In his New Rule segment on Friday night, Bill Maher went after America’s factory farms, and the wild animal trade put up as entertainment for a trash TV- hungry American audience.
Began Maher: “I’m not watching ‘Tiger King’ while sequestering because torturing animals is what got us into this mess. That’s the lesson we keep refusing to learn, that you can’t trash the environment, including the animals, and not have it come back and kill you.”
“America’s factory farming is just as despicable as a wet market,” Maher continued, “and just as problematic for our health. … Most, if not all, infections diseases, are zoonotic, meaning they start in animals and jump to humans.”
Maher then pointed out that AIDS came from primates, Mad Cow disease from cattle, and a fatal strain of bird flu was just found in South Carolina. Maher said that if the conditions in which we treat animals don’t improve, it’ll be more of the same.
“If you think the market in Wuhan is gross, you should visit one of our giant poultry processing factories,” said the Real Time host. “But of course you can’t. Because we have ‘ag-gag’ laws that make it a crime to report the crime. And it is a crime.”
Explained Maher: “Eighty percent of pigs have pneumonia when they’re slaughtered, because we make them live in conditions that would make a zombie vomit and then, so they don’t die before we kill them, pump them full of antibiotics that in turn get passed on to humans, that in turn leads to antibiotic-resistant disease that in turn leads to us dying from ever-evolving contagions. It’s six degrees of tainted bacon.”
“Let me put it as basically as I can,” he said. “If we keep producing food the way we do, you’re going to get sick with something medicine cannot fix. You don’t have to care for the sake of the animals; I wouldn’t want to mess with anyone’s reputation as a heartless asshole. But do it because animal cruelty leads to human catastrophe.”
“And get the f**k away from me with Tiger King,” Maher finished up. “I don’t care that he sees the light at the end; so did Darth Vader. There’s no such thing as keeping a wild animal pent up, but treating them well. Just ask Siegfried and what remains of Roy. Joe Exotic is in prison partly for killing five endangered tigers, which are endangered because of people like him. I don’t get why the woke left loves this show so much and isn’t on this guy like pink sequins.”
