When I was 16 years old, I was invited to a picnic. When I arrived, I was shocked to realize that I'd actually been invited to a pig roast—big difference. The sight of a whole charred pig turning on a spit with an apple stuck in his mouth was all I needed to convince myself that I'd never eat pork, i.e. pig, again.

The pig was already dead, and I knew nothing about his journey from his mother's womb to the fire pit. I didn't need to—after all, I called myself an "animal lover," so it was a simple, logical decision. If I wouldn't eat my dog, I wasn't going to eat a pig.

Despite the overwhelming evidence that pigs and other animals on factory farms routinely endure horrific abuses, millions of people continue to happily chow down on hot dogs and ham. Today, Fox News offers food for thought—the Web site is featuring exclusive undercover video footage taken by Mercy for Animals at Country View Family Farms, one of Pennsylvania's largest pork producers and a Hatfield Quality Meat supplier.

The video shows a slew of horrors, including workers as they hurl baby pigs and slam them into transport carts, pick piglets up by their ears and tails, cut off the animals' tails with pliers, and rip off their testicles with their bare hands without any painkillers. (The sound of screaming piglets in the video made my skin crawl.) Their squealing mothers are shown scrambling to escape workers who slam spiked mallets into the animals' sides. Many pigs bear sores from their constant confinement—one mother pig suffered an excruciating prolapsed rectum for at least 13 days before she was killed.

Folks, this video is tough to view (I had to pause it three times), but as caring people, we owe it to ourselves and the animals it shows to watch it and then pass it on to others—along with a link to GoVeg.com. You can share the video and the link via e-mail, via a link on your Facebook page, and via "tweets." Anyone you know who still needs convincing that animals suffer on factory farms won't question it after they've watched this footage.

Posted by Karin Bennett

aact / CC

Thanks to global pandemonium revolving around swine flu, almost everything has ground to a halt in Mexico; schools in New York, California, and Texas have closed; Europeans are being urged to postpone travel to the U.S. and Mexico, and sore throat sufferers everywhere are dialing their doctors to ask, "Is it really just my allergies … or have I got swine flu?"

You know who's to blame? Yup, filthy factory farms. A headline in Vera Cruz's La Marcha points the finger at gi-normous pig-breeding farms operated by a subsidiary of Smithfield Foods, the world's largest hog producer. Local residents reportedly believe that feces from the pig farms has contaminated the water and the air, spreading the virus to people. Another article in the Huffington Post quotes La Jornada newspaper, which points the finger at a factory farm in La Gloria, saying, "Clouds of flies emanate from the lagoons where Granjas Carroll discharges the fecal waste from its hog barns …." Yup, knew all that.

Because human consumption of meat is the sole reason that these factory farms exist, PETA has fired off a letter to Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard urging him to encourage residents to go vegetarian, noting that such an action could help prevent future outbreaks. We're also shipping emergency Spanish-language copies of our "Vegetarian Starter Kit" in case residents need helpful tips when making the shift.

If you live in the U.S., encourage members of Congress to stop the spread of these diseases by ending factory farming.

Posted by Karin Bennett