Americans Are Trained Livestock, by Hardscrabble Farmer

From Hardscrabble Farmer, on a guest post at theburningplatform.com:

When I step into the orchard the turkey poults come running. They will follow me around while I do my chores like a litter of puppies. Ditto the piglets, lambs, calves, etc because I always feed them treats like fruit drops, kitchen scraps, etc. This continues with regularity right up until the time we either sell off or slaughter. On the occasion when a hauler comes to pick up a steer or a hog I have them park their trailer and open the door and then I walk over to wherever I have the animal that is going to market, open the gate and without lead or prod walk the animal to the trailer and it loads itself. Every time. Most livestock related injuries occur during times of stress, particularly when animals are being loaded/unloaded for shipment.

Most haulers/ranchers/slaughterhouses use negative compliance tools/techniques like push panels, prods, load vocalization, etc. People like Temple Grandin have done a great deal of research to show that this type of animal handling is not only stressful to the animal and affects the final product due to the release of certain hormones and chemicals into the bloodstream, but increases risk to handlers. It is far safer, expeditious and easier to get the animal to what you want it to because it thinks its doing what IT wants to…

You should hear the comments I hear from guys who do this for a living when they come to get an animal from the farm- “I’ve never seen an animal load easier than that, how’d you get him to do that, that was easy, blah, blah, blah…” Like what we do is magic rather than reinforced behavior.

Even the dogs- the only animals that we don’t eat- are given treats every single morning for dutifully watching over the flocks and herds all night long against predators while we sleep so that the very first sight of me at dawn triggers a Pavlovian response from them for a job well done. BISCUITS!!!

There are two choices for what we are witnessing in the behavior of the Federal Government towards the “consumers” as they like to call us and you can choose to be amazed like the livestock hauler or you can decide for yourself what’s happening.

A) The government really loves you, so much in fact that they will pay you every single month without fail enough money to feed everyone in your family AND provide free food for 2/3 of the meals your children eat AS A BONUS to the money they already paid you to feed them, because THEY TOTALLY LOVE YOU AND CARE ABOUT YOU AND IT MAKES THEM SUPER DOOPER HAPPY TO SEE EVERYONE SO WELL FED.

Or…

B) At a time in the future not known to you the government will want you to get in the truck so that they can give you a free ride to a place where they will give you something really good to eat. BECAUSE THEY LOVE YOU SO MUCH.

There is no other possible explanation for what they are doing and for how people are willing to accept something as fundamental as feeding your children as a government obligation rather than a parental one.

What you are witnessing is not benevolence, it is positive reinforcement training.

And as Forest Gump once said, that’s all I’ve got to say about that.