Factory farming is the greatest moral crisis we ignore, says farm animal welfare champion Lewis Bollard. He exposes the truth behind the "all natural" labels on your groceries and shows how technology and public pressure can uncover the unseen struggle of animals, drive the industry to reform and harness our collective capacity for moral progress. (Note: This talk contains graphic images.)For a chance to give your own TED Talk, fill out the Idea Search Application: ted.com/ideasearch.Interested in learning more about upcoming TED events? Follow these links:TEDNext: ted.com/futureyouTEDSports: ted.com/sportsTEDAI Vienna: ted.com/ai-viennaTEDAI San Francisco: ted.com/ai-sf Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. Meat is an integral part of billions of people's diets around the world, and yet it's hard to balance this reality with the unimaginable horrors that exist in factory farms today.
In his talk, farm animal welfare champion Louis Bollard reveals how it is possible to make lasting, sustainable changes in the meat industry. He shares how a blend of big data, inventive tech, and grassroots pressure is actually driving major corporate and legislative reforms, showing us that we can tackle massive moral and environmental problems if we decide to act.
Today, I want to talk with you about one of the most important moral issues we never talk about, and that's factory farming. But first, I want to share with you the story of how I came to be here. I grew up in New Zealand, and yes, we had a sheep farm.
It was small, 100 acres of rolling hills, and the sheep would graze the hillsides by day and then retreat to the hilltops to circle up and fall asleep at night. The sheep ultimately went to slaughter. But I always felt like at least they'd lived good lives and had quick deaths. Frankly, if I'm ever reincarnated as a sheep, which, as a New Zealander, is not unlikely, I'd like to live their life.
When I was a teenager, we traveled to Vietnam. And in the back streets of Hanoi, I stumbled into a live animal market. I still remember seeing the site, stacks upon stacks of cages crammed full of animals of every species, trembling in fear, staring out at me in distress. I was shaken. But when I returned to New Zealand, I figured things were different.
I mean, you can see the cows and the sheep in the fields. Still, I started to wonder how we treated the animals that you couldn't see. How, in particular, did we treat the pigs and the chickens? So I did what you did back then. I picked up a phone book, and I looked up some pig and chicken farms. And one by one, I called, and I naively asked if I could just come visit.
And one by one, they told me no. They don't let anyone just visit. Finally, I got hold of a major slaughterhouse and connected with a farm boy. Let's call him Liam. Now, this slaughterhouse didn't do visitors either, but Liam and I bonded over sheep, and he agreed to get me in. Honestly, the slaughterhouse wasn't as bad as I'd expected.
It was the state of the animals arriving there that shook me. I remember seeing pigs coming down off a transport truck. some shaking, some squealing, some limping in pain. Liam, I said, why are those pigs limping? Not my problem, he replied. So I looked into it. Before I tell you what I learned, let me say I'm not here to tell you what to eat.
In fact, I don't think this should be on you as an individual consumer at all. You never chose factory farming. When the factory farms came in and replaced the old family farms, they didn't tell you they were doing it. They didn't relabel the meat as now for miserable animals. They labeled it as all natural and farm fresh.
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