is so little time, many go through the process still alive which totally breaks my heart. (my husband used to work for a major slaughter house...not the killing floor though, so this is how I know).

Another reason.....Safety! I quit trusting the industry, therefore what was on my plate! Because of the speed and high numbers, there's NO WAY things are being done properly. FDA Inspected? Yeah...right! Maybe for a second!
There's such a high volume of beef, pork or chicken going through the lines that there's not enough time to inspect it properly before it hits your plate.
No way! So you take your chances. It's like russian roulette!
It's all being done like this for sheer greed and profit. Not for the consumers and certainly not for the animals.

I couldn't watch that video. That picture alone was upsetting.

I'm trying to figure out what this has to do with feeding our dogs.

Hmmm...that's true! I forgot for a moment which forum I was in. But the meat that is in the pet food basically comes from the same industry. But I haven't forced my animals to be veggie....just me.

That's where the meat comes from that goes into the dogfood.

It's not about the pet food industry though. The pet food industry is even worse.

I would like to see some info. on the pet food industry. I've never research the subject....I probably should have, but I guess because I'm afraid of finding out new horrors in the industry. What I know is already too horrible to imagine.

yes, but innocent cows and lambs and chickens and ducks and fish and whatnot also get slaughtered to go into the quality foods that are so highly respected on this site. I agree that these foods are better for a dog, and the meat sources are better, the nutrition is better... that doesn't mean the end result for the meat-providing animal is any better. I would rather feed my dog a quality food than something full of corn and soybean meal, and "meat and bone meal" that could possibly mean euthanized dogs getting put back in dog food... (I know I read this somewhere on chaz, that low-quality foods put euthanized dogs into their dogfood)... to me that is really awful, but any way you spin it, even the good quality foods with good meat sources mean that innocent animals are dying to feed your dog.

The meat industry is no bucket of rainbows and sunshine, and cruelty could be lessened, but the animals are still going to die for our own and our dogs' consumption.

Most of my dogs' raw diet comes from my grandparents cattle and poultry (goose, chicken and sometimes turkey) They have a privately run farm with small herds and they store all the meat for their own use or sell/give it to friends and family members. So I'm lucky to have a source like this where I know the animals weren't from an unclean, high-volume, assembly-line type of meat plant. However, I do still buy meat from the grocery store when I can't get it from grandma's, I have no qualms about enjoying a big mac or a whopper every now and then, and I will never, ever be a vegetarian. No amount of guilt could overcome my love of meat, and to deny it to my dogs due to my own guilt over the fate of meat animals would just be cruel. Certain vegetarian groups love to claim that you can get every nutrient from non-animal sources that comes from meat, for both people and dogs...but it's really a matter of believing what you want to believe, and I tend not to believe claims that humans are not naturally omnivorous (I learned this in probably the 1st grade) and that dogs are not naturally carnivorous. I know most people here advocate either a raw diet or a high-quality food with MEAT as it's #1 ingredient for their dogs.

Incomplete list of vegetarian foods:

http://www.dogfoodproject.com/index.php?page=vegetarian_vegan

I especially like the ingredients in the Natural Balance and Pet Guard formulas, though I wish Pet Guard would stop adding menadione.

I'm still not ready to try it, though I do have some guilt issues with the slaughter that goes into my dog's food. (I'm lacto-vegetarian)

What's a lacto-vegetarian?

it means still eating dairy products but otherwise having a vegetarian diet.

Herschel, even the front page of that link says that most healthy dogs shouldn't be fed this type of vegetarian diet exclusively, unless they have allergies or medical issues that would make it necessary. Guilt can go a long way toward changing a person's individual preferences and choices, but in the end, do you really think it makes any significant effect on the industry itself? (to switch to a veggie diet)... not to offend but choosing to go veg for most people seems more like a way of staving off guilt over the slaughter of meat animals than changing the meat industry itself. In fact, I've seen a lot of vegitarians/vegans talk about ordering veggie meals in popular restaurants that serve it as an option for those who don't want to eat meat...but the restaurant still serves meat. So those veggie people are still feeding money into a corporation that supports this type of slaughter, aren't they? Come to think of it, if you buy a veggie food for your dog from Natural Balance or another company that has a meat-based line of foods, you're still supplying money to a company that supports the slaughter of animals, even if your chosen bag of food contains no animal stuff, right?

I just dislike this kind of guilt trip/scare tactic, though (meaning the type of video link posted originally).... screams of PETA-like tactics

I beg to differ. Dogs' digestive systems as well as jaws and teeth are designed carnivorously. Behaviorally, they can be omnivorous. They will eat what they can find, being scavengers. However, also being predator/hunters, they need meat and plenty of it to be in optimum health.

yes I agree, by "carnivorous" you basically specified what I should have been saying there instead, that they need meat but they do eat from other sources as well. bad choice of words on my part

Yup, my well trained, well mannered (and opportunistic parasite) Doberman, Lyric.... last night opened the oven door (heat almost gone in there) and snatched most of a whole cheese pizza. Boy, was my son mad. Who would have ever thunk it? I guess he scored....have to find a new place to hide dinner.

lol... mine think that any food the humans have must be extra-tasty for them as well I was eating grapes once and dropped one, Moro took a bite, spit it out and immediately looked at me like "What the crap is this?!" lol your story about the pizza reminds me of when Moro was about 6 months old, we had a barbeque at my house and had a plate stacked high with steaks and chicken that we grilled... while not paying attention, Moro managed to reach the counter and put a good dent in our steak population, hehe... afterward she came in the living room and stretched out with this hugely satisfied look on her face...my husband said she looked like she was thinking "I did it, I don't regret it, and if I could do it again, I'd do it twice"

ROFLOL! You're a good writer, very entertaining. I love how you say "steak population." That's good. And I think you hit exactly the nail on the head....what your dog must have been thinking. Not, "I did wrong. I couldn't help it. I know they wouldn't go for it, but who cares." But instead.....It worked, it was good and now I know how to do that little trick. End of throught. Time for sleep. LOL. What a hilarious story.

Be glad Lyric waits until the cooking surfaces have cooled. Shiva and Kharma are both adept at snagging things off of the grill, and Kharma has perfected a technique to snatch food from the electric skillet . . . while it is cooking Neither one of the delinquents has ever suffered so much as a singed lip whisker

Wow!

Survivalists...these domestic dogs are! No wonder they've come a long way "baby."

Behaviorally, they are omnivorous. It doesn't matter if they have the wrong equipment for it, dogs are omnivores.

OK Herschel. :hail: