Wegmans Cruelty Dot Com
I must preface even providing the link below with two facts. First, I am someone who identifies myself as a conservative, and am never talked into anything. If I hear something that intrigues me, or even something that is nearly unbelievable to me, I will do my best to investigate it. I then make decisions based on what I learn.
Second, I am nearly sick to my stomach as I sit here writing this, having finished watching only the first half of the video about to be discussed. Until watching this video, I was convinced that the topics discussed could not possibly BE as represented by the environmental activists that produced it.
I now understand, having seen with my own eyes, that they are not in fact lying or exaggerating.
We have heard the voices of activists for decades. Sometimes they are called "hippies" with a tired disgust. I have used the term myself. I fear now I must reconsider.
I first heard of the story on AM radio in Rochester when a woman involved with the group "Compassionate Consumers" was fired from her job as a Tax Accountant for a company in the city. One of this company's world-wide clients is Wegmans, a grocery store chain spreading Eastward and Southward from Rochester. Wegmans has for over half a decade now impressed me with the quality of their product and presentation, and the visible dedication they have shown towards impressive customer service. The woman who was fired came onto the radio program to which I was listening and talked briefly with Bob Lonsberry, the host, about being fired because, she says, she is a part of a Consumer Activism group.
My first reaction, quite frankly, was 'no shit... If you're working for me, and you're part of an Activism group against one of my clients, you're suspended if not immediately fired. If you have a complaint against a client, however, and you come to me to discuss it and show me proof of your complaints, okay - but activism groups have for decades proven to see themselves as above the law while investigating their concerns, and I believe that as a society our job is to abolish such behavior and instead make the lawful means of intervention more accessible and understandable.
It's that viewpoint that set my feelings about "Wegmans Cruelty" negatively at first. It's what had me saying to myself "just a bunch of dirty hippies with too much time on their hands, investigating a [thick with sarcasm] terrrrribbble farm living situation for some animals who live too close to poo." But like I said - I try to be objective, and to investigate as much as I'm permitted by law and reason. I would never break into a farm as these people did, but I'm not an activist... I suppose, now in some way, I see how these people have served some purpose. Read on, please.
A group of animal rights activists called Compassionate Consumers broke into the Wegmans Egg Farm, a chicken-egg production facility near Rochester, NY that currently houses over 700,000 chickens in a literally giant facility. My first complaint against them, before seeing their video, was "why don't you ask for a tour, and see the facilities firsthand legally?" In their video, they show letters to and play phone conversations with people in various positions at Wegmans trying to GET such a tour. Wegmans objects, saying they fear Avian Flu.
These are regular white college students, not asians off the boat from Vietnam.
My second issue came from my own imagination's initial imagery while hearing the story on the radio. The girl described what are called "battery cages" which keep the chickens in confined spaces so they cannot eat or destroy eachother and their eggs. I pictured these in my head - little wire mesh garages shaped for each chicken to keep them facing one way, pooping and egging out the back end safely into some kind of mechanical conveyor.
I would be perfectly happy consuming from and supporting such an operation. One chicken per cage, poop conveyors and egg movers, air circulation and good water and food supplies...
Then I watched the video.
Firstly, the video is produced well, by semiprofessional editors. However, the footage is undoubtedly authentic. There is no question that the video purported to be of the Wegmans Egg Farm IS of the Wegmans Egg Farm - especially since later, the people making the video were arrested for trespassing. If they're guilty of trespassing and the video was evidence of the trespass, then it's of the Egg Farm.
Secondly, I went into the video expecting a laugh - or at least a laugh at the hippies freaking out over battery cages.
In less than ten minutes, I was opening my Blog's post link to start writing this article in anger and disgust.
The video begins by walking past rows and rows of chicken battery cages. They are barely lit by rows of dim incandescent light bulbs in the low ceiling. Overwhelming numbers of chicken heads and beaks and wings are visible... and the first thing I noticed is that they were not one-chicken-per-cage and few were facing outwards. They then begin to show detail of the cages... reporting specifically that large numbers of the cages contained up to nine hens in the space of a single file-cabinet drawer. They showed examples of these. Hens are not kept in line by the cages - indeed, the stronger are often found standing on the weaker hens.
Food is distributed by a trough at one end of the cage. The trough has a large mechanical screw down the length of it, thus food may be delivered the entire length of the trough without human intervention. The troughs shown, not even pointed out by the narrators of the video, were to me foul and disgusting. I've lived near farms for half my life, and I know food troughs are rarely "clean" by our standards. These troughs were disgusting, and obviously foul.
The video then goes on to show the darker side of the farm's population. Hen after hen after hen is shown sick, sickly, nearly dying, or obviously dead. Video clips rapidly back to back count and show over 25 birds SO dead for SO long that to remove them from the battery cages the activists literally had to peel their fly-ridden bodies from the cages - each and every hens skin had actually decomposed to fuse with the wire cage bottoms and sides. The action of removing these bodies, peeling them from the cages, and what the bodies looked like after being so carefully removed were all shown on the video. Not once during the video did I feel misled or even that they were trying to hide any details about the farm (like showing only the bad and filtering out the good). There simply was no good to show.
These video sequences in particular were played out to a taped telephone conversation between one of the activists and a representative at Wegmans. The woman on the phone is audibly condescending at times, speaking to the person on the phone as if he were calling from a competing egg farm, not a group called "compassionate consumers." Were I Wegmans, for instance, and truly had nothing to hide, I would offer a video tour of my facilities. Somehow I doubt the technology they could purport to use in their farming processes is so advanced that others haven't gotten wind of it yet. But more specifically, this woman told the activist on the phone (who mostly listened, his voice was only heard asking questions and going "mmhmm") that hens were never allowed to remain in the cages when sick or dead, that hens are rushed to vet visits whenever those things happen, and that the conditions outlined by the certification groups whose logos decorate all of Wegmans' egg cartons are humane and perfectly sufficient for the care of their chickens.
Bull-shit.
Hens with their heads wrapped around cage bars and feeding equipment, so weakened and sickened by their inability to eat and drink that they are near death... Not just talked about, but SHOWN, as the activists themselves with their gloved hands carefully free each bird from its tangle. Some are able to be fed by syringe or dropper (shown on the video), where others are too sick and soon die.
One of the requirements of Egg regulatory groups, and something specifically referenced by Wegmans in the video, is that chickens and feces are seperate at all times. But in the video, again without ANY hint of editing of any kind, chicken after chicken is shown with poo either already on them (often on their head) or freshly landing on them from above.
There's no poo conveyor. They poo on eachother, and eventually it all filters down through the wire cages to a gigantic, horrific pit beneath them.
IN that pit, SOMEHOW, there are actually CHICKENS. Not fifty or a regulated amount... but four or five chickens somehow got down there, and were shown on video still alive and barely breathing... buried at least partially... in the giant piles of putrid chicken shit. One was head-first into a puddle of liquid shit.
It died on their way to the animal hospital.
I am disgusted by the falsehoods represented as the Truth and boasted by Wegmans with the certification stickers and emblems that so impressively adorn their various egg packages. I am aware that most people share my initial views, however... and that many of those have little or no desire to investigate or SEE the truth themselves. I'm aware that few will read this and care, and even fewer will actually retrieve the video and watch it.
So be it.
However, my opinion and conscience stand clarified with this message, simple and clear... though Activists these people may be, and though many messages portrayed by activists are boy-cried-wolf situations of imagined "abuse" - it is not the case here, and investigation further is absolutely essential.
I say again, CLEARLY - I support caged chicken farms. I believe that one-chicken-per-cage, however, is the only way to keep them safe and uniform. I support "battery cages" the way I imagined them initially - uniform, poo conveyors/troughs, good lighting and air... not the horrific, sickening conditions shown in this video.
If a chicken dies... as is bound to happen in farms of seven hundred THOUSAND hens... how is it left to sicken and foul those around it? If a chicken becomes snagged in a cage or mechanism somehow, why is that chicken not located within a day, before it has a chance to truly weaken or become sick?
Is it "not possible" to ensure those kinds of simple safeguards, steps that in my opinion are ESSENTIAL to providing what I would consider "humane" treatment to ANY animal? Then, I feel that Wegmans should stop worrying about charging $0.39 for a dozen eggs. I challenge ANYONE who actually downloads that video to truly feel insulted at the thought of having to spend $0.50 a dozen for Wegmans to prove they've corrected these wrongs.
I strongly encourage you to download the video from the site linked below. If you are somehow unable to obtain the video, email or IM me and I will post it for your viewing or help you download it. See for yourself - to Hell with my opinions! Reading about this, and even hearing about it on the radio did almost nothing to form a true understanding of the actual situation for these birds.
Indeed, these hens are bred only to feed Americans. But no animal, no matter how essential to our diet and easy to keep en-masse like this, deserves to live in such filth and misery. I wholeheartedly believe Wegmans could produce fantastic eggs for very low prices while keeping these chickens safer and cleaner at the very least. If you can't afford to have each chicken seen by human eyes once a day, then you are charging TOO LITTLE for your product.
Enough. See for yourself.
Text and speech do this topic NO justice of effect and understanding.
http://www.wegmanscruelty.com/
Second, I am nearly sick to my stomach as I sit here writing this, having finished watching only the first half of the video about to be discussed. Until watching this video, I was convinced that the topics discussed could not possibly BE as represented by the environmental activists that produced it.
I now understand, having seen with my own eyes, that they are not in fact lying or exaggerating.
We have heard the voices of activists for decades. Sometimes they are called "hippies" with a tired disgust. I have used the term myself. I fear now I must reconsider.
I first heard of the story on AM radio in Rochester when a woman involved with the group "Compassionate Consumers" was fired from her job as a Tax Accountant for a company in the city. One of this company's world-wide clients is Wegmans, a grocery store chain spreading Eastward and Southward from Rochester. Wegmans has for over half a decade now impressed me with the quality of their product and presentation, and the visible dedication they have shown towards impressive customer service. The woman who was fired came onto the radio program to which I was listening and talked briefly with Bob Lonsberry, the host, about being fired because, she says, she is a part of a Consumer Activism group.
My first reaction, quite frankly, was 'no shit... If you're working for me, and you're part of an Activism group against one of my clients, you're suspended if not immediately fired. If you have a complaint against a client, however, and you come to me to discuss it and show me proof of your complaints, okay - but activism groups have for decades proven to see themselves as above the law while investigating their concerns, and I believe that as a society our job is to abolish such behavior and instead make the lawful means of intervention more accessible and understandable.
It's that viewpoint that set my feelings about "Wegmans Cruelty" negatively at first. It's what had me saying to myself "just a bunch of dirty hippies with too much time on their hands, investigating a [thick with sarcasm] terrrrribbble farm living situation for some animals who live too close to poo." But like I said - I try to be objective, and to investigate as much as I'm permitted by law and reason. I would never break into a farm as these people did, but I'm not an activist... I suppose, now in some way, I see how these people have served some purpose. Read on, please.
A group of animal rights activists called Compassionate Consumers broke into the Wegmans Egg Farm, a chicken-egg production facility near Rochester, NY that currently houses over 700,000 chickens in a literally giant facility. My first complaint against them, before seeing their video, was "why don't you ask for a tour, and see the facilities firsthand legally?" In their video, they show letters to and play phone conversations with people in various positions at Wegmans trying to GET such a tour. Wegmans objects, saying they fear Avian Flu.
These are regular white college students, not asians off the boat from Vietnam.
My second issue came from my own imagination's initial imagery while hearing the story on the radio. The girl described what are called "battery cages" which keep the chickens in confined spaces so they cannot eat or destroy eachother and their eggs. I pictured these in my head - little wire mesh garages shaped for each chicken to keep them facing one way, pooping and egging out the back end safely into some kind of mechanical conveyor.
I would be perfectly happy consuming from and supporting such an operation. One chicken per cage, poop conveyors and egg movers, air circulation and good water and food supplies...
Then I watched the video.
Firstly, the video is produced well, by semiprofessional editors. However, the footage is undoubtedly authentic. There is no question that the video purported to be of the Wegmans Egg Farm IS of the Wegmans Egg Farm - especially since later, the people making the video were arrested for trespassing. If they're guilty of trespassing and the video was evidence of the trespass, then it's of the Egg Farm.
Secondly, I went into the video expecting a laugh - or at least a laugh at the hippies freaking out over battery cages.
In less than ten minutes, I was opening my Blog's post link to start writing this article in anger and disgust.
The video begins by walking past rows and rows of chicken battery cages. They are barely lit by rows of dim incandescent light bulbs in the low ceiling. Overwhelming numbers of chicken heads and beaks and wings are visible... and the first thing I noticed is that they were not one-chicken-per-cage and few were facing outwards. They then begin to show detail of the cages... reporting specifically that large numbers of the cages contained up to nine hens in the space of a single file-cabinet drawer. They showed examples of these. Hens are not kept in line by the cages - indeed, the stronger are often found standing on the weaker hens.
Food is distributed by a trough at one end of the cage. The trough has a large mechanical screw down the length of it, thus food may be delivered the entire length of the trough without human intervention. The troughs shown, not even pointed out by the narrators of the video, were to me foul and disgusting. I've lived near farms for half my life, and I know food troughs are rarely "clean" by our standards. These troughs were disgusting, and obviously foul.
The video then goes on to show the darker side of the farm's population. Hen after hen after hen is shown sick, sickly, nearly dying, or obviously dead. Video clips rapidly back to back count and show over 25 birds SO dead for SO long that to remove them from the battery cages the activists literally had to peel their fly-ridden bodies from the cages - each and every hens skin had actually decomposed to fuse with the wire cage bottoms and sides. The action of removing these bodies, peeling them from the cages, and what the bodies looked like after being so carefully removed were all shown on the video. Not once during the video did I feel misled or even that they were trying to hide any details about the farm (like showing only the bad and filtering out the good). There simply was no good to show.
These video sequences in particular were played out to a taped telephone conversation between one of the activists and a representative at Wegmans. The woman on the phone is audibly condescending at times, speaking to the person on the phone as if he were calling from a competing egg farm, not a group called "compassionate consumers." Were I Wegmans, for instance, and truly had nothing to hide, I would offer a video tour of my facilities. Somehow I doubt the technology they could purport to use in their farming processes is so advanced that others haven't gotten wind of it yet. But more specifically, this woman told the activist on the phone (who mostly listened, his voice was only heard asking questions and going "mmhmm") that hens were never allowed to remain in the cages when sick or dead, that hens are rushed to vet visits whenever those things happen, and that the conditions outlined by the certification groups whose logos decorate all of Wegmans' egg cartons are humane and perfectly sufficient for the care of their chickens.
Bull-shit.
Hens with their heads wrapped around cage bars and feeding equipment, so weakened and sickened by their inability to eat and drink that they are near death... Not just talked about, but SHOWN, as the activists themselves with their gloved hands carefully free each bird from its tangle. Some are able to be fed by syringe or dropper (shown on the video), where others are too sick and soon die.
One of the requirements of Egg regulatory groups, and something specifically referenced by Wegmans in the video, is that chickens and feces are seperate at all times. But in the video, again without ANY hint of editing of any kind, chicken after chicken is shown with poo either already on them (often on their head) or freshly landing on them from above.
There's no poo conveyor. They poo on eachother, and eventually it all filters down through the wire cages to a gigantic, horrific pit beneath them.
IN that pit, SOMEHOW, there are actually CHICKENS. Not fifty or a regulated amount... but four or five chickens somehow got down there, and were shown on video still alive and barely breathing... buried at least partially... in the giant piles of putrid chicken shit. One was head-first into a puddle of liquid shit.
It died on their way to the animal hospital.
I am disgusted by the falsehoods represented as the Truth and boasted by Wegmans with the certification stickers and emblems that so impressively adorn their various egg packages. I am aware that most people share my initial views, however... and that many of those have little or no desire to investigate or SEE the truth themselves. I'm aware that few will read this and care, and even fewer will actually retrieve the video and watch it.
So be it.
However, my opinion and conscience stand clarified with this message, simple and clear... though Activists these people may be, and though many messages portrayed by activists are boy-cried-wolf situations of imagined "abuse" - it is not the case here, and investigation further is absolutely essential.
I say again, CLEARLY - I support caged chicken farms. I believe that one-chicken-per-cage, however, is the only way to keep them safe and uniform. I support "battery cages" the way I imagined them initially - uniform, poo conveyors/troughs, good lighting and air... not the horrific, sickening conditions shown in this video.
If a chicken dies... as is bound to happen in farms of seven hundred THOUSAND hens... how is it left to sicken and foul those around it? If a chicken becomes snagged in a cage or mechanism somehow, why is that chicken not located within a day, before it has a chance to truly weaken or become sick?
Is it "not possible" to ensure those kinds of simple safeguards, steps that in my opinion are ESSENTIAL to providing what I would consider "humane" treatment to ANY animal? Then, I feel that Wegmans should stop worrying about charging $0.39 for a dozen eggs. I challenge ANYONE who actually downloads that video to truly feel insulted at the thought of having to spend $0.50 a dozen for Wegmans to prove they've corrected these wrongs.
I strongly encourage you to download the video from the site linked below. If you are somehow unable to obtain the video, email or IM me and I will post it for your viewing or help you download it. See for yourself - to Hell with my opinions! Reading about this, and even hearing about it on the radio did almost nothing to form a true understanding of the actual situation for these birds.
Indeed, these hens are bred only to feed Americans. But no animal, no matter how essential to our diet and easy to keep en-masse like this, deserves to live in such filth and misery. I wholeheartedly believe Wegmans could produce fantastic eggs for very low prices while keeping these chickens safer and cleaner at the very least. If you can't afford to have each chicken seen by human eyes once a day, then you are charging TOO LITTLE for your product.
Enough. See for yourself.
Text and speech do this topic NO justice of effect and understanding.
http://www.wegmanscruelty.com/
posted by Nate at 7/19/2005 03:27:00 PM
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