You Can’t Justify It.
“I know of no adjective that adequately describes the suffering I have witnessed on the factory farms I’ve visited.”
— Deborah Giunta
No matter which way you look at this, you cannot justify advocating cruelty or illegal behaviour towards animals.
When something pops up in any social media feed, it’s good to find out where it’s come from. So when one particular image (below) arrived, I was both shocked and unbelieving that a farmer could publicly say such a thing and had to dig a little deeper.
Well, it appears he did say this about three years ago along with other tweets that are just as damming.
Of course, because this has surfaced, he has come out and apologised.
“Viewing them myself, I am very embarrassed and would like to sincerely apologise for these tweets, for bad language and questionable techniques.“
He then went on to say that these were not practices he did but more
“tongue in cheek jokes”.
Mind you it’s taken him three years and being stripped of his title to do so.
You can read the news report (including other tweets and video) here
Regardless of whether Nick Bertram actually does these practices or not is not my point today. I’m quite sure he didn’t dream them up; therefore, they must go on in the industry. Surely he must know that tweeting comments of cruel practices gives those practices kudos to other farmers who may not understand the ‘joke’ and so believe it’s okay.
It also is not a good look at the NZDIA committee who were, apparently aware of the tweets before the awards program.
Of course, Nick couldn’t see the harm in what he’d done and refused to give up the title voluntarily. He is like all other farmers bleating on how hard-working, salt of the earth and misunderstood they are and not wanting to face just how cruel dairy is.
I still can’t get my head around the fact that farmers say they “love their cows”. This is utter bullshit (excuse the pun). How can anyone love another sentient being and still treat it as if it can’t feel pain or experience grief? The dairy industry uses the cows for monetary gains and nothing else. And when the cow’s milk supply drops she is sent to be slaughtered. Where’s the ‘love’ in that?
But wait, these are just cows; it’s not like they’re cats or dogs!
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