FACTORY FARMING
_This
[video footage from the movie Babe] is the way Americans want to
think of pigs. Real-life "Babes" see no sun in their limited lives,
with no hay to lie on, no mud to roll in. The sows live in tiny
cages, so narrow they can’t even turn around. They live over metal
grates, and their waste is pushed through slats beneath them and
flushed into huge pits.
~Safer, Morley |
_If you
could see or feel the suffering you wouldn't think twice. Give back
life. Don't eat meat.
~ Basinger, Kim _When I
was old enough to realize all meat was killed, I saw it as an
irrational way of using our power, to take a weaker thing and
mutilate it. It was like the way bullies would take control of
younger kids in the schoolyard.
~ Pheonix, River |
_...[I]t
is a terrible thing that religious people today can be so
indifferent to the cruelty of the farms, shrugging it off as so much
secular, animal rights foolishness. They above all should hear the
call to mercy. They above all should have some kindness to spare.
They above all should be mindful of the little things, seeing, in
the suffering of these creatures, the same hand that has chosen all
the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and the weak
things to confound the things which are strong. 'Who so poor,' asked
Anna Kingsford more than a century ago, 'so oppressed, so helpless,
so mute and uncared for, as the dumb creatures who serve us -- they
who, but for us, must starve, and who have no friend on earth if man
be their enemy?
~ Scully, Matthew |
Before
they reach their end, the pigs get a shower, a real one. Water
sprays from every angle to wash the farm off them. Then they begin
to feel crowded. The pen narrows like a funnel' the drivers behind
urge the pigs forward, until one at a time they climb onto the
moving ramp... Now they scream, never having been on such a ramp,
smelling the smells they smell ahead. I do not want to overdramatize
because you've read all this before. But it was a frightening
experience, seeing their fear, seeing so many of them go by, it had
to remind me of things no one wants to be reminded of anymore, all
mobs, all death marches, all mass murders and executions ...
~ Rhodes, Richard_ |
Cattle
dragged and choked...Knocking ‘em four, five, ten times. Every now
and then when they’re stunned they come back to life, and they’re up
there agonizing. They’re supposed to be restunned but sometimes they
aren’t and they’ll go through the skinning process alive. I’ve
worked in four large [slaughterhouses] and a bunch of small ones.
They’re all the same. If people were to see this, they’d probably
feel really bad about it. But in a packing house everybody gets so
used to it that it doesn’t mean anything.
~ Veteran USDA meat inspector from Texas describing what he has seen _ |
_Family
organization is broken and young animals are increasingly being
denied a mother to turn to for comfort and for grooming. One of the
saddest and most pathetic of farm practices - inevitable at the
present time for the supply of dairy produce - is the separation of
the calf from the cow at birth or soon after.
~ Harrison, Ruth |
_For most
humans, especially for those in modern urban and suburban
communities, the most direct form of contact with nonhuman animals
is at meal time: we eat them.... The use and abuse of animals raised
for food far exceeds, in sheer numbers of animals affected, any
other kind of mistreatment.
~ Singer, Peter |
In a
lunch session at the slaughterhouse, a lamb jumped out of its pen
and came unnoticed up to some slaughtermen who were sitting in a
circle eating some sandwiches; the lamb approached and nibbled a
small piece of lettuce that a man was holding in his hand. The men
gave the lamb some more lettuce and when the lunch period was over
they were so affected by the action of the lamb that not one of them
was prepared to kill this creature, and it had to be sent away
elsewhere - showing that within each human soul there is an element
of pity, compassion and love in varying degrees. It is our duty to
encourage the higher qualities to bloom and blossom wherever
possible in each individual.
~ Latto, Gordon_ |
_In fact,
if one person is unkind to an animal it is considered to be cruelty,
but where a lot of people are unkind to animals, especially in the
name of commerce, the cruelty is condoned and, once large sums of
money are at stake, will be defended to the last by otherwise
intelligent people.
~ Harrison, Ruth |
In my
opinion, one of the greatest animal-welfare problems is the physical
abuse of livestock during transportation.... Typical abuses I have
witnessed with alarming frequency are; hitting, beating, use of
badly maintained trucks, jabbing of short objects into animals, and
deliberate cruelty.
~ Grandin, Temple, Ph.D._ |
_It is in
the battery shed that we find the parallel with Auschwitz....To shut
your mind, heart and imagination from the sufferings of others is to
begin slowly, but inexorably, to die. Those Christians who close
their minds and hearts to the cause of animal welfare, and the evils
it seeks to combat, are ignoring the Fundamental spiritual teachings
of Christ himself.
~ Baker, Rev. Dr. John Austin |
_On
profit-driven factory farms, veal calves are confined to dark
wooden crates so small that they are prevented from lying down or
scratching themselves. These creatures feel; they know pain. They
suffer pain just as we humans suffer pain. Egg-laying hens are
confined to battery cages. Unable to spread their wings, they are
reduced to nothing more than an egg-laying machine. . . . The law
clearly requires that these poor creatures be stunned and rendered
insensitive to pain before [the slaughtering] process begins.
Federal law is being ignored. Animal cruelty abounds. It is
sickening. It is infuriating. Barbaric treatment of helpless,
defenseless creatures must not be tolerated even if these animals
are being raised for food—and even more so, more so. Such
insensitivity is insidious and can spread and is dangerous. Life
must be respected and dealt with humanely in a civilized society.
~ Byrd, Senator Robert |
_The
dissolution of commercial animal farming as we know it obviously
requires more than our individual commitment to vegetarianism. To
refuse on principle to buy products of the meat industry is to do
what is right, but it is not to do enough. To recognize the rights
of animals is to recognize the related duty to defend them against
those who violate their rights, and to discharge this duty requires
more than our individual abstention. It requires acting to bring
about those changes that are necessary if the rights of these
animals are not to be violated. Fundamentally, then, it requires a
revolution in our culture's thought about, and its accepted
treatment of, farm animals... But prejudices die hard, all the more
so when they are insulated by widespread secular customs and
religious beliefs, sustained by large and powerful economic
interests, and protected by the common law. To overcome the
collective entropy of those forces against change will not be easy.
The animal rights movement is not for the faint heart.
~ Regan, Tom |
To a man
whose mind is free there is something even more intolerable in the
sufferings of animals than in the sufferings of man. For with the
latter it is at least admitted that suffering is evil and that the
man who causes it is a criminal. But thousands of animals are
uselessly butchered every day without a shadow of remorse. If any
man were to refer to it, he would be thought ridiculous. And that is
the unpardonable crime. That alone is the justification of all that
humans may suffer. It cries vengeance upon all the human race. If
God exists and tolerates it, it cries vengeance upon God.
~Rolland, Romain_ |
_As soon
as I realized that I didn't need meat to survive or to be in good
health, I began to see how forlorn it all is. If only we had a
different mentality about the drama of the cowboy and the range and
all the rest of it. It's a very romantic notion, an entrenched
part of American culture, but I've seen, for example, pigs waiting
to be slaughtered, and their hysteria and panic was something I
shall never forget.
~ Leachman, Cloris |
_I just
could not stand the idea of eating meat - I really do think that it
has made me calmer.... People's general awareness is getting
much better, even down to buying a pint of milk: the fact that
the calves are actually killed so that the milk doesn't go to them
but to us cannot really be right, and if you have seen a cow in a
state of extreme distress because it cannot understand why its calf
isn't by, it can make you think a lot.
~ Bush, Kate |
On a
wagon bound for market lay a cow with 2 mournful eyes... lay a cow
with 2 mournful eyes. (If one passes slaughterhouse trucks on Rt 80
bound for Manhattan or the slaughterhouses of S Phily, in winter,
with the freezing wind from mountain passes ripping through the
slats, one sees their noses pressed to the bars, and their sad and
frightened eyes.)
~ Baez, Joan_ |
Once
people spend time with farm animals in a loving way ... a pig or cow
or a little chicken or a turkey, they might find they relate with
them the same way they relate with dogs and cats. People don't
really think of them that way because they're on the plate. Why
should they be food when other animals are pets? I would never eat
my doggies.
~ Silverstone, Alicia_ |
The
shriek was followed by another, louder and yet more agonizing..for
once started upon that journey, the hog never came back. One by one
the men hooked up the hogs and slit their throats. There was a line
of hogs with squeals and lifeblood ebbing away.. until at last each
vanished into a huge vat of boiling water (some still alive). The
hogs were so innocent. They came so very trustingly. They were so
very human in their protests. They had done nothing to deserve it.
~ Sinclair, Upton_ |
Americans
consume, on average, 51 pounds of chicken every year, 15 pounds of
turkey, 63 pounds of beef, 45 pounds of pork, 1 pound of veal, and 1
pound of lamb. 'More than ever,' reports our U.S. Department of
Agriculture, 'we are a nation of meat eaters.' And now, with help
from Dr. Atkins and his wonder diet, we have millions of consumers
gorging themselves on nothing but flesh, one excess to correct their
other excesses -- no thought whatever of taking their portion of
meat even if we grant that meat production and the sufferings
involved are necessary.
~ Scully, Matthew_ |
Isn't
man an amazing animal? He kills wildlife - birds, kangaroos, deer,
all kinds of cats, coyotes, beavers, groundhogs, mice, foxes and
dingoes - by the million in order to protect his domestic animals
and their feed. Then he kills domestic animals by the billion and
eats them. This in turn kills man by the million, because eating all
those animals leads to degenerative - and fatal- health conditions
like heart disease, kidney disease, and cancer. So then man tortures
and kills millions more animals to look for cures for these
diseases. Elsewhere, millions of other human beings are being killed
by hunger and malnutrition because food they could eat is being used
to fatten domestic animals. Meanwhile, some people are dying of sad
laughter at the absurdity of man, who kills so easily and so
violently, and once a year, sends out cards praying for "Peace on
Earth."
~ Coats, C. David_ |
It's hard
to remember, if all you see of a chicken are it's body parts wrapped
in plastic, or crates of them crammed on a slaughterhouse bound
truck, but chickens are individuals. Anyone who gets to know a
particular chicken learns that their range of emotions is vast and
undeniable.
~ Burton, Craig_ |
Most
Americans don't have any idea how well the Department of Agriculture
protects the grower at the expense of the consumer. When a chemical
is banned from use, a farmer or livestock operator who has the
chemical in stock has a choice: either to lose money by disposing of
the product, or to use it and take the risk of getting caught
breaking the law. How severe is that risk? Well, if you use a banned
product in your cattle feed, you have to face the prospect that the
government is going to inspect one out of every 250,000 carcasses.
They will test this carcass not for all banned substances, but just
for a small fraction of them. And even if they detect some residue
of a banned substance, and even if they're able to trace the carcass
to the ranch that produced it, the guilty rancher is likely at most
to receive a stern letter with a strongly worded warning. I never
met a rancher who suffered in any way from breaking any regulation
meant to protect the safety of our meat. The whole procedure is, in
short, a charade.
~ Lyman, Howard_ |
Since
factory farming exerts a violent and unnatural force upon the living
organisms of animals and birds in order to increase production and
profits; since it involves callous and cruel exploitation of life,
with implicit contempt for nature, I must join in the protest being
uttered against it. It does not seem that these methods have any
really justifiable purpose, except to increase the quantity of
production at the expense of quality—if that can be called a
justifiable purpose.
~ Merton, Thomas_ |
The
current treatment of animals in the livestock trade definitely
renders the consumption of meat as halachically unacceptable as the
product of illegitimate means. … As it is halachically prohibited to
harm oneself and as healthy, nutritious vegetarian alternatives are
easily available, meat consumption has become halachically
unjustifiable.
~ Rosen, Rabbi David_ |
At the
moment our human world is based on the suffering and destruction of
millions of non-humans. To perceive this and to do something to
change it in personal and public ways is to undergo a change of
perception akin to a religious conversion. Nothing can ever be seen
in quite the same way again because once you have admitted the
terror and pain of other species you will, unless you resist
conversion, be always aware of the endless permutations of suffering
that support our society.
~Conan-Doyle, Sir Arthur_ |
She gave
up eating pork three years ago, despite her proud pork-loving,
half-Cuban heritage, because she was told pigs share the same mental
capacity as 3-year-old children. 'My niece was 3 at the time, which
is a magical age,' she said, horrified. 'I thought, Oh, my god, it's
like eating my niece!' This, then, also put an end to her preferred
hangover cure: Egg McMuffins with Canadian bacon, natch, and beer.
~Diaz, Cameron_ |
We manage
to swallow flesh only because we do not think of the cruel and
sinful thing that we do. Cruelty... is a fundamental sin, and
admits of no arguments or nice distinctions. If only we do not
allow our heart to grow callous, it protests against cruelty, is
always clearly heard; and yet we go on perpetrating cruelties
easily, merrily, all of us - in fact, anyone who does not join in is
dubbed a crank.
~ Tagore, Rabindranath_ |
We
stopped eating meat many years ago. During the course of a Sunday
lunch we happened to look out of the kitchen window at our young
lambs playing happily in the fields. Glancing down at our plates, we
suddenly realized that we were eating the leg of an animal who had
until recently been playing in a field herself. We looked at each
other and said, "Wait a minute, we love these sheep--they're such
gentle creatures. So why are we eating them?" It was the last time
we ever did.
~ McCartney, Paul & Linda_ |
Animals
are often transported long distances and subjected to great
suffering in reaching a market. Taken from the green pastures and
traveling for weary miles over the hot, dusty roads, or crowded into
filthy cars, feverish and exhausted, often for many hours deprived
of food and water, the poor creatures are driven to their death,
that human beings may feast on the carcasses.
~ White, Ellen_ |
Every
particle of factual evidence supports the factual contention that
the higher mammalian vertebrates experience pain sensations at least
as acute as our own. To say that they feel pain less because they
are lower animals is an absurdity; it can easily be shown that many
of their senses are far more acute than ours - visual acuity in
certain birds, hearing in most wild animals, and touch in others;
these animals depend more than we do today on a the sharpest
possible awareness of a hostile environment. Apart from the
complexity of the cerebral cortex (which does not directly perceive
pain) their nervous systems are almost identical to ours and their
reaction to pain remarkably similar, though lacking (so far as we
know) the philosophical and moral overtones. The emotional element
is all too evident, mainly in the form of fear and anger.
~ Serjeant, Richard_ |
The awful
cruelty and terror to which tens of thousands of animals killed for
human food are subjected in traveling long distances by ship and
rail and road to the slaughterhouses of the world.. God disapproves
of all cruelty.. whether to man or beast. The occupation of
slaughtering animals is brutalizing to those who are required to do
the work.... I believe this matter is well worthy of the serious
consideration of Christian leaders.
~ Booth, Mrs. and Booth, General Bramwell_ |
Very few
people question that it is an act of kindness to put an animal
painlessly to death if it is injured beyond possibility of a
pain-free future; or that it is better to neuter pets than to allow
thousands of unwanted litters to be born. But mention it might be
better for a breeding sow in a farrowing crate if she had never been
born, and you will be met with chants of "Any life is better than no
life". Humans have an odd way of finding pleasure in activities that
bring them pleasure, or profit, or both.
~ Humphries, Bronwen_ |
_[T]hose
who claim to care about the well-being of human beings and the
preservation of our environment should become vegetarians for that
reason alone. They would thereby increase the amount of grain
available to feed people everywhere, reduce pollution, save water
and energy, and cease contributing to the clearing of forests;
moreover, since a vegetarian diet is cheaper than one based on meat
dishes, they would have more money available to devote to famine
relief, population control, or whatever social or political cause
they thought most urgent. …[W]hen non-vegetarians say that "human
problems come first," I cannot help wondering what exactly it is
that they are doing for human beings that compels them to continue
to support the wasteful, ruthless exploitation of farm animals.
~ Singer, Peter |
As we
become increasingly aware of the finite limits to the carrying
capacity of the planet, the inefficiency of converting eight or nine
kilograms of grain protein into one kilogram of animal protein for
human consumption would by itself be sufficient argument against
continuation of our present dietary habits. When one adds in the
abuse of animals inherent to factory farming methods, the depletion
and contamination of aquifers, the intense use of grain crops and
grazing areas, and the release of methane and other greenhouse gases
into the atmosphere, the case against our meat-eating behavior
becomes overwhelming. And that is before we factor in the effects of
animal fats - an inescapable component of meat and poultry - on
human health.
~ Lawrence, Robert S._ |
_Most of
the public lands in the West, and especially the Southwest, are what
you might call cow burnt. Almost anywhere and everywhere you go in
the American West you find hordes of [cows].... They are a pest and
a plague. They pollute our springs and streams and rivers. They
infest our canyons, valleys, meadows, and forests. They graze off
the native bluestems and grama and bunch grasses, leaving behind
jungles of prickly pear. They trample down the native forbs and
shrubs and cacti. They spread the exotic cheatgrass, the Russian
thistle, and the crested wheat grass. Weeds. Even when the cattle
are not physically present, you see the dung and the flies and the
mud and the dust and the general destruction. If you don't see it,
you'll smell it. The whole American West stinks of cattle.
~ Abbey, Edward |
...there
is something so very dreadful, so satanic in tormenting those who
have never harmed us, and who cannot defend themselves, who are
utterly in our power, who have weapons neither of offence nor
defense, that none but very hardened persons can endure the thought
of it.
~ Newman, Cardinal John Henry_ |
_May those
who oppose capital punishment for humans extend that protection to
animals as well . May those who oppose germ and other biological
warfare work to end the unconscious biological warfare unwittingly
waged on those who eat animal products. Those who are pro-life would
logically become vegetarian. Those who are pro-choice would not want
to impose their wills upon the body of a cow, sheep or pig.
~ unknown |
A
reduction in beef and other meat consumption is the most potent
single act you can take to halt the destruction of our environment
and preserve our natural resources. Our choices do matter. What's
healthiest for each of us personally is also healthiest for the life
support system of our precious, but wounded planet.
~ Robbins, John_ |
The very
fact that companion animals are so highly regarded raises difficult
issues for agricultural and performance animal doctors. Some of
these animals are not markedly different in their mental capacities
from many companion animals. At a time the profession seeks to
promote companion animals as members of the family, to what extent
must it also advocate the interests of its food, farm, and
performance animal patients?. . . Nevertheless, discussions devoid
of attention to animal interests are appearing with frequency in the
literature espousing the model of the veterinarian as herd health
consultant.
~ Tannenbaum, Jerrold_ |