Facts don't lie!  The amount of resources to produce a pound of meat is unsustainable.  Feed lots produce more polution than the industrial revolution (my own fact ... not researched).  Millions go to bed hungry every night.  Meat is not a need in the human diet.  And these animals are sentient and have every right to life as human.  Let us continue to fight the fight!!!  Create a new norm!!!

I can't stand the carte blanche for cruelty crap. You were fully justified in writing this just as you have.

I watched this film from beginning to end last night, and while I agree that animal cruelty took place on the farm, I also agree that the individual farmers in this case are victims of the same system.

Pigs, and other husbanded animals across the country, are treated this way because our culture is based on the premise that man should hold dominion over the earth. For hundreds of years, our ancestors fought and destroyed any ideology or culture that would present man to the world as a component of a symbiotic relationship. As a result, when our farmers think of producing Chattel, they only see little monetized commodities within the confines of their pens, and they don't see a being with equal rights to existence, let alone a being with any rights at all.

I present the farmer as a victim of this system, in addition  to the pigs, because in his failure to identify with the animals in a compassionate way, his development as an intelligent, and conscious being is compromised.

The farmer doesn't know that he has an infinite existence, or that it requires development , because the ideals of what a man is and what a man does, his relationship to the world around him, has been so utterly corrupted by the 'Man's Dominion' worldview, that the idea of a better way within this system is limited to, 'What's cheap' and 'What works', rather than, 'What is good'. Much in the same way that the piglets don't know if they like the feeling of rainwater, or a loving touch - they've never been exposed to it, the farmer has never been exposed to the idea that conscious beings engaged in compassionate action, continue to grow and evolve beyond their self-stunting peers.

What I mean to say, is that the system itself is broken. Any attempts to punish the members of the system, without changing the apparatus itself, is at best a half-measure. Our system doesn't value pigs, or chickens, or cows, or pensions, or the middle-class, or personal-development and spiritual-growth, it only values money. As long as we continue to support a system that only values an inanimate object(money), the system will only continue to produce more individuals that treat animate beings as if they were inanimate objects.

The solution to the problem is not in punishing the individual farmer, after the fact, while factory operations, and their requisite atrocities continue all over the world. The solution lies in changing our relationship to the world around us, and encouraging other to do the same.

Realizing that our power comes not from dominion over the world, with man separate from the earth, but rather that it comes from our ability to live symbiotically with life and the forces of nature, combined with compassion and the infinite power of our intellect, that we will overcome our shameful disassociation from the world around us.

In the film, the prosecution brought multiple counts of animal abuses before the court, but only one stuck, and only a single person was punished by a year of probation. Obviously, the world-view that the courts and legal apparatus will somehow lead us out of a culture that condones such behavior is a pipe-dream.

There are thousands of farms, and thousands of farmers. Will we push for convictions to lock them all up, only to see their empty positions filled with new farms and farmers, within the same system? Obviously, the system needs to change first, and that cannot be done with misdemeanor charges against isolated farmers. It can only be done with an indictment against the system itself, and for that we need a lot of conscious beings to follow their compassion, and refuse to support any and all parts of the system that continue to operate in this fashion. We also need to support those who operate their businesses with the values of compassionate, conscious beings.

At the end of the day, the only thing we can be sure all understand is money. The sooner we can make these operations unprofitable, the sooner they will cease to operate. The farmer isn't the face of these operations, and shouldn't necessarily be the target. The face of these operations is every fast, and low-cost, food operation, every national grocery store chain, every out-sourced arena food-service operator, every hotel, every decision-maker deciding, 'what is good' by 'what is cheap'. These are the real faces of this charade, and the sooner we identify them as such, and refuse to dissassociate our plate, or sackful, from what we know the animals have suffered, our stomachs will ensure that the compassion is followed, and then we begin the process of change.

I like your take, Stephanie. I agree.

FYI, the line "We can't all eat lettuce" is becoming one of the animal exploiters' mantras. It's a talking point they're trying to make in articles, letters, comments...
To play offense (instead of defense) we should blow that claim out of the water with images, videos, and recipes for vegan food so people know exactly what we mean when we say "Don't eat animal products!"

Honestly, I don't think you were harsh enough.  This guy's just a speciesist jerk, plain and simple.  I don't think I've read anything worse in the NYT since that whole Nina Planck debacle.

And as for "We can't all eat lettuce," seriously?  The only place that quote belongs is in an article about how much pork farmers fail at logic.

Let's not forget to write letters to Judge Miller
Honorable Judge Stuart Miller

Wooster Municipal Court 215 N. Grant St. Wooster, Ohio Post code 44691   
Dear Judge Miller:   
To watch the HBO production: “Death on a Family Farm” documentary meant that I could not eat that evening; I was too sick to my stomach.  Imagine the pain that those animals endure, day after hellish day, with no hope in sight, for an entire lifetime.  At the same time it is unimaginable, we also see the Judge is too morally weak (for lack of another euphemism) to rule favorably upon it.  To think you are not even fit to rule on the behalf of a pig.   And to think the defense attorneys and the Judge himself could not empathize with the definition of "suffering" as witnessed by a hanging pig? Or the utter torment experienced by a distressed mother pig, so utterly hopeless that she lost the will to eat?  Is that not suffering?  Losing the will to eat for a pig?  Are you a complete fool?  Or just a complete coward that is plain for the eye to see?  Clearly, the wisdom of an innocent child sitting on your bench would have been more appropriate for that case.  I feel sorry for the lack of integrity that Judge displays for his family and community to see.    Thank you, HBO and the producers behind this work.  I salute you for being honorable enough to complete this piece.  And please, please find a way to extend my humble thanks to the Gentleman who went undercover to dedicate his life so that masses of animals might endure a little less torture for no reason.  Thank him from the bottom of my heart.  I look up to him.  I would be honored to stand next to him as much as I would be ashamed to stand next to Judge Miller.    In the end, my opinion is that the real blame falls upon the bankers that buy out the once morally operated family farm.  Now all that stand are shareholder ‘for-profit’ enterprises where live animals are reduced to inanimate objects that suffer endlessly for no reason and have no justice on their side.  And sadly, the Judges like Judge Miller that rule in these cases are like mere referees in a basketball game: hopeless and useless to accomplish any justice, and reduced to a courtroom fool for the amusement of the rich farm profiteers.              Shouldn’t the incompetent Judges be sent to work on a farm so that they can witness first-hand the injustices resulting from their weak moral fiber verdicts?  As sad as it is to see the Wiles family be put to such a horrible line of business, isn’t the real documentary the tragedy of our morally corrupt court system that allows this travesty to survive on American soil?   We dare call ourselves a People that inhabit the “Land of the Free and Home of the Brave”?  What freedom and what amount of bravery is there to witness in this hell-house of horrors disguised as a hog farm?   I feel ashamed to be counted among our like that put up with these horrors while Judges-in-disguise mock the justice system.   Yours truly,     John, Los Angeles