Factory farmers in Israel stumped by animal rights activists' well-hidden webcam

A group of animal rights activists seeking to draw awareness to the cruelty of battery hen farming operations have hidden a webcam in a factory farm in Israel. The result: a live webstream that shows these animals confined in conditions that would widely be regarded as inhumane, and gross. The factory farm managers haven't been able to locate the cam. (via Submitterator, thanks christackett)

• [Anonymous]

  As president of Jewish Vegetarians of North America, I am happy to see this discussion which I hope will lead to a greater consideration of how animals are treated on factory farms.

  For further information about Jewish teachings about animals and about vegetarianism, please visit JewishVeg.com/schwartz, where I have over 140 articles, 25 podcasts of my talks and interviews and the complete text of my book, “Judaism and Vegetarianism.” Also, please visit ASacredDuty.com to see our acclaimed documentary “A Sacred Duty Aplying Jewish Values to Hlp Heal the World.”

  Thanks,

  Richard Schwartz

• [Delaney]

  I have to say, that video didn’t look all that bad to me. I’ve seen a lot worse. I thought a lot worse was the normal thing actually. I mean, I source my eggs from a friend of mine who treats his chickens like the valued pets they are.

  If what is depicted in that video is considered bad I frankly feel better about eating eggs. I mean, clearly it’s bad…but when stacked up against all the other horrific things in this world? Oh hell I don’t know, just not my issue I guess. As you all were.

  • [travtastic]

    So by that logic, murder is okay since there’s genocide out there somewhere?

• [ocschwar]

  I grew up in a mechanized poultry raising village in Israel. Quite possibly where this webcam is hidden. These methods date back to teh 1930s, and I am guessing this is a family farm, with the chicken barn in a back lot. The barn needs electricity to operate the feeding machine, and the lighting, and it has to have truck access. So it’s not like it takes a Mission Impossible crew to sneak near it and into it. And htere are plenty of hidden crannies to hide things like a tap iinto the power. Add a SIM card to upload the images, and a camera powered from the tap, and aimed at this cage, and it will not be found for a while.

• [Anonymous]

  Kudos to the web-cammers! Cases of abuse are widespread and well-documented. Anytime someone turns on the video camera, they can find abuse because it is standard industry practice–and for a very good reason. Abusing animals adds a large percentage to the profits of factory farmers. The more animals are crammed into smaller spaces, moved quicker through assembly lines, and treated as machines instead of the creatures they are, the more money they make. That’s why the tail-docking, castration, debeaking and overcrowding are standard practices. It’s cheaper that way.

  Last year several spokespersons for the US egg industry admitted that smothering live male chicks or grinding them up in a wood-chipper was standard practice. Of course males are not needed to produce eggs. That industry can advocate and admit to this practice with a straight face tells us about the depths of their inhumanity.

  I hope the web cams keep on exposing the truth!

• [Anonymous]

  AWESOME! Sick and tired of barbaric, callous humans who value nothing but themselves, money and profit. Exposure is always the best method for sub-humans who think they’re getting away with abuse and torture.
  I say MORE hidden cameras everywhere to expose the atrocities!

• [Anonymous]

  There was a study years ago to determine how much room a chicken needed to avoid feeling stressed. A cage with moving walls was built that responded to the chicken’s behavior. The idea was that the final size of the cage would be stress free. It was a failure. The walls kept compressing (not killing) the chickens. The conclusion was chickens don’t have a sense of personal space.

  None of us ever want to see animals mistreated. For our own sake as much as theirs, they should be treated with care. But part of the equation should take into account different animals (ourselves included) have different views on what is a decent life. Chickens may not care if they are packed like sardines and filthy. But that set a minimum of care. We should treat them better.

  Then kill them, fry them, and eat them.

  • [Anonymous]

    None of us ever want to see animals mistreated.

    Excuse me, are you from this planet?

    Here on Earth (motto:At Least We Have Parsley) little boys burn ants with a magnifying glass for fun, and slaughterhouse workers have to be psychologically tested to filter out sadistic psychopaths who are so obsessed with torturing animals that they actually slow down meat production.

  • [travtastic]

    Source?

• [Anonymous]

  Dear Factory farmers

  1) Place smart child or average adult in front of computer with web page open to webcam feed

  2) send dull-witted adults with bright BLUE AND RED lights into the farms

  3) Hand child (or adult) walkie-talkie and ask them to announce loudly when a blue or red light is seen on camera by announcing HOTTER OR COLDER when it gets brighter

  4) Find Camera through a fairly simple process.

  Or possibly Discover the Camera is really in a set somewhere like the moon landing?

• [JorgeBurgos]

  Call me cynical, but what are the odds that there is no farm and that this group just staged this themselves?

  I think you underestimate the size of some of these farms – some farms have hundreds of thousands of chickens in them. If the location was not clear from the video, it could take weeks to search every cage for the camera.

• [ChibiR]

  “Exactly how the group smuggled in a webcam, and where it is concealed, remain a mystery. The location and identity of the farm also remain secret.”

  Call me cynical, but what are the odds that there is no farm and that this group just staged this themselves? Because that sounds somewhat more plausible than people smuggling a webcam and a freaking computer (“We had to use small yet reliable equipment that could transmit continuously from the chicken coop to a PC hidden in its vicinity,” – from the Guardian article linked in the source) into some farm without at least the computer being found quickly. I know computers and cameras can be small these days, but they still at least need power, and I don’t really think that the chicken coop areas have many places to plug in your devices.

  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t approve of mistreating poor animals, and I’m not trying to smear the organization (which I know almost literally nothing about). But when people with an agenda (no matter how noble) claim to have successfully smuggled a camera and laptop into such a farm and that it’s still not found… just before a parliamentary vote on whether to ban battery cages… I just dunno. Maybe somebody did manage to pull of this stunt, or maybe somebody figured that the ends justify the means.

  I really hope this doesn’t lead to some epic flaming or so – please just accept that somebody has doubts despite supporting the group’s message.

  • [flosofl]

    Yeah, I was wondering that myself. The thing that got me was the whole “unable to find the webcam” part. Wouldn’t they just have to see the video being broadcast and be able to deduce it’s location to a fairly small and searchable area?

    • [dragonfrog]

      Depends on where it’s focused. If it’s a panoramic shot of a chicken barn, yes. But if it’s a closeup of the back of a rack of chicken cages, showing a few cages that look exactly like all the other in the place, then finding it would mean practically dismantling the whole place – and that’s assuming you even know that your particular barn is the one being broadcast.

      Which, given the negligible amount of money the farm stands to loose due to this cam, vs the expense of looking exhaustively, seems very unlikely.