This is the dumbest thing I’ve heard of since Bush thought a good way to boost the economy would be to just give free money to people.

Apparently, the Ottawa government decided the best way for pig farmers to get out of the pork-price collapse mess will be to pay them to slaughter 150,000 pigs this summer. Though a small amount of the pigs will go to dog food, 25% of the pigs will go to food banks, and the vast majority of the killed animals will go directly to the incinerator. So the thinking is very similar to Bush’s idea. Bush: People don’t have enough money, so let’s just give EVERYONE money! Ottawa: Pork prices are low, so let’s increase prices by killing a shit-ton of pigs!

Not to mention that all of this valuable food is going completely to waste as millions of people around the world are starving (I was going to post a link to pictures of starving children, but you get the idea. If you want the full effect, just google image search “Starving Africa”).

However, I guess I’m kind of an asshole and more sensitive to Animal Cruelty concerns than human cruelty concerns so this section really kind of got me seething:

To ensure that the animals are treated in a humane way, producers are being encouraged to ship their pigs to approved slaughter plants. Producers who live in areas without plants will be asked to ship their animals to a province with such a facility.

But there is nothing to prevent producers from killing the animals on their farms themselves.

Sounds on the level to me! Rednecks told to kill a shit-load of animals at once. Sounds like a great idea. I’m sure many farmers will choose to pay to ship their hundreds of pigs to a slaughterhouse (and, oh yeah, why are slaughterhouses considered “humane”? Have you seen those videos??) rather than just go out back with a shotgun. The amount of times the word “euthanasia” was used in the article is kind of sickening, as it is not a “good” death for anyone except for the pig farmers who get an immediate payoff from it in the short term, but will run into bigger problems in the long run as they continue overbreeding the swine.

Anyway, sorry to drop this depressing bit of a post on you… but I’m off to make some BLTs!