Farming Simulator 17 Needs to Get Real and Show the Truth About Modern Factory Farms
Farming Simulator, the popular agriculture-simulating video game, boasts that players can assume the role of a modern farmer. The latest release, Farming Simulator 17, is set to include pig farming.
PETA has written to the game’s makers asserting that if the October release includes pigs, it should also include footage of real-life pig farming, thereby giving players an accurate depiction of the industry.
If Farming 17 is to simulate the reality for many pigs accurately, players would need to keep these intelligent and friendly animals crammed into barren concrete pens, where they may never see the sun or breathe fresh air. Like real pig-industry workers, players would need to cut off pigs’ tails and grind down their sensitive teeth, usually without painkillers. Female pigs would face having rings forced through their noses, while male piglets would be castrated without anesthetics – a barbaric procedure which is legal in the EU. Players would also need to manage a stockpile of antibiotics and try to avoid catching a drug-resistant strain of disease themselves.
Finally, players would need to force the pigs onto lorries, and the game would need to show how the animals are killed by being hung upside down, stabbed, and dropped into scalding-hot water.
PETA is challenging the creators of Farming Simulator 17 to show footage of the nightmarish reality endured by pigs at abattoirs. Otherwise, they should change the game to Vegan Farming Simulator 17 and let players grow healthy and sustainable plant crops. To do anything else wouldn’t truly simulate modern farming.
If you consider pig-slaughter footage too gruesome to include in a simulated reality game, show compassion “away from keyboard”, rid your plate of animal corpses, and switch to cruelty-free vegan foods! Take PETA’s vegan pledge for recipes and inspiration.
