Vegan for Life - Jack Norris [88]
PETA and MFA undertook three undercover investigations of pig farms between 2007 and 2009, and they found numerous abuses. Workers dragged injured pigs out of the facility by their snouts, ears, and legs before killing them with a captive bolt gun, and employees cut off piglets’ tails and castrated them without using painkillers.
On one farm, a supervisor admitted on video that he violently beat pigs. Other acts of wanton cruelty included workers beating pigs, jabbing them in their eyes, shoving a cane up one of the sow’s vaginas, and spraying paint into the nose of a nursing sow. Young pigs who had been gassed improperly were still alive when the gas container was opened. Piglets were tossed through the air among workers. Pigs with cysts, sores, and uterine prolapses received no medical treatment.16,17–18
DAIRY COWS
A majority of dairy cows are kept in large feedlots, where they live on a layer of mud and feces and among swarms of flies. To keep milk production high, cows are impregnated repeatedly. Their calves are taken from them soon after birth, often causing extreme anguish to the mother cow and her newborn.
According to USDA statistics, the average dairy cow’s milk production has increased from two to ten tons per year since 1940.19 Their bodies are so stressed by this hyper-production that by the time they are sent to slaughter (once production has declined), many “go down” and are unable to walk into the slaughterhouse. They are then dragged to a “dead pile” and left to die.
In September 2009, PETA released undercover footage of a Pennsylvania dairy facility that supplies the Land O’Lakes company. Over the course of several months, the investigation documented filthy conditions for cows on the farm, such as pens that were filled inches deep with excrement, which caused foot and hoof problems. Some cows were so ill that they had collapsed. The video footage shows cows struggling to walk or unable to stand up. Calves rescued from the farm had pneumonia, “manure scald,” ringworm, pinkeye, and parasites. Some cows suffered respiratory distress and had pus-filled nasal discharge streaming down their faces.20 In order to make milking easier, the cows’ tails were amputated by tightly binding them with elastic bands, causing the skin and tissue to slowly die and slough off, and leaving the animals unable to swat away flies. In one case, workers were told to wrap an elastic band around a cow’s gangrenous, infected teat in order to amputate it. The cow’s condition deteriorated for eleven days before she finally died.
In 2009, at Willet Dairy in Locke, New York, the largest dairy farm in the state, an MFA undercover video shows cows with udders that are shockingly large due to the production of an unnatural volume of milk, and cows with open wounds, prolapsed uteruses, pus-filled infections, and swollen joints. Some were too weak to stand, and dead cows and calves were found on the premises.21
VEAL CALVES
Male calves born on dairy farms are typically taken from their mothers right after birth. Most are raised for “milk-fed” veal.22 They are tethered in stalls where they can’t turn around. This lack of movement and their iron-deficient liquid diet makes the meat from these animals more tender and pale. The calves live this way for sixteen to eighteen weeks before being sent to slaughter.
About 15 percent of calves are slaughtered when they are just a few days or weeks old for “bob veal.”23 Often, these newborns are too weak to walk. A 2009 HSUS investigation of a Vermont “bob veal” slaughterhouse showed workers kicking and electrically prodding newborn calves who struggled to walk to slaughter. They threw water in some of the calves’ faces to make the electrical prodding more painful. The workers were also filmed cutting portions of skin off still-living calves in front of the USDA inspector.24 Improper stunning of the calves meant that some were conscious when they were shackled by one leg and hung upside down to have their throats slit.
BEEF CATTLE
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