Dirty Jobs' Mike Rowe on Lamb Castration, PETA, and American Labor

Drawing on his experiences picking up roadkill, feeding swine, and castrating a lamb with his teeth, Mike Rowe, host of Discovery Channel's Dirty Jobs, discusses how modern American culture belittles necessary labor.

EG is the celebration of the American entertainment industry. Since 1984, Richard Saul Wurman has created extraordinary gatherings about learning and understanding. EG is a rich extension of these ideas - a conference that explores the attitude of understanding in music, film, television, radio, technology, advertising, gaming, interactivity and the web - The Entertainment Gathering

Mike Rowe has had more jobs than you. In fact, Mike has had more jobs than anyone.

As the creator and executive producer of Discovery Channels Emmy-nominated series Dirty Jobs With Mike Rowe, Mike has spent years traveling the country, working as an apprentice on more than 200 jobs that most people would go out of their way to avoid. From coal mining to roustabouting, maggot farming to sheep castrating, Mike has worked in just about every industry and filmed the show in almost every state, celebrating the hard-working Americans who make civilized life possible for the rest of us.

On Labor Day 2008, Mike launched a Web site called mikeroweWORKS.com, where skilled labor and hard work are celebrated in the hope of calling attention to the steady decline in the trades and bolstering enrollment in trade schools and technical colleges.

In addition to Dirty Jobs and his mikeroweWORKS endeavor, Mike is the voice of Deadliest Catch and the national spokesman for Ford Trucks. He has traveled extensively for Discovery Channel, hosting Shark Week in South Africa, where he field-tested a steel-mesh shark-suit, and Egypt Week Live, where he opened and explored newly discovered tombs in the Valley of the Golden Mummies.

• Category

  News & Politics

[James Gaw]

Some times farming can seem brutal but in the end it is always the animals that come first. I love my cows, no farmer in his or her right mind would ever cause pain or suffering to their animals. A happy animal is a productive animal. My cows are my life! and they always come first, they eat before i do, they get water before I do.

they get bedding before I do.

[copperIoxide]

everybody look at this hipster making a comment on one of the internet's most popular sites owned by the biggest internet company after watching a video about a television star

[tmack1337]

I don't think we ever CAN get consumers to change though; greed is a part of human nature...companies AND consumers are on both sides of that coin. We probably never will convince people to spend more money on something that in the majority of people's eyes, is the same exact product. Guess it's society's own fault for letting industrialization take over food production for them!

[shadowofthewarriors]

Of course. I completely agree. Which Is why I said I hope that his farms will be where we get the majority of our meat (implying a need for change on the part of the consumer). And unfortunately this is why we need to make consumers stop buying grocery store meat and dairy (and why I have gone completely vegan as a form of boycott against the industry). Unfortunately, consumers' willful ignorance holds back heaps of progress we could otherwise make.

[apetheape9]

You sir. Thank you.

[Dalton Buck]

they get laid before you do....(:

[tmack1337]

With all due respect, WE THE CONSUMER are the reason for conditions at farms...not the farmers. Do you THINK anybody actually wants to abuse animals? Of course not! But what the hell are farmers supposed to do when the public demands cheap groceries and more humane treatment costs more money that that public isn't willing to pay? It would be great if everyone did the right thing and only supported sustainable ethical farmers, but since it would be more expensive...not gonna happen anytime soon!

[Pat Lacroix]

Love this video. Points out lots of great hypocrisy.

[shadowofthewarriors]

Thank you for treating your cows well. I shall hope and wait for the day that your farms become the way we get the majority of our meat. However, until that day, when we get the vast majority of our meat from factory farms, the conflicts will continue.

[redneckhippiefreak]

Thumbs up if you skipped here from reddit!

[tomat0TM]

amazing speech!