The Animal Gulag

Bill Niman and Nicolette Hahn Niman discuss the politics of animal antibiotics:

Over the past several years, each of us have toured numerous industrial-style animal operations, and they were not pretty. We saw pigs confined in metal buildings living on hard, slatted floors and fed daily rations that include such unsavory ingredients as bone meal, blood meal, and drugs, including antibiotics. Stepping into these buildings, we were immediately enveloped by the stench of rotting eggs. The pigs spend 24 hours of every day in crowded conditions standing over their own liquefied manure, bathing in the odor of decaying feces and continually breathing its fumes.

One day in the future, generations may well look back at our treatment of farm animals and wonder just how barbaric we were.