Walk For Farm Animals is the day when compassionate people take to the streets of tens of American and Canadian cities to raise awareness on the plight of farm animals, whose lives are spent in concentration camp-like conditions before being sent to a gruesome slaughterhouse. Organized by Farm Sanctuary, the walks also help raising funds for the organization’s rescue, education and advocacy work.The walks have attracted an increasing number of people each year, bringing together people who care about what factory farming is doing to animals, people and the environment.If you would like to join the Walk For Farm Animals, which take place between September and October, please check this page to find out whether there is one taking place near you.
A new investigation by Mercy For Animals gives us an opportunity to discuss the atrocities behind the production of eggs, which besides being completely unnecessary for our diets, are heavy on suffering.The video was shot with a hidden camera and microphone by a Mercy For Animals employee, who worked at Hy-Line North America’s chick hatchery, in Spencer, Iowa, for two weeks in May and June, 2009. Male chicks are dropped alive into a grinding machine. Female chicks are brutally hooked up to a spinning debeaker that mutilates their sensitive beaks with an infrared laser. And all this is true of so-called free range, cage free, natural, certified humane and every other nonsensical label designed to inject a guilt-busting dose into the process of animal exploitation.Male chicks are considered a ‘waste product’ by the hatchery system, therefore they are destroyed by grinding, just like a piece of trash. Now, if a child was caught doing something like that, in a civilized family, they would be punished for that. So how come a whole industry can legally incorporate such a terrifying method into their practice? And it’s the way it’s going to be. As a United Egg Producers representative coldly told AP yesterday: “If someone has a need for 200 million male chicks, we’re happy to provide them to anyone who wants them. But we can find no market, no need”.As to the female chicks, they are going to spend their lives caged up in tiny spaces, laying egg after egg and when their productivity declines, will be sent to slaughter.The industry is designed this way and it will never change. The only way to put a stop to all this is to go vegan. By doing that, you help decrease demand and the suffering of these animals.
Last Sunday was Mothering Day in the UK and Ireland. In order to call attention to the plight of mother pigs in those diabolical gestation crates, which are so small the sows can’t even turn around, AnimalAid visited a factory farm in England’s West Country to bring a little bit of joy to these victims of the animal exploitation industry.
The video above shows clearly the surreality of animal farming, the complete disregard for the sentience of other fellow beings. Everyone can help by turning away from animal products. Go vegan. It’s the most effective way of helping animals.
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.”
Walk For Farm Animals is the day when compassionate people take to the streets of tens of American and Canadian cities to raise awareness on the plight of farm animals, whose lives are spent in concentration camp-like conditions before being sent to a gruesome slaughterhouse. Organized by Farm Sanctuary, the walks also help raising funds for the organization’s rescue, education and advocacy work.The walks have attracted an increasing number of people each year, bringing together people who care about what factory farming is doing to animals, people and the environment.If you would like to join the Walk For Farm Animals, which take place between September and October, please check this page to find out whether there is one taking place near you.
