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Originally Posted by impaul99  So based on your info rom PETA, would you say that animal cruelty is the norm? Or at least, would it be safe to say that a significant percentage of meat we eat has come from a source such as this? |
From what I've seen from PETA and other sources, I'd say efficiency is the norm. If animal cruelty makes an operation more efficient, it tends to fairly standard. When it doesn't improve an operation's efficiency, it tends to be less common. Debeaking chickens is a common practice because in tight cages the chickens go insane and peck each other like mad, which damages the final product. Having the chickens go insane doesn't hurt the operation's efficiency, but having them peck holes in each other does. Hence debeaking is the practical solution.
An interesting statistic I came across (from John Robbins I believe) was that 75% of U.S. poultry inspectors claim they will never eat chicken.
I haven't heard of any industry-wide figures on the percentage of factory farms that do X, Y, and Z, since that's not the kind of data the industry wants to make public. I don't know how an outsider could compile such data without help from the inside.
How bad does it have to get before one's conscience begins to question one's stomach?
"Organic meat" is merely a marketing term, since it isn't backed by any enforced federal standards. By itself the term is meaningless.