"Just shut up and eat your bacon"
By
Yet,
that’s what the monopolistic meatpacking industry — led by such huge
conglomerates as Tyson, Smithfield, JBS, and Hormel, which control nearly 70
percent of America’s pork market — is doing.
“Just shut up and eat your bacon,” the industry shrieks.
The
target of their corporate tantrum is the growing grassroots movement of
consumers, animal rights advocates, farmers, chefs, retailers, and others who
are dismayed and disgusted by Big Pork’s profiteering on animal cruelty.
“None
of your business!” shout the executives, lobbyists, lawyers, and for-rent
politicians who run the tortuous system.
But gutsy groups like the Humane Society made their way inside the industry’s animal factories, videoing such mass horrors as thousands of pregnant sows locked for 16 weeks at a time in gestation crates so small the animals can’t even turn around. In 2018, such exposés prompted 60 percent of California voters to approve a ballot initiative outlawing the use of the inhumane crates.
Adding
plutocratic stupidity to their greed, the pork barons then sued the people of
California. Yes, the pork profiteers actually asserted that democracy must not
interfere with “sound business practices.”
Never
mind that few of us uncorporatized commoners consider animal suffering to be a
sound practice. Even the corporate-coddling Supreme Court gagged at the
industry’s claim that it has the sovereign power to dictate what type of pork
chops are available to the public.
This
May, in an odd-fellow 5-4 decision rendered by two progressive judges and three
corporatists, the Court ruled that “policy choices like these usually belong to the people.”
Well, yes — and to the animals!
This is an example of how grassroots activism matters in important ways. To stay involved in this issue, go to humanesociety.org.
OtherWords columnist is a radio commentator, writer, and public speaker. This op-ed was distributed by OtherWords.org.