12:17 a.m. - 2009-03-26
This American life
I just finished watching this show, this American life ep106.
This American life is a documentary filmed all over the us, exploring various topics and Americana.
In this ep, they went to a pig farm in Iowa. Except pigs don't grow in farms anymore. They grow in factories, genetically modified, in concrete pens. They have been so modified that they no longer have sex. The sows are impregnated with a tube while the boar is pushed around on a cart outside their cage to give them a whiff of his scent.
The modern pig never goes out, he lives in a sterile environment so he has no immunity to outside germs. Every worker who comes in has to bathe and wear a sterile suit.
The modern pig lives in a tiny space, that the longest walk it ever takes is the walk to the slaughter area.
It is strange that here I'm eating food and i don't even know the truth of how they're produced. In our minds when we eat the chickens, pigs and
cows, the image that comes up, of them on a sunny farm, is so far from reality.
I have a feeling zoos should start teaching this to the kids, show them, most chickens and pigs don't live in the wild or farms anymore, they live (in the most narrow sense of the word) in factories.
Will I still eat pig or chicken?
I'm sort of cutting down, but for my own reasons. I'm not telling u to do the same k.
Also in the same episode, they featured a new discovery of a chemical which can erase one's memories. Like eternal sunshine of the spotless mind. Sigh.
Whenever I see a show I like, you're the first person I wanna share it with.
If one day, scientists managed to grow meat in a petro dish, is that a good thing?
