Maybe industrial farming would die off. (Big maybe.) But, given the enduring fascination with violence we see reflected in pop culture, it's just as likely that people would start slaughtering animals in the back yards. Making a party out of killing a hog is a common social occasion in many rural areas.

Nice post, EK. But remember this is a family farm -- if you want to see the reality for the vast majority of turkeys, see this:
http://tinyurl.com/69m6vy

While there is nothing wrong with slaughtering turkeys, there seems to be some embarrassment about it on the part of some. The simple fact that there is criticism for showing this in the background is all the evidence one needs to demonstrate that.

Palin is unabashed and is not swayed by how Politically Correct or not her actions may be.

Good for her.

For all of the rest of you, you can show your support of this post by not eating turkey this Thanksgiving.

Stand your ground (or shut the hell up).

I think her biggest problem with this fiasco is her instant denial that she knew it was going on behind her. At first it was just a funny, laugh at her incompetence story. Now it's another case of her lying when she doesn't have to.

And that is still a stupid point. If she stood in front of people fucking it would be wrong too, but in front of a maternity ward it would be fine.

Palin is unabashed and is not swayed by how Politically Correct or not her actions may be.

No, she isn't. She does this sort of thing and then when asked about it, she denies it. She's simply not very smart, makes silly mistakes, and tries to lie her way out of it.

It's somewhat hard to tell, but isn't his method well within the boundaries of humane handing of poultry? The killing cone is a prominent player in The Omnivore's Dilemma, if you remember the Staunton farmer.

Rob is right - it is not the fact that turkeys get slaughtered, it's that Sarah Palin chose this as the background where she'd be interviewed.

It isn't about America's subconscious.

It's about Sarah Palin's twisted mind.

We have sufficient abundance that a fair number of folks would happily substitute other food sources than be confronted with the reality of a chicken breast.
This neatly explains why so many professional butchers and farmers throughout history have been vegetarians.

Oh, wait. Apparently people can get used to things that they reacted to strongly the first time they saw them. Damn the adaptability of our species!

I think if everyone had to see the slaughter of their meat animals... they'd react about the same as people that *do* regularly see the slaughter of meat animals have reacted throughout history and continue to react today. And I also think that your suggestion to the contrary reflects the limited perspective of a fastidious city-dweller who didn't even perform the thought experiment of asking how people handled this in other times and places.

Have you ever heard the expression "running around like a chicken with its head cut off"? How do you think it originated? By observation of decapitated chickens, that's how.

Wait, what? No, Ezra, no. You not only are promulgating a terrible policy -- which reminds me of nothing so much as the fevered fantasies of an antiabortion ideologue -- but also have the causal arrow pointed the wrong way.

In small-scale farming areas, people slaughter livestock, or see it. There are not in my experience very many vegetarians as a result on working farms. Confronting humans with slaughter does not shock the conscience, it accustoms them to the process as normal -- as indeed it is.

We human beings kill animals and eat them. The amount of meat protein in the US diet is exceptional historically, but not its existence.

Now, if you want better regulations and rationalized subsidies so that the meat-factory business becomes uneconomic, rough it out and I'll probably be for it. But scare videos that probably won't work?

Please. I expect better.

Several women have pointed out to me that Palin (or somebody working for her) is trying to duplicate the fancy high dollar Hollywood makeup job that the RNC professionals did for her during the national campaign, with low dollar unprofessional results.
So there she is, wearing a shitty makeup job blabbing away mindlessly while a grinning yokel mugs the camera and decaps turkeys a few yards away. It's priceless. God I hope she runs in 2012.

Palin is "in charge of the turkey." You betcha! LOL

If you were Gov. Palin's Chief of Staff, would you arrange a press conference with the slaughter of a turkey going on as the background?
There is only one possible answer to that question, and it isn't yes.
This episode once again shows the inability of Palin to get even the simplest things right. There is NO morality play vis-a-vis the hypocrisy of urban meat eaters or any such nonsense.
Right wing spin, vegetarian spin…..spin is spin folks.

I think if everyone had to see the slaughter of their meat animals... they'd react about the same as people that *do* regularly see the slaughter of meat animals have reacted throughout history and continue to react today. And I also think that your suggestion to the contrary reflects the limited perspective of a fastidious city-dweller who didn't even perform the thought experiment of asking how people handled this in other times and places.

Exactly. Comments like yours, Ezra, are why people like Palin and El V. continue to yabber on about 'the Real America.' Lots of us grow up knowing exactly where our meat is coming from; we have farmers in our neighborhood, our parents work at meat processing factories, etc. Palin's rhetoric is still bullshit, but you might want to take a few minutes to realize that not everyone shares your common background (though, certainly, many do).

PETA's 'Rub It In Their Nose' argument only goes so far. I mean, what if the requirement of a heart by-pass operation were to watch a video of someone else getting the procedure?

Or even better, how about a couple of videos of someone getting born?

There's a lot of ugly out there. The focus in this case is pretty silly.

Yeah, I gotta weigh in with Chris and wcw. And that's speaking as a vegetarian.

People are squeamish about slaughtering animals, but I think all the evidence (and human psychology) says more exposure to it would just make people less squeamish, not significantly affect consumption. I think this effect probably applies to most of the inhumane conditions in factory farms as well.

No, really meat just needs to be NOT SUBSIDIZED.

Bonus points for actively discouraging specific farming practices with nasty environmental and health effects (manure dumping, antibiotics abuse), and/or discouraging excessive consumption of animal flesh with taxes (to the extent that this is desirable in terms of public health policy). But mostly, we need to just stop subsidizing it.

What wcw said: this is almost exactly analogous to requiring women to watch a film of an abortion before having one.

sarah palin is a carnivorous kind of a person, so it is very apt that she speaks cheerily about thanksgiving, while turkeys are slaughtered behind her. there is even an element of cruelty in her. and sadly, there are people who find that appealing.
just as she has the beautiful head of a dall sheep, one of the loveliest creatures on earth, decapitated and hung in her living room.
there is little gentlenesss in her...and that is why she could bless a turkey in front of others being killed.
this is not about a pioneering spirit of living in alaska....this is about the same sensibility that turns babies outward to flashing lights late in the evening, to be used as a campaign prop.....instead of holding them respectfully and tenderly.
she is neither respectful or gentlespirited. she clangs like a brass cymbal.

Imagine an America in which consumption of meat required viewing a quick video of the animal's slaughter. That's a world in which PETA is funded like the AARP.

I'd much rather people see a video of the places were most food animals are raised.

This video probably isn't much different than how they would do it on Polyfarm.

This interview was broadcast on local TV in Anchorage. Alaskans are more likely to know where their food comes from, frankly, and while I'm not sure I'd say that nearly everyone hunts, it's certainly the case that it's very, very common for people in Anchorage to hunt and consequently killing an animal and gutting it just isn't shocking. I haven't spent time in Anchorage but in Fairbanks you see quartered game in the back of pickup trucks around town, in parking lots, etc. The audience for the evening news in Anchorage is simply not the same as the ones in other big American cities.

Interesting piece tangentially on this topic in the Times this morning, here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/26/opinion/26beahrs.html

As an aside, if I had to name an organization that was likely to put industrial-scale CAFOs out of business, PETA would be somewhere near the bottom of the list. They're an unproductive mess, more interested in drawing attention than in doing the work to make real change happen.

What an incredibly stupid post.

i have friends in fairbanks who hunt, and they pray over animals when they kill them.
there are people who work in meat processing plants, hunt animals....do all sorts of things....but it is about the sentience of a person, rather than the job they are doing.
in some people, you see cold-bloodedness, spiritual callousness, even a perverse delight toward the suffering and defamation of people and animals....people for whom
hunting in its various forms, is first a sport,...people who are insensate and mindless to the suffering of animals....that is what differentiates humane and caring people from those who are not.
intent.
humility.
being part of the world, being a steward of the world, instead of believing that you control it.
the reason why not to stand in front of animals that are being slaughtered, is out of respect for them.....sarah palin didnt stand in front of them so that we would remember the cruelty inflicted on them....or because hunting is a commonplace activity....
people can be earthy, people can hunt regularly....it is the spirit of the person doing this that makes all of the difference.
it is very sad that there are so many deeply spiritually unenlightened people, who because of their charisma, are uplifted to positions of leadership.

at the very least,
may every person who is eating a turkey tomorrow, realize in a conscious and grateful way, that it was a living creature whose life was taken to replenish another life.....in that way, there is at least an appreciation of something that lived on earth for a short while, who may not have lived in freedom or dignity....(and all animals deserve this) and brought pleasure in its life and death, to other people.

From what I understand, scientists are very close to being able to grow meat without involving an animal in the process. Note that this is not "fake" meat; it is actual meat that tastes exactly the same as the meat you eat everyday. It's just that the meat is unconnected to an animal.

This would not only eliminate a great amount of unnecessary cruelty from the process, but it would also make the production of meat much more efficient, and the meat itself would be healthier since the nutritional content could be tweaked to keep it low in fat, etc.

And presumably it would help with CO(2) emissions since their would be many fewer farting cows. Oh, and maybe it would help with transportation costs, because presumably meat in a lab could be grown just about anywhere.

oh goddess can someone please shut jacqueline up!

Glad to see you jum pn this bandwagon a week late, Ezra!

Two separate issues, one about food production and one about politics. As to food production, a turkey has to be killed before it is eaten. Because most people in this country are so far removed from the first step, they are much more squeamish about the process than their ancestors or people in other parts of the world. Frankly, I wish people in this country had more experience seeing for themselves commercial farming and food production, as well as commercial livestock and meat production.
As to politics, the evidence is that Palin knew the slaughtering was going on in the background (she was asked by the camera crew) and she just didn't care. To her, the killing of animals for food is a routine process. The amazing thing is not that she was demonstrating callousness, but that she was demonstrating such incredible tone-deafness. I had thought that her schtick about small town America being the "real America" was just Rovian culture war blather. Apparently not. Her world view (not including Russia, of course) really is that myopic. It never even dawned on her that millions of Americans don't want to see the casual slaughter of turkeys. Squeamish viewers may be hypocritical, but you go to the ballot with the voters you have, not the voters you want to have.
I predict this video is going to resurface every Thanksgiving for years to come.

But what I REALLY want to see is Sarah shooting a moose from a helicopter. She is the face of the modern Republican Party... amen!

Humane slaughter is that: humane. For a peek into the other world (commercial slaughter houses) read 'Stuffed Starved' by Raj Patel. Inhumane to both animals and people. Sinclair Lewis would be proud for the reporting but saddened. Not much has changed.

Sorry, forgot. I am anonymous.

I agree that letting people see what happens to the non-pardoned turkeys is admirably honest.

However, I was concerned that the turkey in the cone had to listen to Palin while waiting for the knife. I meann upside down and all. I was relieved to learn that it was already deceased at the time.

On the PETA front, I personally have no problem with the idea of free ranging animals being slaughtered. Every living thing dies in the end and I'd rather go via a killing cone than what I'm likely to get.

VEgetarianism certainly is a reasonable choice, but animal husbandry can be humane. Well yes when I say husband[] I am forced to recognise that I eat steer not bull. Then I reflexively cross my legs.

I hope that a way will be found to bread animals which reproduce with 100:1 female to male sex ratios, so castration (and suffocating male chicks etc etc) will be obsolete.

by the way have you read chapter 8 of "What a Carve Up" by Jonathan Coe ?
http://tinyurl.com/5fe799

An excellent book, but chapter 8 is not for the faint of stomach.

Just finished "Together We Stand", a history of the Allied campaigns in North Africa during the Second World War. The bit I remember is a description of the training that US Rangers went through - as a result of British advice, they switched to much more realistic training, using live ammo as much as possible: they also ate some of their meals in a slaughterhouse, to get used to the sight and smell of blood.