I LUV THAT PICTURE you are so cute!!!!!! Honestly, you were one good lookin' kid. Okay, now on to your very reasonable questions.
When I said tortured and raped, that is exactly what I meant. here are
some specifics, but this only begins to scratch the surface:
Animals are routinely
drowned in scalding water while still fully conscious. This is because more often than not chickens are not propertly stunned, and the killing line certainly doesnt stop for humane consideration. The meat industry cares about profit and quota. Not about the excruciating pain that an animal being drowned in scalding water feels. Just the other day I was boiling some water and accidentally some of it splashed on me. The pain was indescribable. Imagine what it must feel like to be DROWNED in boiling water.
And the terrified animals doesnt understand what is going on and is powerless to defend herself.
That the killing line is not stopped for humane consideration has been confirmed to me by people that I know who actually worked in a slaugherthouse, and I think one of Brendan's friends (Brendan posts here can also vouch for this as he too use to work inside of a slaugherhouse).
After conception, a sow (female pig) is imprisoned in a gestation stall. She remains in this stall for about 16 weeks, giving the producer total control over her. To counter her stress, the sheds are kept dark except at feeding time. While the sow is inactive, she is "limit fed" once every two or three days, to hold down her weight and save money.
About a week before her piglets are due, the pregnant sow is moved to a farrowing stall. here she is restricted for another 2-3 weeks after her piglets are born. She cannot walk or turn around. The only thing she can do is lie down or stand up to keep her in position for eating , drinking, and keeping her teats exposed to her baby pigs. Breeding sows are incarcerated into farrowing crates in this way, pinned down between metal bars, unable to walk or mother her piglets. The "factory farms" are designed for maximum exploitation of the animals, who never see daylight until their trip to the slaughterhouse.
the newborn pigs receive injections of iron, antibiotics,
their tails get cut off, and their ears notched for identification purposes. They get their teeth PULLED OUT WITH PLIARS, young males are usually castrated before weaning all with never any pain killers. . 2-3 weeks after birth, the piglets are taken to be fattened for market. The mother is immediately impregnated and sent back to the gestation stall to begin this hellish "cycle" (aka torture) all over again.
VEAL
Crated veal factories are among the harshest confinement systems. Veal producers take newborn calves
AWAY from their mothers within hours of being born and chain them in crates averaging 22" wide by 58" long.
Over a million calves spend their entire lives in solitary confinement unable to scratch, stretch their legs, or turn around until they are hauled off to slaughter. Suffering from chronic diarhea, standing in their own waste, deprived of solid food or water, the calves are fed only a diet of artiifical liquid feed, which includes growth stimulators, antibiotics, and mold inhibitors. YUP you read that right MOLD INHIBITORS. Their unnatural food and confinement is aimed at producing the anemic, pale-colored meat sold as high-priced "prime" or "milk-fed" veal.
One veal factory inspector writes: " We visited a milk-fed veal factory in Connecticut. Though it was broad daylight outside, the calves' rooms were pitch dark; our guide explained that darkness helped keeped the calves quieter. The lights were turned on at feeding time when the producer made his rounds. In two rooms, more than a hundred calves were crated in rows of wooden stalls.
Their eyes followed our movements. Many tried to stretch toward us from their stalls in order to suckle a finger, a hand, or part of our clothing. The farmer explained, "They want their mothers, I guess."
Animals used for food are specifically exempted from anti-cruelty laws in many states. And there is no federal law to ensure that farm animals have proper care, suitable living conditions or protection from abuse and cruelty.
CATTLE
After several months on the range, cattle are transported to feedlots crowded with tens of thousands of animals where they are fattened up as quickly as possible to a market weight of 1000 pounds. In combination with commercial growth promotants, the cattle are fed corn and soy meal. To reduce costs, some feed lots add cardboard, newspaper, sawdust,
chicken and pig manure, industrial sewege, oils, and even cement dust to animals feed, not to mention ground up animal. In fact, mad cow disease arose because cows were being fed ground up carcusses of sick cows, even though all farmers know that cows are vegetarian animals! They know, but they dont care enough about consumer or animal health to do act on this knowledge.
Cattle are routinely castrated, dehorned and hot-iron branded without painkillers or anaesthetics.
Their screams of pain and torment are real and audible to their tormentors. Unfortunately, nobody listens, nobody cares.
Dairy cows perhaps have it worse. After a few years of constant impregnation and calf and milk production, the worn out cow is trucked off to the slaugherhouse. Because her exhausted body is not suitable for steaks, chops, and other cuts, she ends up a hamburger in a fast food chain. "Downers", the most vulnerable of the vulnerable, often exhausted dairy cows or breeding sows, too sick or weak to walk on their own, are often dragged by chains to the killing line or just discarded to a slow and miserable death.
After years of physical and pychological abuse in the above ways, cows are shipped off to slaughter with no food or water
in extreme weather temperatures. AT the slaugherhouse,
they are often hung upside down from a hook and delimbed (i.e. have their limbs hacked off) while fully conscious.
CHICKENS
In poultry, cannabilism resulting from overcrowding is controlled by routine debeaking. This began around 1940, when a San Diego poultry farmer found that if he
burned away the birds' upper beaks with a blowtorch, they were unable to pick and pull at each others feathers. His neighbour caught on to the idea, but used a modified soldering iron instead. A couple of years later, a local company began to manufacture the "debeaker", a machine that sliced off the chicks' beaks with a hot iron blade.
This is EXCRUCIATINGLY painful for a chick, as her beak is one of the most sensitive parts of her body. Imagine somebody putting a blowtorch to your lips!! The agony that you would feel is no different than what these animals experience - billions of them every year.
And, to make matters even more appalling, the beaks of birds are sloppily cut. An excessively hot blade causes blisters in the mouth. A cold/dull blade may cause the development of a fleshy, bulb like growth at the end of the mandible. Such growths are very sensitive. Some debeaked birds do not grow to full size because beak tenderness makes it hard for them to eat and drink, and so they starve.
Eggs are taken from the hens and placed in an oven to hatch.
After hatching, half of the chicks, the males, who dont lay eggs, are literally thrown away. At one such hatchery, "chick pullers" weeded males from each tray and dropped them into heavy duty plactis bags. The guide explained: "
[b][b]We put them in a bag and let them suffocate. A mink farmer picks them up and feds them to his mink[/b][/b]."
Speaking of minks and all animals murdered for their fur. One typical method for killing fur bearing animals is genital electrocution. Yup, you read that right. They have "devices" shoved up their genitals only to be fried to death on the inside, so their fur on the outside remains in tact so designers like Christain D'ior and people like Jennifer Lopez and Biance can walk around feeling "glamorous". Not to mention the animals caught in leg-hold traps, in pain for days, exposed to the elements,
who often chew off their own paws to escape the terror!!! of course, being handicapped and injured in this way makes them easy prey for other animals in the wild, so they suffer and die, or are ripped apart by anotehr predator. What a horrible way to do. Or, baby seals who are clubbed to death in front of their frantic mothers, an atrocity which after being outlawed for many years, has been reintroduced by the pathetic government and greedy fishermen in my country.
Back to the chickens though.
Chickens, can live as long as 15 years. In the modern egg factory, hens lived less than two years, warehoused in battery cages stacked from floor to ceiling.
All their natural instincts are thwarted by being crammed into tiny cages with other birds. Please dont think that many chickens and hens are treated the same humane way that your friend treats hers. This line of thinking is grossly inaccurate.
Finally at the slaugherhouse, numerous undercover exposes of chicken suppliers like Tysons and Pilgrims pride, even kosher places, have been caught on tape inflicting the most vile and sadistic evil acts on defenseless, innocent and gentle animals.
Workers were caught spitting tobacco in chicken's eyes, smashing their heads with pipes, shoving the heads of weak and sickly birds up the but of another so as to form a "chicken chain" and then to yank them apart again, just for fun. Accounts from former slaugherhouse gone vegetarian workers confim that crulety like this is the norm rather than the exception in the industry.
As Paul McCartney and his wife said, if slaughterhouses had glass walls, we would all be vegetarian.
Animals in laboratories are force fed bleach, have corrosive substances dripped into their eyes after being strapped down with their eyeballs pinned open so that cannot move or blink. Many break their necks and backs trying to escape the pain. All this so L'oreal can come up with a new shade of haircolour to maintain "market share", or Proctor and Gamble can come up with a new scented
Mr. Clean product. I cringe when I see commercials for these products on tv because i am all too aware of what it has meant for animals.
Fish suffer excruciating decompression followed by suffocation when hauled from the deep seas. They just dont have vocal chords to voice their pain. I know I wouldnt enjoy being hooked in the mouth and being impaled. Its gotta hurt. And, fish are by far the most defenseless of animasl, with no arms, no vocal chords, nothing.They are utterly at the mercy of humans who refuse to see them for the smart and social animals that they are and want to think of them as only food.
Please consider going vegan, or at least vegetarian as a first important step. It is the BEST way to ensure that you are not supporting any of the heartbreaking atrocities above.
But, dont take my word for it, check it out for yourself:
www.farmsanctuary.org
www.cok.net
www.whyvegan.org
www.DawnWatch.com
Meet your Meat (petatv.org)
The Witness (tribeofheart.org)
Animals hve as much capacity to suffer as do you and I. They can feel loneliness, sadness, happiness and fear (as pet animals have shown us). And, many animals have a bond to their offspring too. Just try to get near a bear cub when his mommy is around and you will quickly agree
Calves long for the comfort and warmth and security of their moms. The moms wonder what happened to their calves.
I will end with this piece from Ronald Sklar:
There are moral issues here that we refuse to recognize. When one group with the power to advance its own self-interests exploits a group completely lacking in power, the powerful group has to face the question of the morality of its conduct. It was that way with slavery; it is that way with our use of animals. As Mr. Scully writes: "When a quarter-million birds are stuffed into a single shed, unable even to flap their wings, when more than a million pigs inhabit a single farm, never once stepping into the light of day, when every year tens of millions of creatures go to their death without knowing the least measure of human kindness, it is time to question old assumptions, to ask what we are doing and what spirit drives us on."
As a society, we haven't asked those questions. If we were at least to admit that there is a moral issue, and that we need to open a dialogue among ourselves about the extent to which we can continue this exploitation, it would be a start toward a new plane of human existence.
Call it a "right" as do American law professors Tom Regan and Steven Wise; call it a "basic moral principle" as does Princeton philosopher Peter Singer in his seminal book, Animal Liberation, or call it "common human decency and kindness," as does Matthew Scully.
Whatever we call it, it's now time to give to the non-human animals that share this world with us the humane consideration they deserve.
And let's not wait until we have to watch mass cow slaughterings on television.
So you see, this is why many vegans are angry and frustrated with the world who refuses to act to put an end to this mass murder, torture and rape.
And i hope you can also understand, even if you dont quite agree, why many vegans will not hesitate to describe the support of any of the above cruelties as evil.
But, I do beleive that most humans on this earth arent evil. Just misguided and uninformed. That is why we need to open up people's eyes to the dirty little secrets that animal exploiters wish to hide from public scrutiny. We need to
inform people, and once they see the suffering, once they hear the cries of terror and pain, then I know they will be guided to veganism by their own consciences, and they will never look back!!
peace
Login
Register
FAQ
Search
, but I am thinking about these issues and struggling with decisions in my own life... setting priorities, and working on action plans. Trying to exercise, eat better, work less, and spend more time with my wife and friends.
I will be again after 12 months on my new program, though!