In January 2010, RTE TV sent Ella McSweeney of their Ear to the Ground programme to the National Cattle Breeding Centre in Enfield, Co. Meath to investigate the use of artificial insemination in Ireland.

Explaining that creating the genetically perfect calf through artificial means has become the norm in Ireland, the show demonstrates the easygoing speciesism in society as presenter and artificial inseminator make crude and childish jokes throughout the piece.

The programme notes state that, “Ella follows the inseminator around farms in Ireland. She witnesses the cutting edge technology used to create genetically superior calves, and meets Ireland’s top breeding bulls, one who has fathered over 10,000 calves.”

As if to deliberately highlight the casual exploitative attitudes of a deeply speciesist society, McSweeney declares that she is going to see the “hardest working and hottest males in the business.” She is referring to the 400 “donor” bulls imprisoned in the breeding centre, 70 of whom were chained by their noses or locked into pens in the semen collection centre.

The chief executive of the breeding centre, Bernard Eivers, tells McSweeney that their aim is to increase profits gained from better and more efficient exploitation and getting “more use” out of the bulls. When we do see the tethered bulls up close, the speciesist production values of the show are reflected in the playing of a Barry White love song as McSweeney talks about the exploitation of a bull called Rocky.

Centre manager Michael Bailey, 30 years at the job, shows off his semen collecting skills. This involves the use of a “teaser bull,” tethered to the wall for another to mount. While McSweeney jokes about bulls being “ready for action,” Bailey says the industry term is a bull who “is ready to pop.”

Speciesist views go into overdrive once the bull has ejaculated into an artificial vagina – McSweeney smirks about how very quick the whole event was, while Bailey talks about “successful jumps” and bulls being “good producers.” McSweeney giggles that this bull has never had sex with a live cow, and the pair laugh about the artificial vagina being “what he wants” and “what he loves.”

Trying to recover some credibility from the juvenile journalism at the start of the programme, they move on to a laboratory scene and a description of the centre’s genomic programme, however they cannot resist a shot of a clock on the centre’s wall showing a cartoon bull copulating with a cow, ironically something the real bulls are never allowed to do. Perhaps that is a postmodern comment on the extent of the exploitation that goes on at the forced breeding centre?

We are then introduced to Violet Nevin, a female artificial inseminator [a person known as having “a bull in a bottle”] who reportedly travels the globe abusing cows. Nevin states that she “loves working with cows,” which seems to mean that she likes to push her hands, arms and instruments into cows’ anuses and vaginas.

The next scene involves Nevin and McSweeney abusing a cow, with the latter have a go at inserting her arm into the cow. McSweeney, making a crass gag about being a virgin at this sort of thing, is shown trying to locate the cow’s cervix, and the best Nevin can do is say with a sneer that it feel like a turkey’s neck. McSweeney even asks “how far in can I go.” After feeling the cow “tensing up,” this woman finally decides to take her hands out of another female – feminist theory not her bedtime reading non doubt.

This 9 minute video is an A-Z of speciesists norms and values, served up with laughter and mirth to ideologically reduce the truth of what is actually happening.