So how did your book, Slaughterhouse, come about and what impact did that have?

Well, the book came about because I worked with all the major television networks in the United States to expose these horrendous violations that I documented nationwide as slaughterhouses.

And while the networks, some of them came out in the field with me, interviewed the workers that I had taken affidavits from, got videotape, all sorts of stuff.

And all the networks decided to kill the story based on the fact that they thought it was too disturbing and viewers would change the channel.

So that was very disturbing to me that nobody was going to expose what was going on in slaughterhouses.

On top of that, when I worked at the largest animal protection organization in the United States, I had a really bad boss and he wouldn't let me expose anything.

He told me I couldn't work on slaughterhouse issues any longer.

Finally, from me, Gail, tell us, if you will, about Dexter, a dog walking on... his hind legs that you describe it in the book and the public interest which Dexter's case generated and what link you make to that to getting the public similarly interested in fond animals.

Just for be- just for being rude to you, that's fantastic.

[laughs] But it forced me to find a job elsewhere, and Humane Farming Association was on my radar, because they did things the way I thought they should be done.

And when I went to work for Humane Farming Association, they gave me the means and the ability to do exactly what I needed to do to expose, um, slaughter violations across the country.

So that right there was incredible.

My supervisor's the one that said, "If the media refuses to expose your findings," which it did, which was very frustrating, "then why don't you write a book about it?" And that's when I wrote Slaughterhouse, my first book.

Humane Farming Association has about 300,000 members.

It conducts anti-cruelty investigations, like the kind of things that I do.

Mm.

so bad you are also dealing with a serious mysterious health condition during all of this how did that affect your day-to-day work in the field

Oh, it definitely did.

It was really scary driving because I couldn't tell depth perception.

Things didn't make sense.

And it was really scary traveling across the country.

But It didn't stop me because it was too important to get this information out to the general public.

That's what's always been important to me.

Please tell us all about it.

Mm-hmm.

And they seemed to, uh, become more sadistic and took out their frustrations on the animals.

For example, when the hogs were not- when the line speed was so fast and the stunning device was actually, the electricity was actually reduced so it wouldn't bruise the hog's loins, which was ridiculous.

So it wasn't stunning them properly, and they weren't being rendered unconscious.

And so, uh, the animal would get up to the sticker, the individual who cuts the animals' throats, and, um, they'd be kicking and squealing.

And these workers were so frustrated because they had talked to their supervisors about this, who kept turning down the stunning current, and, um, they took out their frustrations on the animals.

It was really horrible the things they did to the animals.

Wow

What, what can you tell us as, as somebody who has spent so much time trying to find out the reality of factory farms, how it contrasts with that image people are encouraged to maintain?

Yeah, I mean the way animals are kept, like take, uh, take breeding sows for instance, as you well know.

You know about this better than anybody, but I mean, the fact that breeding sows are kept in gestation crates which are two feet wide or less, some of them are 19 inches at the factory farms that we visited, and seven feet long and these...

the pregnant mother sows spend their entire lives living inside these crates.

I mean, that's not... that's how it's done on factory farms.

Millions and millions of breeding sows spend their lives in gestation crates and they get...

they go crazy.

Mm-hmm.