Skinny Bitch by Rory Freedman Page A

handful of salt brine and ground it into his nose.
    Now that hog really went nuts, pushing its nose all over the place. I still had a bunch of salt left in my hand—I was wearing a rubber glove—and I stuck the salt right up the hog’s ass. The poor hog didn’t know whether to shit or go blind.”116
    “Nobody knows who’s responsible for correcting animal abuse at the plant. The USDA does zilch.”117
    Eisnitz chronicled the constant failure of U.S. Department of Agriculture inspectors to stop this abuse and their willingness to look the other way. In addition, she exposed the USDA’s blatant tolerance for allowing contaminated meat into the human food supply. Think about it. Ten billion animals a year! Do you think the USDA has enough inspectors to supervise the humane and safe slaughter of 10 billion animals a year? Of course the inspectors tolerate abuse and contaminated meat. Imagine the kind of person who would have a job that entailed witnessing the slaughter of thousands of innocent animals every day. Even if every single inspector did a good job (they don’t), the factory workers can easily bypass the system. Eisnitz interviewed one worker from a horse slaughterhouse, who said, “Might be part of him’s [a contaminated horse] bad, might be the pneumonia’s traveled everywhere. I’d drag him back, and my boss would tell me to cut the hindquarters off and bring him into the cooler. The meat’s supposed to be condemned, but still you’d cut it up and bag it.”
    When Eisnitz asked, “But don’t they have to be stamped ‘USDA inspected?’ “ he responded, “He [his boss] got the stamper. He can stamp it himself when the doc leaves. . . . You take a condemned horse, skin him, cut him up, sell the meat. . . . We’ve sold it as beef.”118
    According to the Congressional testimony of one former Perdue worker, the poultry plants are filthy. She said there were flies, rats, and 5-inch long flying cockroaches covering the walls and floors.119
    Believe it or not, it gets worse: “After they are hung, sometimes the chickens fall off into the drain that runs down the middle of the line. This is where roaches, intestines, diseased parts, fecal contamination, and blood are washed down. Workers [vomit] into the drain. . . . Employees are constantly chewing and spitting out snuff and tobacco on the floor . . . sometimes they have to relieve themselves on the floor. . . . The Perdue supervisors told us to take the fallen chickens out of the drain and send them down the line.”120 A USDA inspector said of the cockroaches, “One time we shined a flashlight into a hole they were crawling in and out, and they were so thick it was like maggots, you couldn’t even see the surface.”121 A worker at another poultry plant said, “Every day, I saw black chicken, green chicken, chicken that stank, and chicken with feces on it.
    Chicken like this is supposed to be thrown away, but instead it would be sent down the line to be processed.”122 Another worker at another plant said, “I personally have seen rotten meat—you can tell by the odor. This rotten meat is mixed with the fresh meat and sold for baby food. We are asked to mix it with the fresh food, and this is the way it is sold. You can see the worms inside the meat.”123
    No comment. We are simply speechless.
    Animals are intelligent, emotional, social creatures. Researchers at Bristol University in Britain discovered that cows actually nur-ture friendships and bear grudges. One study showed cows displaying excitement while solving intellectual challenges.124
    Chickens are as smart as mammals, including some primates, claims animal behaviorist Dr. Chris Evans of Macquarie University in Australia. They are apt pupils and can learn by watching the mis-takes of others. One researcher conducted a study that demonstrated chickens’ ability to use switches and levers to change the temperature of their surroundings. A PBS documentary revealed chickens’ love for