I have only been in one hog confinement facility, ever. So, I can’t say what’s typical; only that the pictures in the film were not typical of what I saw.
I have been in poultry plants. The latter showed the nastiest part of the process; called “live dock”, but I suppose that was the point, to show the nastiest part. I will add, however, that we raised what are called “range chickens” now, when I was a kid, and there’s just no way to kill a chicken much more humanely than what they do on “live dock”. The way farmers used to kill them was nastier.
Chicken catching is similar to what was shown. But they don’t throw them around. Catching crews get penalized for any kind of bruising, cuts or whatever, so they avoid it.
I have been in integrator houses and egg houses, and the film was accurate in some respects, but not in others; particularly not the egg houses. I have never been in an egg house where several chickens were in some little cage. There are individual cages that the hens go into on their own to lay their eggs, then go back out into open areas where there is food and water.
If people don’t think chicken houses in “old time farming” operations were full of feces, they don’t know much about “old time farming”. Chickens drop their loads wherever they are, including sometimes in their own nests. Yet, in “old time farms” they went into the chicken houses readily to roost or lay eggs. In modern integrator houses, they line the floors with deep linings of either wood shavings or rice hulls. They take out the whole floor lining after each flock. You smell fecal material, all right, but certainly no worse than “Grandma’s and Grandpa’s” chicken house; better, really.
Perhaps the most laughable part of the chicken tale was that business about chickens’ legs breaking because their breasts are so big. Yes, they do breed them to have big breasts. But there is a poultry processing plant in my town, and a hatchery. They give away baby chicks that aren’t perfectly conformed, and people raise them to maturity. There’s nothing wrong with them. There is also a rule that if a chicken gets outside the plant fence, it’s free to anybody who wants to bother to catch it. People do, all the time. They take them home for their own eggs or meat or whatever, and there’s nothing wrong with them at all. Their legs don’t break. I think the producers of the film were sold a bill of goods on that one.
The treatment to beef cattle shown is totally inaccurate. Reality is much more like the idyllic scene toward the end of the film. Steers and heifers destined for slaughter do, indeed, get fed grain for a short time just before slaughter, and that’s true. Feed lots are not pleasant, but neither was Grandpa’s cow barn. In fact, most beef producers (around here anyway) never put cows in barns because it’s unhealthy for them. They do just fine out in the open. And no cow-calf producer with half a brain (and the right climate) would feed them on anything but grass or hay. I’ll grant that some do feed grain supplements, but it’s unnecessary, expensive and, in my view, not very smart. Mistreating cattle is stupid. Buyers can spot every injury and defect, and you’ll lose money mistreating the animals.
I don’t personally dehorn, brand or castrate. Almost nobody brands anymore, so I don’t know where they came up with that as being “typical”. It’s hard on the animal and ruins part of the hide, and can get infected. I don’t know anybody who brands. I have the vet come to do dehorns and castrations. My impression of both is that it’s something equivalent to having a tooth pulled for a human. Not pleasant. Obviously painful. Very short-lived. If an animal has good-sized horns, the vets will inject painkiller into the flesh at the base of the horn before doing it.
Why do people dehorn? Two reasons. First, the buyers want them that way, and that’s related to the second reason. A cow, steer or bull with horns can very seriously injure another animal, and will often do it no matter what the environment is like. I personally leave the horns on herd bulls and on “lead cows”. The lead cows are the dominant animals in a herd no matter what. Since no animal will challenge them anyway, they don’t hurt the others. It’s the struggle for dominance lower down in the “pecking order” where horns will cause injuries. Bulls only fight other bulls, so you don’t keep two of them in the same pasture unless it’s an enormous huge pasture and there are too many cows for one bull. Even then, it’s risky. Why do I leave any of the horns on? Because I think they’re picturesque and I like to see a few of them, and one or two in a herd do no harm. No other reason. Well, I ought to add, as a negative, that horned stock are harder to get into a stanchion for veterinary treatment. It takes more skill to do it. I guess I would also have to admit that any cow can kill you, given the right circumstance. Easier to kill you with horns, I guess, though a dehorned cow can kill a human very quickly too. I had to laugh at the farmer (I guess he really was one, not some fool of an actor) who went up to the newborn calf in an open field with what I think was the mother right there. I can’t think of a single thing one can do with cattle that can more easily lead to one being killed than that. I don’t care how tame cattle are, mother cows will often try to kill you if you get too close to a newborn calf, and in an open field, there’s no place to go. Cattle are remarkably fast when they want to be. She’s got you.
On the whole, (and admitting there are gaps in my knowledge) I would say the film is fundamentally sentimental, not really very realistic in a number of ways.
But I think this is because of this stupid office computer not letting me view it! 
) I hope y’all remember that JESUS Himself ate fish, and never counselled anybody to cease doing so.
