It's All Relative

Here in the USA we are continually bombarded by animal rights messages. This is cruel, that is cruel, the whole keeping of animals business is cruel....even though most management methods have evolved over generations of time, since farming and livestock keeping began. Remember veal? AR groups convinced folks that it is cruel to eat veal, so no one does. And bit by bit the vegan beat goes on....

One of the big buzz makers is confinement housing for sows. It is done to manage the potential for disease and to keep big pigs from crushing little pigs, but AR groups have used our anthropomorphic feelings about how we would prefer to live to change the face of hog farming.

Several states (usually states with very few pigs and not too many farmers) banned the practice, thanks entirely to animal rights groups' media campaigns.

Meanwhile, in other countries, where such anthropomorphism is a luxury too expensive in the face of real hunger, things like this are going on. People hungry enough to willingly and knowingly eat pork from pigs that died of a contagious disease probably aren't worrying too hard about the housing system where they were raised. They just need food.

It is all relative.