An undercover vegan wired with a camera no bigger than a sugar cube spent six weeks last fall working at a Southern California slaughterhouse. To fit in, he brought sandwiches made with soy riblets and ate them in a dusty parking lot with the other workers.
He tried not to worry about the emotional toll that long days escorting cows to the kill might have. He had more practical concerns, like whether the camera switch hidden in his pocket would fail or a cow would smash into him and crack the recording equipment taped to his body.
The Humane Society of the United States first gave a 32-minute video made from his footage to the San Bernardino County district attorney, then in January released an edited version on its Web site and to a newspaper. The video showed workers flipping sick dairy cows with forklifts, prodding them with electricity and dragging them with chains to be processed into ground meat, some of which likely ended up in chili and tacos at public school cafeterias.
It was as if someone gave Upton Sinclair a video camera and a Web link. Animal cruelty charges were filed, the slaughterhouse was shut down and Congress held hearings. The Agriculture Department announced the recall of more than 143 million pounds of meat — the largest in the nation's history. (Cows so sick they can't walk can't legally be processed into food because they may have mad cow disease, also known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, a form of which can be passed on to humans.)
After more than 25 years of tactics that have included tossing a dead raccoon on to the lunch plate of Anna Wintour, the Vogue editor; boycotting fast-food restaurants; and staging legal challenges, the animal rights movement had a bona fide hit.
A new generation of cameras so small they can be hidden in eyeglass frames or a hat — together with the rise of YouTube and the growing appeal of so-called citizen journalism — has done for animal rights advocates what the best-organized protest could not. Perhaps more than other social agitators, people concerned about animals raised for food have discovered that downloadable video can be the most potent weapon in their arsenal.
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For more animal-esque music, news, and issues, tune in to Kitty Mowmow's Animal Expo online at www.thecapstone.ua.edu, Sunday nights 8-10 central.
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