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Animal Rights Ads | Columns & Articles | Disaster Victims | Stanley | Links | Mission | Home Downed On The Farmby Brenda Shoss On the idyllic family farm, animals roam freely and engage in natural behaviors. Hollywood depicts lovable critters who live comfortably until the day of their humane slaughter. "Babe" and "Chicken Run" are a far cry from today's corporate farms. Perdue Farms, ConAgra, Tyson Foods, etc. have restructured the agricultural landscape into barracks from a World War II epic. Barb wire fences enclose windowless warehouses where animals live stacked atop one another. If you don't trust my word, visit a stockyard or slaughterhouse. But prepare yourself for interrogation and dismissal. Factory farmers don't want you to see their killing floors. Corporate arrogance is hard at work on the modern monster-farm. Small farmers can't compete with the mass production/low overhead tactics of agribusiness. But what about the nine billion "food" animals slaughtered every year in America? Do they suffer? Should we care? A lazy USDA (the governmental arm whose APHIS branch oversees animal welfare issues) does little to enforce anti-cruelty laws on the farm. Farm animals will be slaughtered for food anyway, so why bother? Let's start with two-feet wide "gestation stalls," where impregnated pigs live on bare cement in their own excrement. When their four-month pregnancy cycle ends, sows are immobilized in farrowing creates where 10 or more piglets nurse, but cannot touch their mother. "Veal" calves are chained by the neck, pumped full of antibiotics, and fed an iron-and-fiber-deficient diet. Condemned to two-feet wide crates, they never stand, turn around or lie down comfortably. Because veal calves need almost five times more medication than calves in spacious settings, veal is more likely to contain illegal drug residues which can threaten human health. At 16 weeks, these sickly animals are slaughtered as food for humans. Chickens-who are not covered under the Humane Slaughter Act-endure torture from birth to death. Though the USDA recommends four hens per every 16-inch wide cage, eight to nine battery hens typically live in cramped containers with 48 to 64 sq. inches of space per bird. Disease, smothering and heart attacks are common. To reduce stress-related fighting, birds are debeaked with no anesthesia. Unprofitable male chicks are tossed by the thousands into garbage tubs. The egg industry, in its tireless quest to automate production techniques, has used industrial-strength garbage disposals to mash unwanted chicks into fertilizer. According to an eyewitness research scientist: "Even after 20 seconds, there were only partly damaged animals with whole skulls" in the disposal. Forced molting, the 10-14 day starvation of hens to manipulate egg production, is already illegal in the United Kingdom. The European Union is also phasing out battery hen cages, gestation crates and other cruel intensive confinement devices. In America, the proposed Downed Animal Protection Act wallows in Congressional limbo. This groundbreaking legislation would ban the sale of downed animals and humanely euthanize suffering animals. Downed animals, those too ill or injured to stand, cannot reach food or water. Veterinary care is routinely denied. Considered living "trash," they are commonly dragged with chains or pushed with tractors and forklifts on to mounds of dead and decaying animals. They are bruised and cut. Bones break and ligaments tear. A petition is also underway with the USFDA Executive Branch to ban the slaughter of downed animals for human consumption. "What is happening to farm animals today is unacceptable to any thinking being," says Gene Bauston, founder of Farm Sanctuary, one of the largest non-profit organizations dedicated to ending farm animal abuse through rescue and shelter efforts. No living being deserves to be treated this way. WHAT YOU CAN DO:Write to your federal Representative and two Senators in Washington D.C. Encourage them to support the Downed Animal Protection Act. The Honorable _________________________ The Honorable _________________________ You can also write to the Docket Management Branch of the United States Food and Drug Administration, urging them to honor the Downed Animal Petition which requests a ban on the slaughter of downed animals for food. USFDA Docket Management Branch To find out who your legislators are: www.hsus.org/forms/search_reps.html or call 202-955-3668. You can also locate legislators and government department addresses at:http://www.congress.org/
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