The Truth about Finnish Factory Farming

Oikeutta Eläimille, the Finnish animal rights organization, unveiled their new campaign “Julma totuus” yesterday. And what a beautifully executed campaign it is! They have documented the state of things on 101 Finnish farms in videos and photographs, and made it all available online.

The TV magazine news show A-Studio picked up on the matter and broadcast some of the material. They also had some talking heads in to discuss the material. Jaana Husu-Kallio, the director of The Finnish Food Safety Authority failed to put up a convincing argument, and instead alluded to these being “isolated incidents” and made some vague references to “scientific advances” that are supposed to alleviate the suffering of these animals.

They also had Elisa Aaltola (a prominent animal ethics expert) in, and boy, did she make her case like Noam fucking Chomsky! While successfully linking the broader issue of our twisted relationship to animals to the discussion, she also had her facts straight, where Husu-Kallio didn’t: When asked about what the EU regulations say about the crowdedness of broiler chicken buildings, she did not have a number. Aaltola did: They are allowed to stock up to 38 kilograms of chickens per square metre.

It will be interesting to see how all of this plays out. I’m not getting my hopes up though. (Then again the Facebook group has gone up to 360 members in one day…) Certainly most of the information here is nothing new, and so far it has mostly been stifled by the power of denial. But if there is one person in the country who, because of this material, starts to question the origins of their food, and that results in their consumption of animals going down, then, well, there’s that much less suffering in the world. It’s a nice thought.

It feels good to see an issue so important to me get some media attention. The animal rights movement has been so effectively marginalized that it rarely gets this kind of coverage, whereas this arse dribble is funded by the state. Go figure.