A Humane Society investigation led to the closure of Vermont-based Bushway Packing Inc. slaughterhouse. Videotape from the investigation reveals that veal calves only a few days old - many with their umbilical cords still hanging from their bodies - were unable to stand or walk on their own. The tape shows that the animals were kicked, slapped and repeatedly shocked with electric prods and subjected to other mistreatment.The U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Vermont Agency of Agriculture took decisive action last Friday based on the information provided by The HSUS and immediately suspended operations at the plant, pending a continuing investigation.According to a report published by the Associated Press, “U.S. Department of Agriculture records show Bushway Packing Inc. of Grand Isle was shut down for a day in May, again in June and again in July after an inspector cited it for inhumane treatment of animals.”Still according to the AP report, “the slaughterhouse specialized in “bob veal” - meat from days-old calves that ends up in hot dogs and lunch meats.” Ironically, meat coming from this slaughterhouse was certified organic, which once again highlights how meaningless this label is when it comes to animal products.Veal is a by-product of the dairy industry, therefore the most effective answer to this horrible situation is going vegan. These innocent infants are babies snatched away from their mothers, who are literally milked to death, are then killed for someone’s pleasure. This is a not an industry that can be regulated because cruelty is inherent to the process of animal farming. But everyone can help eradicate it through a vegan diet. It’s that simple.Undercover video – contains imagery that some may find upsetting (but very revealing of what the dairy industry really looks like):
Sometimes you wonder what kind of society we live in when courts debate whether making a profit out of videos depicting animal cruelty staged for the purpose of ‘entertainment’ is legal or not.A man called Robert J. Stevens (pictured) produced videos showing gruesome dogfighting scenes. He was sentenced to 37-months in prison under a 1999 federal law that bans trafficking in “depictions of animal cruelty.” Now the Supreme Court is set to hear his case on October 6 and, believe it or not, this man is being defended by ‘free speech’ groups who are invoking the First Amendment for legal protection. The court will decide whether dogfighting videos and other videos showing animal cruelty without a serious purpose is “too vile” to be protected under the First Amendment. This definition of vileness is what removed First Amendment protection from child pornography in 1982.It is the issue of ‘seriousness’ that is bothering the free speech camp and while I support the idea of free speech wholeheartedly, I find it terrifying to see such a confused take on it. Animal cruelty is illegal, therefore staging it simply to make a profit is obviously illegal. It’s a no brainer. I think the free speech camp would put their energy to better use by fighting censorship against positive, stimulating, truthful ideas and justice in general. Wasting time defending sadics is just outrageous.I second a comment made by beemer5 in relation to the San Francisco Chronicle article on which this blog is based:
There is no question that this man should be prosecuted. If these films weren’t making money for someone, they wouldn’t be made. What kind of society are we that we are even arguing the legality of selling these animal snuff and torture films? If it was up to me, I would go further and put Robert Stevens in with a pack of pissed off fighting dogs, and film what happens to him. I’d then use the film as a warning to anyone else that thinks that this is OK.Those who argue for this man’s ‘rights’ disgust me. Get a set of values and some compassion, for god’s sake.
LGBT, a San Francisco-based group, has released a warning about the horrid treatment of animals at San Francisco markets.
Live animal vendors at San Francisco’s farmers’ markets overcrowd animals in direct sunlight with no water, cram animals upside-down in paper bags inside plastic bags, and set aside injured birds for later sale or eventual dispatch. Customers then take them home (often in their car trunks, after carrying them around shopping) and kill them when and how they wish (for food, ritual sacrifice or fighting), unsupervised and unregulated - these “spent hens” (worn-out egg-laying birds) and “small game birds” are exempt from California’s poultry slaughter laws, and these birds (along with rabbits) are exempt from federal slaughter laws.
A video on YouTube (no disturbing imagery) gives an idea of what’s going on in the city’s markets. It is so sad that such gross behavior is being frowned upon by the authorities.
You can help by contacting the San Francisco District Attorney’s office (email erica.derryck@sfgov.org and districtattorney@sfgov.org) and politely ask that Kamala Harris pursue prosecution of live animal vendors whose cases have been turned over to them by Animal Care and Control.
Of course, going vegan is the best way to help all animals. Please consider banning animal parts and derivatives from your diet and life. It’s easier than you might think. And the health rewards are immense.
Something terrible in happening in Egypt right now. The government of the Northern African country decided to slaughter its swine population because of swine flu and is doing so in the most brutal way. Says Compassion in World Farming, an animal welfare UK organization:
Hundreds of pigs are dragged from their smallholder pens and dumped live and fully conscious into a huge dumper truck. Fighting to breathe, the animals writhe on top of each other. From a distance, the scene almost looks like a tin of maggots. Come closer, and the true horror is clear. The animals are then driven to mass graves where they are covered in caustic chemicals before being buried. Media reports tell of the pigs screaming at the pain of the chemicals for half hour or more before they are dead. This is the intended fate of all of Egypt’s 400,000 pigs.”
The organization has also released disturbing footage of the way the animals are being rounded and taken to mass graves. This must be stopped immediately.
Please add your voice to the organization’s protest as there is no place in the world for such unspeakable brutality.
As a gay man I have always disliked the idea of gay rodeos. For one, it comes from this strange obsession that some gay men have with bullies. Cowboys are a symbol of machismo and although may be valid as a kind of sexual fantasy, acting out the fantasy in rodeos is simply not on. Rodeos involve great cruelty to animals because they can only behave in the aggressive way they do if they are hurt before being unleashed on the arena.
Thus, it’s a good thing that Animal Rights Foundation of Florida activists demonstrated outside a gay rodeo taking place at Bergeron Rodeo Grounds in Davie a few days ago. It would be good to see criticism coming from the main gay rights groups as well, though.
HBO showed on Monday a hidden-camera investigation into an Iowa hog farm that has attracted a lot of media attention. The New York Times wrote a review that takes a rather benign view of animal cruelty at points and sides with the bogus notion that animal rights is about urbane people against farmers, which it isn’t. It’s a movement for justice for the animals, for the planet and for our health as well, which in practice translates into veganism.
Elsewhere, the Celebrity Café wrote: “The point of the show is to point out the cultural divide that animal rights activists have been fighting for years. To some people, these graphic images are simply not upsetting. To others, it is as important as any social movement. The divisive beliefs about the treatment of animals is the biggest obstacle that many activists face. This documentary tries to sway those on the other side of the fence.”
Popmatters also wrote a review of the program: “The farmers see their livestock as just that—commodities to be produced and sold. This premise, Pete surmises, allows them to toss the pigs like sacks into bins and against walls, pile them on top of one another, keep sows in breeding and farrowing crates for months, such that the animals cannot move and develop sores from rubbing against crate walls and suffering the unstoppable demands of their hungry litters. As Pete says on his first day of the assignment, listing the maltreatments, “This stuff looks really nasty, pigs cannibalizing each other and beating little piglets over the head, that kind of shit… I think this is gonna be some nasty nasty work.”
If nothing else, Death on a Factory Farm got people talking about a subject that remains taboo and which many of us would rather not think about. This type of mainstream attention signals that the age of ignorance is truly over.
They do a risky, gun-wrenching job but it’s thanks to them that the the animal exploitation industry gets most of the bad press it so deserves. Undercover investigators risk their own skin to infiltrate farms, labs, kennels etc in order to collect footage of animal abuse. It can’t be easy for an animal lover to bear witness to suffering and remain passive and still record footage. I’m glad some people have the mental strength to do that.
HBO is showing a documentary on 16 March called Death on the Factory Farm, of which I wrote about here . The investigator in the case, one ‘Pete’, has been interviewed by Time magazine about his job, which most signal that interest in ‘farm’ animals is growing. Says ‘Pete’:
“My initial plan in life was to become a cop and then join the FBI. But I started to learn that the worst things I’ve ever read about humans being doing to each other — similar if not identical things happen to animals on a mass scale. I felt that there were enough people in law enforcement, but there weren’t enough people working in animal rights. In 2001, a private investigator trained me and my first job on my own was working at a dog kennel in Arkansas … I do not believe animals are here for us to exploit and I do not believe that under any circumstances we should raise animals for food.”
ABC’s Nightline last night ran a report on the primate hellhole that is the New Iberia Research Center (NIRC), which is part of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and has received millions of dollars in public funding. The Humane Society of the United States has accused the research center of at least 338 possible violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act, which sets minimum care and treatment standards for animals.
“Our investigation found an abject failure on NIRC’s part to attend to the psychological well-being of primates as dictated by law, a lax USDA attitude about enforcing that law, and a knowing and gross violation of the federal government’s pledge to stop breeding more chimpanzees for research,” said Wayne Pacelle, HSUS’s president.
I think every effort made to reveal the diabolical deeds of the secretive animal-testing industry is welcome, but there’s no reason to be surprised at the ill-treatment of the animals featured in the undercover video. Testing on animals is in itself ill treatment so the only way to stop this abomination is banning animal testing, not just on primates, but on all animals. It’s cruel and it’s bad science.
Now, I’d like to direct you to this moving post by Simon Chaitowitz published by the Huffington Post. Chaitowitz suffers from leukemia and despite having dedicated her life to banning animal testing by promoting alternatives, she’s now having to take drugs that most likely were tested on animals. Hypocrisy? No, lack of choice in a world dominated by the pharmaceuticals and governments that insist on this archaic, flawed method.
“As someone who recently signed up for hospice, I have another major problem with animal research. I wonder if science would have found a cure for my leukemia by now if they weren’t sidetracked by misleading animal tests. I wonder if the chemo that I took for breast cancer would have been safer it hadn’t been tested in species that are so unlike our own.
“The truth is that using animals to develop and test drugs is a system that doesn’t work very well. It’s an old paradigm, one that is fortunately beginning to change, however slowly. A growing number of scientists are developing some exciting (and more effective) non-animal alternatives. These changes have been inspired partly by concern over animal cruelty but also because animal research and testing have so often failed us. Some government agencies are even starting to call for more alternatives.”
It’s a brave statement from someone for whom the odds of survival are against her and I highly recommend reading the full post. It sheds a very clear light on the disgrace that animal testing is.
The weekend is upon us and here goes a suggestion of links for some thoughtful reading. The Missouri has a great article about the growth of animal law in academia and how cases of cruelty are being handled these days. It says:
Lewis & Clark opened the first Animal Legal Defense Fund chapter in 1992. Today it has branches at more than 115 law schools in the United States and Canada. In 2000, nine law schools had animal law studies. Today, about 100 do.
It’s a very though-provoking article for anyone interested in how animal rights activism is progressing in the courtroom.
Last year an exhibition in San Francisco that included video work showing animals being bludgeoned to death was shut down. The French artist Adel Abdessemed refused to reveal the context of the footage and so it remained unclear whether the damage done to the animals had been staged for the camera, which anyone with a hint of mercy in their blood would not condone. Now, the same artist had an exhibit suspended in Italy, for similar reasons. Doris Lin from the Animal Rights blog on About.com writes about the case.
The thing is, were an artist to deal with the theme, say, of rape, would he feel entitled to reproduce a real situation for show in a gallery? Surely not - if he or she did attempt that, he wouldn’t even get started because no gallery would touch such material. It’s not about censorship, it’s about common sense. The same principle should apply to animals. Real violence should only be shown in documentary form, with the context very clearly marked. Otherwise it’s just sheer exploitation.
There’s a lot going on today so here goes a round up of news and stories I came across.
First, the sad news that the disappearance of an animal sanctuary activist in Hungary may be murder. Eva Rhodes, the Hungarian model who was one of the beautiful people in 1960s England, was last seen on September 10. The full story is here.
Elsewhere, Cee Tox Inc., a Kalamazoo-based startup company that develops tests to determine if potential medications will be toxic, has been recognized for its work from an animal-rights group, that is, Peta. “CeeTox scientists spent the first few years of the company’s existence perfecting technology that allows drug developers to test whether a new compound will be toxic to humans by using commercially available animal and human cells rather than feeding the compounds to laboratory animals.” The whole article can be found here.
Veganism is growing up, says the Calgary Herald in Canada. “These days, vegan-friendly foods are available in every major grocery store, even Costco; vegan cookbooks are sold in every major bookstore. And numerous Calgary restaurants and natural foods stores - including Buddha’s Veggie Restaurant, Coup restaurant, Planet Organic and Community Natural Foods - offer plenty of milk-free, meat-free, vegan-friendly options”, it says. Good job. Speaking of veganism, so does Ellen DeGeneres.
Finally, some food for thought: is pacifism always compatible with animal rights? Read more +
Sometimes you wonder what kind of society we live in when courts debate whether making a profit out of videos depicting animal cruelty staged for the purpose of ‘entertainment’ is legal or not.A man called Robert J. Stevens (pictured) produced videos showing gruesome dogfighting scenes. He was sentenced to 37-months in prison under a 1999 federal law that bans trafficking in “depictions of animal cruelty.” Now the Supreme Court is set to hear his case on October 6 and, believe it or not, this man is being defended by ‘free speech’ groups who are invoking the First Amendment for legal protection. The court will decide whether dogfighting videos and other videos showing animal cruelty without a serious purpose is “too vile” to be protected under the First Amendment. This definition of vileness is what removed First Amendment protection from child pornography in 1982.It is the issue of ‘seriousness’ that is bothering the free speech camp and while I support the idea of free speech wholeheartedly, I find it terrifying to see such a confused take on it. Animal cruelty is illegal, therefore staging it simply to make a profit is obviously illegal. It’s a no brainer. I think the free speech camp would put their energy to better use by fighting censorship against positive, stimulating, truthful ideas and justice in general. Wasting time defending sadics is just outrageous.I second a comment made by beemer5 in relation to the 
