“The unit is not new, it’s the cameras that are new.”
–Ta-Nehisi Coates
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It has been a mates decades since I saw my archetypal video of a mill farm. Since then, I’ve seen countless much and gone to these places to spot it each personally. To bash this, I learned to abstracted myself from what I witnessed.
I person observed clinically, utilizing spreadsheets to support way of the investigations, color-coding them by types of animals and types of maltreatment (“beating,” “sexual violence,” “standard practices”). That’s what journalists are taught to bash with the trauma we witness. We enactment it successful boxes and past constitute a story.
This worked for a agelong portion until it abruptly didn’t. I don’t cognize however to explicate this, due to the fact that I inactive don’t afloat understand. Although I person been penning astir mill farms for years, this task made it each consciousness caller again, made maine reexperience the panic and the consciousness of being restrained and forced to ticker the violence.
Working connected this task has changed me. I haven’t kept tally, but I person watched dozens of hours of mill workplace investigations astatine this point, possibly more. I person immersed myself successful manufacture probe and publications similar Pork Network News and Dairy Herd Management. I person visited farms and slaughterhouses myself, some legally and illegally. I person seen it each with my ain eyes, and I person been haunted by what I’ve seen, again and again, similar the archetypal time.
I privation to beryllium transparent astir this due to the fact that I bash request to archer you astir what takes spot each time connected mill farms. This is simply a tiny portion of the book, and the descriptions are disturbing, but they are necessary, and I anticipation you won’t crook away.
To genuinely spot injustice, we request much than ocular imagery. Our show has to beryllium informed with a broader knowing of context, history, and the individual.
I besides request to archer you that, soon aft watching that archetypal video, I stopped consuming carnal products. As a journalist, I consciousness the request to disclose my plant-based fare arsenic a bias. I’ve argued with the exertion successful my encephalon rather a spot astir this. Why is it that not eating carnal products is simply a bias, portion eating them is not?
That said, I ever attack my reporting meticulously, and nary substance what I’m covering I fact-check my ain preconceived ideas and deliberately question to situation them. I person done my champion passim to beryllium cautious of my code and adjectives, my descriptions and analyses. I person tried to support details of disturbing videos short—much much has been near connected the cutting country level than made it into the book. Still, I cognize this worldly asks a batch from a reader, adjacent much than if I were to inquire you to ticker a video yourself. As John Gardner says, erstwhile we work we drift into a imagination authorities and “we statesman to spot images.” It tin beryllium haunting, and it’s ever easier to adjacent the book.
I’m reminded of the Friends occurrence wherever Joey was excessively frightened speechmaking Stephen King’s The Shining, truthful sometimes helium needed to unopen the publication and enactment it successful the freezer. Feel escaped to effort that, arsenic often arsenic you need. But travel back, due to the fact that those passages, nary substance however shocking, are conscionable a tiny portion of a overmuch bigger communicative that is captious for america each to confront. It’s not conscionable the workplace animals and those who effort to support them who are astatine risk.
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My person Dayo Aiyetan runs an enactment successful Nigeria called the International Center for Investigative Reporting. He has spent decades exposing corruption and grooming journalists however to study secrets successful unsafe environments. Years agone I asked him to talk to a people I was teaching astatine the University of Michigan connected whistleblowing. My lone petition was that helium not gloss implicit the unsafe realities for African journalists and investigators. Just archer them what it’s like.
At the extremity of his talk, a pupil asked what makes him support going amid truthful overmuch corruption and violence.
“There is simply a saying we person successful Africa,” Dayo said. “ ‘If you fell a rooster successful a basket, helium volition crow sometime. People volition cognize astir it.”
There volition ever beryllium radical successful powerfulness who effort to fell corruption, Dayo said, but it’s increasing overmuch much hard to hide. He argued that due to the fact that of email, societal media, and video, it’s easier than ever to travel the crows of roosters.
This is what undercover investigators person done. One video astatine a time, they began lifting the lids disconnected the baskets of the carnal agriculture industry.
In a landmark probe successful 2008, for instance, the Humane Society of the United States recorded sick cows astatine Hallmark/Westland Meat Packing Company successful Chino, California. The cows were excessively sick to adjacent walk, which is truthful communal successful the manufacture that they are called “downers.”
Sick animals are not expected to participate the nutrient supply. But downers wounded nett margins, and workers are pressured to get each carnal to slaughter. Hallmark/Westland workers were recorded beating and kicking the cows, applying electrical shocks, and stabbing them with the blades of a forklift to propulsion them into the “kill box” truthful that they could beryllium killed and sold.
The slaughterhouse was the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s second-largest supplier and was named a “supplier of the year” for 2004-2005. The video prompted the callback of 143 cardinal pounds of meat, the largest nutrient callback successful U.S. history.
Had this probe not occurred, sick animals would person been fed to simple schoolhouse children successful 36 states arsenic portion of the nationalist schoolhouse luncheon program.
A suit was filed against the institution and its investors arguing they defrauded the U.S. authorities and the National School Lunch Program. The meatpacking institution was deed with a $155 cardinal consent judgment, the largest successful U.S. past for carnal abuse.
This was a turning constituent successful the undercover probe movement. It demonstrated the powerfulness and imaginable of undercover investigations and confirmed for the activists that they were connected the close path. A azygous video had sent the agriculture manufacture into a tailspin, and present they were anxious to physique connected that momentum.
In the pursuing years determination was a feverish strength to the work. Every large carnal extortion radical was progressive successful undercover investigations. Established organizations similar PETA alongside younger, grassroots projects similar Compassion Over Killing and Mercy for Animals. The Humane Society of the United States—which had agelong been a “cats and dogs” payment group—started a farmed carnal campaign, hiring immoderate of those activists I was gathering astatine Asylum.
Exposing carnal maltreatment is possibly a unusual happening to beryllium competitory about, but determination was an aggravated contention among the groups. They supported each other’s work, but they besides utilized it to propulsion themselves to spell further. After each undercover investigation, they held property conferences and partnered with nationalist media outlets for exclusive stories. The attention—and the ambition of activists—kept growing.
Undercover investigations person exposed carnal maltreatment truthful egregious that they person resulted successful historical transgression prosecutions for cruelty against workplace animals. Prosecutors person relied connected the elaborate footage of undercover investigators to physique their ineligible cases and punish those caught connected camera. There person been astatine slightest 12 authorities carnal cruelty investigations since 2010, and this had ne'er happened earlier undercover video.
In New Mexico, a idiosyncratic was convicted of 2 counts of transgression carnal cruelty aft an probe showed him stabbing cows with a screwdriver and whipping them with a metallic chain.
In Wyoming, workers pled blameworthy to carnal cruelty aft they were exposed punching piglets and kicking them similar shot balls.
In North Carolina, workers were exposed stomping and kicking turkeys, throwing them by their necks into metallic cages, and beating them with metallic bars. The probe resulted successful historical felony cruelty prosecution related to animals utilized for food.
In astir each of these cases, workplace owners person attempted to region themselves from their workers. They blasted the cruelty connected mediocre grooming oregon atrocious actors and accidental they were unaware of what was happening each time connected their farms.
The astir damning scenes revealed by undercover investigators, though, haven’t progressive rogue workers. They are behaviors that the manufacture considers wholly mean and proper.
On mill farms these “standard manufacture practices” include
Cutting disconnected the tails and testicles of piglets, the testicles and horns of bulls, and the beaks of chickens without anesthesia.
Confining sows successful “gestation crates” and “sow stalls”—metal pens that are utilized to support pistillate pigs tightly confined and separated from their piglets.
Stacking egg-laying hens successful artillery cages truthful tightly that birds are fixed little abstraction than a modular expanse of paper. They unrecorded incapable to flap their wings, surrounded by mummified corpses and covered successful the feces of birds stacked supra them.
Removing babe antheral cows from their mothers aft birth, chaining them wrong veal crates truthful they can’t determination and their soma remains soft. When babies are not removed from their mothers, metallic spikes—called an “anti-suckling device”—are inserted into their nostrils truthful that it is excessively achy for mothers to caregiver them.
In Canada, Mercy for Animals exposed workers astatine Puratone pig workplace holding piglets by their feet and slamming them onto the factual level to termination them. The manufacture has a much benign description; it’s called “thumping,” and it is modular manufacture signifier some successful the United States and Canada. After the Mercy for Animals investigation, the Animal Care and Review Panel responded by saying that what investigators exposed is wide accepted wrong the manufacture and considered the normal, due mode of treating animals.
The header of the Vancouver Sun summed up the industry’s reappraisal of the video: “Body slamming piglets to decease humane, pork experts say.”
In Iowa, an probe of Hy-Line hatchery showed workers lasting by a conveyor loop of chirping chicks, tossing them 1 by 1 into the blades of a metallic grinder. The United Egg Producers describes the disposal of antheral chicks this mode arsenic modular procedure. The chicks are tossed into trash cans to beryllium gassed oregon electrocuted, oregon successful chutes similar this to beryllium crushed alive, due to the fact that males person nary worth for the ovum industry.
A spokesperson for an ovum manufacture radical responded to the Hy-Line probe by calling carnal payment concerns a “joke.”
“If idiosyncratic has a request for 200 cardinal antheral chicks,” helium said, “we’re blessed to supply them to anyone who wants them. But we tin find nary market, nary need.”
*
Should I support going?
I conscionable summarized the regular suffering of billions of animals with a fewer pages, which is appallingly inadequate and incomplete. If I adhd successful each the details and investigations that I person edited out, would it marque the standard of the occupation much visible? Or successful that measurement of unit does the contented go much opaque?
As I struggled with these questions, I was teaching a classes connected whistleblowing astatine the University of Michigan, speaking astatine surveillance conferences, and hosting lectures with planetary journalists who exposed monolithic information leaks. I saw a broader inclination emerging that was unmistakable: the size of the leaks keeps growing.
When Daniel Ellsberg blew the whistle connected the Pentagon Papers successful 1971, helium photocopied the documents by hand. When Edward Snowden exposed amerciable authorities surveillance, helium downloaded much than a million files. In consequent years, whistleblower releases person continued to expand. For the Luxembourg Leaks, for example, astir 28,000 pages of fiscal documents were anonymously released to journalists. For the Panama Papers, reporters with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists reviewed a leak of 2.6 terabytes—that’s astir 11.5 cardinal files.
Scholar Zeynep Tufekci has praised whistleblowing but describes the massive, indiscriminate dumping of groups similar WikiLeaks arsenic reckless. She has questioned whether it’s really a caller signifier of unintentional censorship; she calls it “whistle-drowning.”
“In a oversea of truthful galore whistles blowing truthful loud,” Tufekci said, “we cannot perceive a azygous one.”
Could that beryllium what’s happening with carnal agriculture? I started to wonderment if the occupation wasn’t censorship—but that determination was too much information. Are we deluged by graphic footage? Are we experiencing censorship by overload?
I deliberation there’s immoderate information here, connected to our constricted quality arsenic humans to process much accusation than we person ever been exposed to successful quality history. But progressively I started to wonderment if the contented wasn’t conscionable a merchandise of the integer era—mass information, caller technology, astute phones, societal media. For maine it raised questions astir cardinal quality nature. This progressively felt similar it wasn’t a technological occupation but alternatively an existential one.
As I constitute this, crossed the galore years I person present been moving connected this project, I person been looking for answers to these questions successful different acceptable of videos.
News outlets astir the satellite person reported an endless watercourse of constabulary unit against achromatic radical documented by national observers. Shooting aft shooting, a acheronian tally of beatings and murder. Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Daunte Wright. These are conscionable a few.
There are striking parallels present to the emergence of undercover workplace videos—a cleanable tempest of caller tech, societal media, and nationalist outrage. The scenes documented by some sets of videos hap each day, retired of sight, until 1 idiosyncratic decides to propulsion retired a camera oregon smartphone, and station the video online.
The idiosyncratic videos are each exposing circumstantial scenes of extreme, astir unwatchable violence. But they enactment unneurotic to uncover thing other entirely.
I’ve watched these videos and the question they created successful a idiosyncratic hunt for answers astir what it means to carnivore witnesser successful a integer age. For maine they rise the aforesaid questions arsenic the mill workplace videos I’ve studied: How bash we, arsenic idiosyncratic humans, statesman to process the standard of suffering that has been recorded? How overmuch injustice bash we request to spot successful bid to understand? And astatine what constituent person we seen excessively much?
The videos person inspired thousands of radical to instrumentality to the streets, demanding accountability and justice. But I wonderment if determination is besides a information here.
One of the starring researchers connected the contented is Allissa Richardson, an adjunct prof of journalism astatine the University of Southern California. In her publication Bearing Witness While Black, she questions whether the nationalist needs to support seeing videos of achromatic radical being killed by police. She says we don’t request them anymore.
Richardson argues that the endless loop of convulsive footage has mislaid show of the victims. Jacob Blake, for example, was changeable successful the backmost aggregate times by Kenosha, Wisconsin police. His children watched from the backseat of his car. The communicative of Blake arsenic a constabulary shooting unfortunate drowned retired the communicative of him arsenic a father, Richardson says, idiosyncratic with “a increasing postulation of dada jokes” and a “bedtime tuck-in routine” for his kids.
In the onslaught of graphic videos the victims are lost, yet simultaneously the spectator is mislaid arsenic well. After constabulary killed Tyre Nichols, for example, Baratunde Thurston announced helium had had enough. He said helium didn’t adjacent effort to ticker the video.
“I knew the infinitesimal I learned astir Tyre Nichols’s decease determination was thing caller to see,” Thurston wrote. “I’ve learned that if you ticker yourself dice excessively galore times, you commencement to dice inside. (America is addicted to watching maine die, to watching itself die.)…But adjacent if I don’t spot constabulary execution different Black person, that doesn’t halt the killing.”
To genuinely spot injustice, we request much than ocular imagery. Our show has to beryllium informed with a broader knowing of context, history, and the individual. But I’m struggling with what that means for the videos I’m discussing.
Despite each the similarities successful however they are used, workplace videos and constabulary videos are, of course, radically different. Farm investigations person focused connected cruelty to animals, not humans. And what they picture doesn’t conscionable bring into question the actions of cops oregon the powers that be. We are personally implicated. It feels similar some of those factors marque these videos easier to overlook.
Should I see chapters documenting however workplace animals consciousness pain, communicate, and signifier relationships? I could diagnostic a fewer experts describing however we cognize they person personalities and analyzable emotions. Cows play, and parent hens pass with their chicks earlier they hatch. Pigs are arsenic intelligent and emotionally responsive arsenic a dog—as a two-year-old child. I could archer you however I person personally witnessed animals comfortableness each different connected mill farms and mothers combat to not person their babies taken away.
What magnitude of mentation bash those videos of cruelty require? Does a changeless watercourse of grounds assistance america recognize the occupation oregon marque america crook away?
One of the organizations that has the astir firsthand acquisition with these questions is called Witness, a civilian rights enactment formed aft the 1992 beating of Rodney King by 4 Los Angeles cops. The onslaught was filmed by George Holliday, who witnessed it from his balcony and sent the video footage to a section quality station. The King video marked the zero hr for caller forms of activism utilizing cameras.
For astir 30 years, Witness has been connected the beforehand lines of these campaigns. The radical has go an planetary grooming center, preparing observers to papers quality rights abuses with exertion and usage their videos to combat for change.
Sam Gregory, the programme manager of Witness, argues that if the videos were confined to 1 incident, oregon adjacent several, we mightiness judge constabulary departments’ claims that these are the actions of rogue officers, a “few atrocious apples.” We request the measurement of videos, helium says, due to the fact that lone past does the occupation go intolerable to ignore.
I deliberation this is however each these videos—whether they are documenting carnal cruelty, constabulary violence, oregon thing else—should beryllium understood. The idiosyncratic videos are each exposing circumstantial scenes of extreme, astir unwatchable violence. But they enactment unneurotic to uncover thing other entirely.
“Yes, video is simply a instrumentality to amusement violence,” Gregory said. “But much importantly, it’s a instrumentality to amusement patterns.”
Patterns are what exposure systemic, institutionalized corruption and abuse.
Patterns let america to link an individual’s behaviour to the corporate, government, and societal structures that person allowed that behavior.
Patterns displacement the speech distant from the atrocious apples and alternatively bring the full diseased orchard into question.
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“Bearing Witness,” from Little Red Barns: Hiding the Truth from Farm to Fable by Will Potter. Copyright © 2025 by Will Potter. Reprinted with the support of City Lights Books.
