Grist's Tom Philpott: "animal abuse is rampant"

Grist's Tom Philpott covers the E6 Cattle investigation by Mercy For Animals in Meat Wagon: Undercover video shows sick calves getting brains bashed in with pickax, and more:

"There's no reason to assume this operation is any kind of outlier...To employ a fashionable cliché, animal abuse is a feature, not a bug, of factory farming."

It's very gratifying that Grist, which covers environmental news, is putting more effort into exposing animal abuse in the food system. Animal advocates need to speak frankly to this audience about the impact of their food choices. 

Wall Street Journal: Mercy For Animals investigation impacts price of cattle futures

Lester Aldrich of the Wall Street Journal covered the abuse at E6 Cattle company in Hart, Texas:


"The video, which has been posted to the internet, pressured live-cattle futures on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Traders were concerned its graphic nature would cause a pullback in consumer demand for beef.

"The video helped to push June futures down 1.3% to $1.1565 a pound after the contract hit a two-week high earlier in the trading day"

Texas Sheriff Investigates Animal-Cruelty Video Rattling Cattle Market

It is ironic that the impact was credited to a predicted reduction in demand for beef, since E6 is a facility that raises dairy cattle. Perhaps the analysts don't think the consumer knows the difference between dairy cows and beef cows?

Later, we learned that it's probable this market dip resulted in fewer calves being born into lives of misery on factory farms - another MFA victory, albeit a much quieter one.