'there are probably factory farms out there that aren't quite that bad.'
Um, yes. But documentary footage is certainly not necessarily 'worst-case.' It's simply what is documented. I've seen varying amounts of disgustingness on factory farms through documentaries and material put out by the animal farming industries. Though, I figured that for the movie they put effort into making the chicken confinement nicer, since it's a movie and not a documentary.
That may well be the case (for the movie), but AR videos do have an agenda. It doesn't mean that they're lying, but it does mean that they probably handpick the footage they show in order to present the most compelling case against modern animal husbandry that they can.
If they go into a chicken confinement and they document that it's gross and there are chickens dying inside and all the other disgusting things that happen inside the confinement, that doesn't mean they're 'handpicking for an agenda' they're simply showing what's going on in there.
Though, for films with clips from various documentaries, they do show the most compelling footage, since the point of the film would be to point out how bad the confinements can be/generally are. But, as I said, they will show varying degrees of abuse in various films. Sometimes they will just show the crowding in cages, as was generally depicted in Napoleon Dynamite.
Actually, the criteria for picking a place to film tends to be accessibilty - a place where it's easier for someone to either walk in and film openly when the farmer isn't around, or to get a job there and film secretly.
Certainly that would also be a factor, but you're not going to see a PETA video about a happy family farm, or even a factory farm that has comparatively palatable conditions.
I'm not saying that factory farms are generally good things, or even that the AR videos are misleading - indeed, these are the realities of the various animal exploitation industries and they should by all means be put to a stop. What I am saying is that an activist video has an agenda that should be considered when you stop to think about which scenes made the final cut, and that there are probably less extreme examples out there (which are not necessarily good, but which aren't quite as far out there as the ones that get showcased for the purpose of convincing people to stop eating meat
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I'm saying that a documentary film is more reliable for information than a movie made primarily for entertainment. We know from watching documentaries that chicken confinements are generally not as clean as they are depicted in Napoleon Dynamite, for example. Though, even in the movie it was a rather disturbing scene, with all the chickens in the small cages.
Though, yeah, the best way to depict chicken confinements would be to have an 'unbiased' person make a documentary from several different confinements and not show just 'the worst' of it. But I have certainly seen AR documentaries that do show more than just 'the worst' considering chicken confinements are awful, no matter how you slice it. I've never heard anything good about battery cages concerning the chickens, just the farmers.
but yeah...why the fuck couldn't they use seitan or something...
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Um, yes. But documentary footage is certainly not necessarily 'worst-case.' It's simply what is documented. I've seen varying amounts of disgustingness on factory farms through documentaries and material put out by the animal farming industries. Though, I figured that for the movie they put effort into making the chicken confinement nicer, since it's a movie and not a documentary.
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Though, for films with clips from various documentaries, they do show the most compelling footage, since the point of the film would be to point out how bad the confinements can be/generally are. But, as I said, they will show varying degrees of abuse in various films. Sometimes they will just show the crowding in cages, as was generally depicted in Napoleon Dynamite.
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So if they walked into a second barn, and it wasn't nearly as bad (for whatever reason), which of the two films do you think they are goinig to show?
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I'm not saying that factory farms are generally good things, or even that the AR videos are misleading - indeed, these are the realities of the various animal exploitation industries and they should by all means be put to a stop. What I am saying is that an activist video has an agenda that should be considered when you stop to think about which scenes made the final cut, and that there are probably less extreme examples out there (which are not necessarily good, but which aren't quite as far out there as the ones that get showcased for the purpose of convincing people to stop eating meat ( ... )
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Though, yeah, the best way to depict chicken confinements would be to have an 'unbiased' person make a documentary from several different confinements and not show just 'the worst' of it. But I have certainly seen AR documentaries that do show more than just 'the worst' considering chicken confinements are awful, no matter how you slice it. I've never heard anything good about battery cages concerning the chickens, just the farmers.
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