Exposé: In the Belly of the Beast

Below, a hard-hitting exposé of the factory farm industry published by Rolling Stone. It is so well done that we will be referring you to the original presentation for the full article. Thank you, Rolling Stone. —Eds.

A SMALL BAND OF ANIMAL RIGHTS ACTIVISTS HAVE BEEN INFILTRATING THE FACTORY FARMS WHERE ANIMALS ARE TURNED INTO MEAT UNDER THE MOST HORRIFIC CIRCUMSTANCES.
NOW THE AGRIBUSINESS GIANTS ARE TRYING TO CRUSH THEM.

By Paul Soloratoff

Sarah – let’s call her that for this story, though it’s neither the name her parents gave her nor the one she currently uses undercover – is a tall, fair woman in her midtwenties who’s pretty in a stock, anonymous way, as if she’d purposely scrubbed her face and frame of distinguishing characteristics. Like anyone who’s spent much time working farms, she’s functionally built through the thighs and trunk, herding pregnant hogs who weigh triple what she does into chutes to birth their litters and hefting buckets of dead piglets down quarter-mile alleys to where they’re later processed. It’s backbreaking labor, nine-hour days in stifling barns in Wyoming, and no training could prepare her for the sensory assault of 10,000 pigs in close quarters: the stench of their shit, piled three feet high in the slanted trenches below; the blood on sows’ snouts cut by cages so tight they can’t turn around or lie sideways; the racking cries of broken-legged pigs, hauled into alleys by dead-eyed workers and left there to die of exposure. It’s the worst job she or anyone else has had, but Sarah isn’t grousing about the conditions. She’s too busy waging war on the hogs’ behalf.