Skinny Bastards. Chapter 6. You Are What You Eat.

Now would be a good time to reflect on the adage, “You are what you eat.” This statement, in all its simplicity, is brilliant. You are what you eat. You are a human body comprised of organs, blood and guts, and other shit. The food you put into your body works its way through your organs and bloodstream and is actually part of who you are. So every time you put crap in your body, you are crap.

Even knowing how abysmal the living conditions are for animals on factory farms, you cannot begin to imagine what the slaughter practices are like. “Humane” protocol calls for animals to be “stunned” before they are slaughtered. For cows, this means getting a metal bolt shot into the skull and then retracted. When done properly, using working equipment, this renders the cow unconscious. But time is money, and slaughterhouses operate at lightning speeds, some killing one animal every three seconds. Because thousands of frightened, struggling cows are not easy to stun, it is extremely common for a “stunner” to miss his mark.

Panicked hogs, also difficult to “hit,” are stunned with an electric device. And if the jolt is too high, it bruises and bloodies the hogs’ flesh (bad for business). Because business comes first on factory farms, the jolt is lowered, despite the fact that it doesn’t properly stun the hogs.

Stunned or not, cows and hogs are then “strung up” from the ceiling by a chain attached to their leg(s).

In theory, while they dangle there, they are supposed to be unconscious. But often they are fully conscious, struggling, screaming, and fearfully staring at the workers while they have their throats stabbed open.

Next, they travel along a “bleed rail,” where they should bleed to death. But again, these large, frightened, struggling, conscious animals are difficult targets and the “stickers” (workers who cut their throats) don’t always get a “good cut.” Before cows can bleed to death, they are sent on their way to the “head-skinners,” where the skin is sliced from their heads while they are still conscious.

Of course, this is excruciatingly painful, and the cows kick and struggle frantically. To avoid getting injured by the struggling animal, workers will sometimes sever the spinal cord with a knife blow to the back of the head. This paralyzes the animal below the neck so that the worker is safe. But these cows can still feel their skin being sliced away from their faces.

Next, their legs and head are chopped off, their entrails removed from their bodies, and then, finally, they are split in half. Often before hogs can bleed to death, they are dunked fully conscious into 140-degree scalding water to remove the hair from their bodies.

Chickens, because they are so overcrowded and stressed, frequently peck each other, so their beaks are literally chopped off their faces.

Even though chickens and turkeys comprise more than 98 percent of all land animals slaughtered for food, Congress exempted them from the Humane Slaughter Act, so there is no requirement to stun them.

But because it is easier to handle chickens that aren’t fighting for their lives, their heads are dragged through a water bath that has been electrically charged. This paralyzes the birds, but does not stun them.

They are snatched up, shackled upside down, and their throats are slashed by machine at the rate of thousands per hour.

Next, they are dunked in scalding water to loosen their feathers. Again, they are supposed to be dead at this point, but if the machine misses its mark, or the chickens haven’t bled to death, they are boiled alive. Then they are placed into a series of machines that literally beat their feathers off of them, still alive and having just been boiled.

All the while, they are being handled like rubber toys: grabbed by their necks, feet, or wings and thrown around.

You get the idea.

In egg-laying factories, male baby chicks are completely useless to farmers because they don’t produce eggs. So workers snatch up chicks speeding by on a conveyer belt, quickly glance at their undersides, and then toss the “useless” males into the garbage or into macerators—machines that chop, tear, and break them into tiny, little pieces.

Yes. Literally. Millions of male baby chicks are shredded alive or simply thrown away as trash, left to languish.

In her book Slaughterhouse, Gail Eisnitz, chief investigator for the Humane Farming Association, interviewed dozens of slaughterhouse workers throughout the country. Every single one admitted to abusing animals or neglecting to report those who did.

The following are quotes from slaughterhouse workers taken from her book. (They are quite graphic and difficult to read, but we implore you to read each one. Don’t be an asshole. You can endure reading it if animals have to endure suffering it.) “I seen them take those stunners—they’re about as long as a yard stick—and shove it up the hog’s ass. They do it with cows, too. And in their ears, their eyes, down their throat. They’ll be squealing, and they’ll just shove it right down there.”208 “Hogs get stressed out pretty easy. If you prod them too much they have heart attacks. If you get a hog in a chute that’s had the shit prodded out of him and has a heart attack or refuses to move, you take a meat hook and hook it into his bunghole [anus]. You’re dragging these hogs alive, and a lot of times the meat hook rips out of the bunghole. I’ve seen hams—thighs—completely ripped open. I’ve also seen intestines come out. If the hog collapses near the front of the chute, you shove the meat hook into his cheek and drag him for ward.”209 “Or in their mouth. The roof of their mouth. And they’re still alive.”210 “Pigs on the kill floor have come up and nuzzled me like a puppy.

Two minutes later I had to kill them—beat them to death with a pipe.”211 “These hogs get up to the scalding tank, hit the water and start screaming and kicking. Sometimes they thrash so much they kick water out of the tank. . . . Sooner or later they drown. There’s a rotating arm that pushes them under, no chance for them to get out. I’m not sure if they burn to death before they drown, but it takes them a couple of minutes to stop thrashing.”212 “Sometimes I grab it [a hog] by the ear and stick it right through the eye. I’m not just taking its eye out, I’ll go all the way to the hilt, right up through the brain, and wiggle the knife.”213 “Only you don’t just kill it, you go in hard, push hard, blow the windpipe, make it drown in its own blood. Split its nose. A live hog would be running around the pit. It would just be looking up at me and I’d be sticking, and I would just take my knife and—reek—cut its eye out while it was just sitting there. And this hog would just scream.”214 “I could tell you horror stories about cattle getting their heads stuck under the gate guards, and the only way you can get it out is to cut their heads off while they’re still alive.”215 “He’ll kick them [hogs], fork them, use anything he can get his hands on. He’s already broken three pitchforks so far this year, just jabbing them. He doesn’t care if he hits its eyes, head, butt. He jabs them so hard he busts the wooden handles. And he clubs them over the back.”216 “I’ve seen live animals shackled, hoisted, stuck, and skinned. Too many to count, too many to remember. It’s just a process that’s continually there. I’ve seen shackled beef looking around before they’ve been stuck. I’ve seen hogs (that are supposed to be lying down) on the bleeding conveyor get up after they’ve been stuck. I’ve seen hogs in the scalding tub trying to swim.”217 “I seen guys take broomsticks and stick it up the cow’s behind, screwing them with a broom.”218 “I’ve drug cows till their bones start breaking, while they were still alive. Bringing them around the corner and they get stuck up in the doorway, just pull them till their hide be ripped, till the blood just drip on the steel and concrete. Breaking their legs. . . . And the cow be crying with its tongue stuck out. They pull him till his neck just pop.”219 “One time I took my knife—it’s sharp enough—and I sliced off the end of a hog’s nose, just like a piece of bologna. The hog went crazy for a few seconds. Then it just sat there looking kind of stupid. So I took a handful of salt brine and ground it into his nose. Now that hog really went nuts, pushing its nose all over the place. I still had a bunch of salt left in my hand—I was wearing a rubber glove—and I stuck the salt right up the hog’s ass. The poor hog didn’t know whether to shit or go blind.”220 “Nobody knows who’s responsible for correcting animal abuse at the plant. The USDA does zilch.”221 Eisnitz chronicled the constant failure of U.S. Department of Agriculture inspectors to stop this abuse and their willingness to look the other way. In addition, she exposed the USDA’s blatant tolerance for allowing contaminated meat into the human food supply.

Think about it. Ten billion land animals a year! Do you think the USDA has enough inspectors to supervise the humane and safe slaughter of ten billion animals a year? Of course the inspectors tolerate abuse and contaminated meat; they’re overwhelmed, to say the least. Even if every single inspector did a good job (they don’t), the factory workers can easily bypass the system. Eisnitz interviewed one worker from a horse slaughterhouse, who said, “Might be part of him’s [a contaminated horse] bad, might be the pneumonia’s traveled everywhere. I’d drag him back, and my boss would tell me to cut the hindquarters off and bring him into the cooler. The meat’s sup posed to be condemned, but still you’d cut it up and bag it.” When Eisnitz asked, “But don’t they have to be stamped ‘USDA inspect ed’?” he responded, “He [his boss] got the stamper. He can stamp it himself when the doc leaves. . . . You take a condemned horse, skin him, cut him up, sell the meat. . . . We’ve sold it as beef.”222 According to one former Perdue worker, the poultry plants are filthy. She said there were flies, rats, and 5-inch long flying cockroaches covering the walls and floors.

Believe it or not, it gets worse: “After they are hung, sometimes the chickens fall off into the drain that runs down the middle of the line. This is where roaches, intestines, diseased parts, fecal contamination, and blood are washed down. Workers [vomit] into the drain. . . . Employees are constantly chewing and spitting out snuff and tobacco on the floor. . . Sometimes they have to relieve themselves on the floor. . . . The Perdue supervisors told us to take the fallen chickens out of the drain and send them down the line.”224 A USDA inspector said of the cockroaches, “One time we shined a flashlight into a hole they were crawling in and out, and they were so thick it was like maggots, you couldn’t even see the surface.”225 A worker at another poultry plant said, “Every day, I saw black chicken, green chicken, chicken that stank, and chicken with feces on it. Chicken like this is supposed to be thrown away, but instead it would be sent down the line to be processed.”226 Another worker at another plant said, “I personally have seen rotten meat— you can tell by the odor. This rotten meat is mixed with the fresh meat and sold for baby food. We are asked to mix it with the fresh food, and this is the way it is sold. You can see the worms inside the meat.”227 No comment. We are simply speechless.

Animals are intelligent, emotional, social creatures. Researchers at Bristol University in Britain discovered that cows actually nurture friendships and bear grudges. One study showed cows displaying excitement while solving intellectual challenges.

Chickens are as smart as mammals, including some primates, according to research done by animal behaviorist Dr. Chris Evans of Macquarie University in Australia. They are apt pupils and can learn by watching the mistakes of others. One researcher conducted a study that demonstrated chickens’ ability to use switches and levers to change the temperature of their surroundings. A PBS documentary revealed chickens’ love for television and music.

And Discovery reported recently, “Chickens do not just live in the present, but can anticipate the future and demonstrate self-control, something previously attributed only to humans and other primates.”230 Pigs can play video games! They’ve been labeled as more intelligent than dogs and three-year-old humans. They too can indicate their temperature preferences.

Even fish have feelings. Dr. Donald Broom, scientific adviser to the British government, explains, “The scientific literature is quite clear. Anatomically, physiologically and biologically, the pain system in fish is virtually the same as in birds and animals.” Fish, like “higher vertebrates,” have neurotransmitters similar to endorphins that relieve suffering. Of course, the only reason for their nervous systems to produce painkillers is to relieve pain.

For some lame-ass reason, there’s this bullshit notion that men who eat meat, or ride bulls, or hunt and fish are “manly.” We’ve even seen redneck bumper stickers claiming, “Real men eat meat.” Sorry, but there’s nothing manly about contributing to the torture and slaughter of innocent animals. It’s actually selfish, scary, and barbaric.

Animals hear the screaming and crying of other animals being slaughtered and are terrified. They know they are about to be killed, and they are panic-stricken. When their young are taken from them, cows kick stall walls in rage and frustration and literally cry with grief.

Think of how you feel when you are angry, afraid, and grief-stricken.

Bear in mind the physical feelings that accompany these emotions.

These emotions—fear, grief, and rage—produce chemical changes in our bodies. They do the same to animals. Their blood pressures rise.

Adrenaline courses through their bodies. You are eating high blood pressure, stress, and adrenaline. You are eating fear, grief, and rage.

You are eating suffering, horror, and murder. You are eating cruelty.

Real men eat meat? Although a minuscule percentage of meat in the United States comes from free-range farms, how do you even know it is really free range? Companies want us to believe that products labeled “free-range” or “free-roaming” are derived from animals who spent their short lives outdoors, enjoying sunshine, fresh air, and the company of other animals. But labels other than “organic” on egg cartons are not subject to any government regulations. In addition, the USDA doesn’t regulate “free-range” or “free-roaming” claims for beef products.

Because there are no agencies governing these claims, do you take the word of someone who makes a living on blood money? And even if the farm was truly free-range and humane, the animals are still being sent to horrific slaughterhouses. (An undercover video of a kosher slaughterhouse revealed animals suffering the worst abuse and torture. Check it out at HumaneKosher.com.) Many animals don’t even survive the transport from their factory or free-range farm to slaughter. Up until very recently, the only law in existence dictating care for transported animals was related to train transport. But it just so happens that 95 percent of animals are transported by truck.

It’s difficult to believe the new guidelines are being complied with or enforced. Animals receive little to no food or water or protection from the elements. Millions of animals are dead on arrival or too injured or sick to move. They don’t get to stop for bathroom breaks, so the animals are forced to stand in their own urine and feces. In the wintertime, the animals’ flesh and feet will actually freeze to the bottom and sides of the truck. So upon arrival, they are literally ripped away from the truck. One worker interviewed by Eisnitz said, “They freeze to that steel railing. They’re still alive, and they’ll hook a cable on it and pull it out, maybe pull a leg off.”236 Assuming you started with a healthy animal (highly unlikely), you’ve now eaten hormones, pesticides, steroids, antibiotics, fear, grief, and rage. You are what you eat. But what if the animal wasn’t healthy? Animals that are too sick or injured to walk are literally dragged to slaughter—either by forklift, or by chaining the animal to a truck. The USDA still allows these animals, referred to as “downers,” to be slaughtered for human consumption237 despite the growing number of mad cow disease cases (a deadly and incurable disease that can be transmitted to humans through the consumption of cow flesh).

Consumer and animal rights groups have been lobbying to keep downers out of the food chain for more than a decade—to no avail.

So in addition to all the other filth you’re eating, you’re also eating whatever illness the animal has. Real men eat meat? Let’s make believe that all the animals killed for human consumption are healthy, happy, free of antibiotics, steroids, and pesticides and are humanely raised and slaughtered. Pretend you are eating “perfect meat.” Great. But what exactly are you eating? Have you thought about this even once in the last decade, or ever? “Meat” is the decomposing, decaying, rotting flesh of a dead animal. As soon as an animal dies, it starts “breaking down.” How long has passed between when the animal was slaughtered and the time you are eating it? It could be weeks, even months. You want to put a dead animal corpse— that has been rotting away for months—in your mouth? In your body? Because meat is muscle tissue, it oxidizes in an open environment and turns brown. So most meat markets will scrape off the brown parts to make it look more appealing. Another trick of the trade is using tinted lighting in open meat cases to enhance the meat’s color.

Restaurants and ranchers might call their meat “aged to perfection,” but no matter how you slice it, it’s still a putrefying corpse.

Real men eat meat? Just because you can’t see what’s happening doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Every time you have a craving for meat or dairy, remember what goes on inside every slaughterhouse, processing plant, and grocery store. Linda McCartney said it best: “If slaughterhouses had glass walls, we’d all be vegetarians.”239 For added motivation with your new diet, visit GoVeg.com and order a free vegetarian starter kit.

So now you are officially vegan, a person who doesn’t eat any animal products. No meat, chicken, pork, fish, eggs, milk, cheese, or butter.

Not only are you a real man, but you’re hotter than fucking ever.

Seriously. There’s nothing hotter than a man who is a) compassionate, b) selfless, and c) secure enough with his manhood that he doesn’t need to eat animal products to prove he’s packing heat. Yes, it can be challenging to avoid animal products, but you will reap the karmic rewards of being vegan. For starters, the ratio of vegan women to vegan men is about a million to one, so you’ll have your pick of the litter. But more important, you’re sparing the lives of approximately one hundred animals a year.

And every environmentalist knows that factory farming is completely destroying the environment. As ridiculous as it sounds, the methane resulting from the burps and farts of cows and pigs is directly responsible for global warming.

The nitrous oxide resulting from the manure decomposition of ten billion farm animals a year is another major contributor.

And all the carbon dioxide caused by the production of meat and dairy is yet another factor. Believe it or not, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, raising animals for food causes significantly more greenhouse gas emissions than cars —about forty percent more! This warrants repeating: raising animals for food causes forty percent more green house gas emissions than cars. So you’d do more good for the planet switching from a meat-based diet to a plant-based diet than from trading in your Hummer for a Prius. (While that’s true, it’s gotta be said: Hummers are for dicks. Think about it.) According to the United Nations’ 400-page report, eating meat is the number one human cause of global warming, “one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global,” and causes “problems of land degradation, climate change and air pollution, water shortage and water pollution, and loss of biodiversity.”245 According to the Environmental Protection Agency, factory farms are the largest polluters of U.S. waterways.

Try to imagine, if you even can, the sheer volume of shit and piss of ten billion farm animals, every year, in the United States alone. It’s horrifying. Think about how much land, food, water, and energy it takes just to grow food for these farm animals. Now think about how many resources it takes to transport this food to the animals. Now think about how much land, water, and energy it takes to raise these animals. Now get this: The amount of land, food, water, and energy used to raise ten billion animals a year for slaughter could be used to grow food for all of the starving people in the world. The United Nations called the diversion of crops to be turned into biofuels “a crime against humanity.”247 Agreed—100 million tons of crops that go to cars instead of starving people is wrong, wrong, wrong.

But what about the more than 750 million tons of corn and wheat that go to feed farm animals?249 Or the 80 per cent of the global soy crop that is also fed to them and not people?250 Wrong on so many levels. Please, don’t just skip ahead without fully grasping this: your being vegan is actually a step toward ending world hunger. Really.

So you shouldn’t eat cows, chickens, pigs, fish, milk, cheese, or eggs. So what the hell should you eat? Pretty much everything else: fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts, seeds, and whole grains. Deep down, you’ve known all along that these foods are best for you; now it’s time to get back on track. Our diets have strayed so far off course from where they belong; we’ve allowed meat to take center stage, with grains and vegetables playing supporting roles. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

There is a plethora of great-tasting, healthy, wholesome foods that you’ve likely been neglecting for years. Well, those days are over. Get back to the basics and enjoy all these excellent foods you forgot about. And enjoy all the health benefits they offer.


Can you remember back to your grade-school days when you learned about photosynthesis? Plants store the sun’s energy, which we receive by eating them. If you can, just picture the light energy from the sun beaming down to the vegetables and fruits, and as we eat those foods, imagine that energy being transmitted into our bodies.

Our nervous systems are maintained and stimulated by this light.

What an amazing gift from nature—to be able to eat such pure foods that give our bodies so much! However, be advised, all fruits and vegetables are not created equal. Plants need vitamins and minerals to function and grow properly. When they are sprayed with pesticides and grown in chemically treated soil, they won’t absorb all the proper nutrients. This results in a loss of enzymes. So, organic fruits and vegetables—ones that have been grown in pure, untreated soil and without pesticides—have far more enzymes than their conventionally grown counterparts.

Any scientist can tell you that food has an “energy” or “life” to it.

Anyone with common sense can tell you that eating a live, fresh fruit is healthier than eating a cooked, canned, preserved one. Why? Because this “life” comes from the plant’s energy, nutrients, phyto chemicals, and enzymes. Enzymes are living biochemical factors that we need to survive. They are critical for digestion, breathing, reproduction, and the functioning of DNA and RNA. They also help repair and heal our organs, detoxify our bodies, carry out our nerve impulses, and help us think.

There are three types of enzymes: metabolic, digestive, and food.

Fortunately, we produce our own metabolic enzymes, which run the whole body, maintain our health, and defend us from illness and infection. But our own enzyme supplies are limited. So to continue healthy bodily functions, we need to supplement with food. When we eat, our bodies release digestive enzymes to break down the food. If we eat foods devoid of enzymes, such as meat, processed food, and even just overcooked food (high temperatures destroy enzymes), our bodies have to work much harder.

Harder work means using more of our precious enzymes. Over time, this can result in an enlargement of the digestive organs and the endocrine glands. (Studies have shown that the increased weight of these organs accompanies obesity.) This lack of enzymes can also cause a disruption in the body’s ability to make enough metabolic enzymes. But when we eat foods high in enzymes, such as fruits, salad, or lightly steamed veggies, we get an enzyme boost along with the meal, so our bodies don’t have to work so hard.

There is no greater defender of our bodies than enzymes. When not in use for digestion, enzymes are busy repairing and cleaning our bodies.

So don’t go throwing your enzymes away on shit! So how do we get these enzymes into our bodies? We just need to make the following foods part of our daily diets: fruits (especially pineapples, papayas, bananas, and mangos), raw or lightly steamed vegetables, raw nuts and seeds, wheat grass, sea vegetables, garlic, and legumes. Juicing is a great way to detoxify your body and get a lot of enzymes, but you must drink it right away.

As soon as a fruit is peeled, or cut, or juiced, it begins to lose its enzymes.

So, buying a gallon of fresh-squeezed juice isn’t as beneficial as making your own daily. Packaged juice has been pasteurized, and the heat destroys the enzymes. Granted, it’s still better to drink pasteurized juice than soda.

So if you can’t juice for yourself, do the best you can.

Well, there you have it. Fruits and vegetables are the answer. And unless you are an idiot who wants cancer, obesity, and enlarged organs, organic is the way to go. You are what you eat. (And you’re a real fucking man.)