Animal Agribusiness Continues Defensive Dance

A story in a Minnesota newspaper questions the legitimacy of an undercover video of an egg-laying facility.

Last month Washington, D.C.-based Compassion Over Killing released the video showing mummified hens at a supplier of Dunkin' Donuts, owned by Michael Foods.

Michael Foods claims that "[s]ome or all of the scenes showing dead birds being removed from cages were staged."

It's a ludicrous charge, and if the company actually believes that, they should file a defamation suit against COK. But they won't because 1) they know the video wasn't staged and 2) they don't want the negative publicity that will come from showing a jury and the media dead, rotting, mummified corpses stuck in cages with living, suffering birds.

The author of this piece, Tom Webb, chose to follow in the footsteps of countless reporters who have used the deceptively named Center for Consumer Freedom as a source.

Ironically David Martosko's first quote -- about PETA -- could just have easily referred to his own organization.

(The original headline for the story had to be retracted because PETA was not accused of staging videos. Yet Martosko went after the group anyhow.)

"PETA in particular has a long history of bending the truth and hiding its own complicity in some really shady stuff."

"Bending the truth"? "Hiding its own complicity in some really shady stuff"? Martosko, are you sure you're not talking about the CCF?

Regular readers of my blog know that the MO of the CCF is, in the words of its founder Rick Berman, "to shoot the messenger."

The people at the CCF bend the truth and, more likely, outright lie. And they hide the corporations that fund the organization, pretending they're working instead for average Americans.

Despite Webb's opinion that "[t]he general public, however, doesn't show many signs of giving up its" non-vegan foods, Michael Foods' accusation of a staged video shows how vulnerable the animal agribusiness industry is feeling right now.

(Undercover video image of a mummified chicken at a Michael Foods facility, courtesy of Compassion Over Killing.)