Wednesday letters: With the meat industry, every day is April Fool’s Day

On this April Fools’ Day, it appears that the meat, egg and dairy industries have been playing us for fools year-round. Their more remarkable hoaxes include “California’s happy cows,” “free-range chickens” and “humane slaughter.” All lies.

Less fun is the stuff they never talk about. Like the hundreds of millions of chickens crammed seven into a cage designed for one, unable to move or spread their wings. Or their hundreds of millions of males ground up live at birth and fed to other chickens, or just dumped into plastic garbage bags to suffocate slowly. Or the miserable breeding sows producing millions of piglets while trapped in tiny steel cages.

All in the spirit of year-round April Fools’ Day, the meat industry has even developed a whole dictionary of fun terms to fool unwary consumers. Those filthy cesspools of animal waste that poison downwind neighbors with putrid odors? They call them “lagoons.” And to make sure that kids don’t confuse the pig flesh on their plate with “Babe” or “Wilbur,” they call it “pork.”

Ah, those meat industry folks are such kidders.

Columbia

This story was originally published March 31, 2015 at 8:00 PM with the headline "Wednesday letters: With the meat industry, every day is April Fool’s Day."