Remember the Anita Krajnc case from a couple of years ago? That's the woman who got famous for giving the pigs a last sip of water on their way to the bacon factory.
To a point, I get where she's coming from. There's absolutely no defence for the inhumane practices of factory farming. None.
This crossed my mind the other day as I was chowing down on my "Big Breakfast Special" at the Teviotdale Truck Stop. The special is where you don't have to choose between the bacon and the ham and the sausages.
No Siree! You get all of them! Plus a generous helping of honest-to-God stove-top home-fries!
Just outside the window there's three tractor-trailer units loaded with pigs. They're on their way to see Anita and get that last drink of water.
At the nearest table to us in the socially distanced seating arrangements were three Mexican dudes. How do I know this? They looked like Mexicans and they spoke Mexican, that's how.
My dining companion makes the observation that what we're eating probably came through here a few days ago.
That's the thing. I believe factory farming is morally repugnant. But I love my Big Breakfast Special. I think that's called cognitive dissonance. There's quite a lot of that in my world, and probably in yours too.
We got through breakfast and were enjoying a breath of fresh air in the parking lot. The Mexicans came out shortly after. Turns out they were the guys piloting the livestock trucks.
And what beautiful trucks they were! Two new Kenworths and a Peterbilt, with ulta-deluxe and ultra-large sleeper cabs... which I'm guessing served as the living quarters for these temporary foreign workers.
At least a little attention has been drawn to the experience of Canada's migrant workers, thanks to Covid.
When you get right down to it, factory farming can't function without those temporary foreign workers.
Talk about a double dose of cognitive dissonance!
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