Animals for food.

Living in America we expect to get the best of the best. When you can eat clean well taken care of food, you wouldn't eat dirty, sickly would you? The answer will always be a no. So you think when you eat a piece of meat, that it came from the finest taken care of animals, correct? When you think of the animals before they were sent to slaughter you think of happy cows wandering around in fields and such, right? Well actually this is all incorrect, sadly. The reality of how these animals are being taken care of before they are sent to their deaths is atrocious. Take Poultry for instance. In the United States, virtually all birds raised for food are factory farmed. Inside the densely populated buildings, where they are confined their entire lives, enormous amounts of waste accumulates. The resulting ammonia levels commonly cause painful burns to the birds' skin, eyes, and respiratory tracts. How would you feel living a life like that? Farmers also trim from a third to a half of the beaks off chickens, turkeys, and ducks to cut losses from poultry pecking each other." This causes severe pain for several weeks. Some, unable to eat after being debeaked, starve. Then there are laying hens. Laying hens are placed into cages less than half a square foot of floor space per bird. Because of this the some hens cannot move at all and die of asphyxiation or dehydration. Male chicks, of no economic value to the egg industry, are typically gassed or macerated (ground up alive). Maceration is becoming a common method for disposing of male chicks. Although hens can live more than 10 years, they’re killed after a year or two. As for pigs, pigs are also abused before being put to death for consumption. The pigs are put into little cages, that are so small they cannot even turn around in them. Farm workers have been known to have jammed the pigs with metal rods and slamming piglets onto the concrete ground. The slamming of the piglets is suposed to instantly kill the unhealthy piglets. But the piglets are not killed instantly, and are thrown into a bloodied pile, some piglets can be seen wiggling vainly. It's also been known that piglets are being castrated, and having their tails cut off, without anesthesia. Hogs are dunked in tanks of hot water after they are stunned to soften the hides for skinning. As a result, a botched slaughter condemns some hogs to being scalded and drowned.

Federal law requires that mammals be stunned prior to slaughter (exempting kosher and halal).

Common methods of stunning:
Captive bolt stunning - A “pistol” is set against the animal’s head and a metal rod is thrust into the brain.Shooting a struggling animal is difficult, and the rod often misses its mark.16

Electrical stunning - Current produces a grand mal seizure; then the throat is cut. According to industry consultant Temple Grandin, PhD, “Insufficient amperage can cause an animal to be paralyzed without losing sensibility.”

For ritual slaughter, animals are fully conscious when their carotid arteries are cut. This is supposed to cause unconsciousness within seconds, but because of blood flow through the vertebral arteries in the back of the neck, some animals can remain conscious as they bleed for up to a minute. There are some plants which use cruel methods of restraint such as hanging live animals upside down. This can cause broken bones as the heavy animal hangs by a chain attached to one leg.

In February of 2007, a Mercy For Animals (MFA) undercover investigator took a job at one of the largest poultry slaughter plants in the country. There he found workers:

Punching live animals for fun, Ripping eggs out of the hens’ cloacae to throw at other workers, Ripping the heads off of turkeys who had gotten their feet stuck in the transport truck cages, Throwing turkeys, Letting birds lie on the ground flapping in misery for hours at a time, Birds frequently mutilated by throat-cutting machines that didn’t work properly; one bird had her skin torn entirely off her chest.

From October 2003 to May 2004, an undercover investigator working for PETA, took footage at a Pilgrim’s Pride chicken slaughterhouse in Moorefield, West Virginia. Workers were filmed violently and repeatedly throwing live chickens into a wall, picking chickens up by their legs and swinging their heads into the floor, and kicking and jump up and down on live chickens.

On May 24, 2000, King5.com new service in Seattle, WA, broke a story about undercover footage taken at a nearby IBP slaughterhouse. According to their report, “The video shows fallen cows being trampled and dragged, others are tortured with electric prods. One cow has fallen and workers stick an electric prod on its head, then place the prod down its mouth. Still other cows are hung on chains, fully conscious, blinking and kicking. The worker who shot the tape said one cow was already at a station where legs are removed. ‘It would be horrible if someone were to cut off your leg without anesthesia.’”

These are horrible things! This is a Holocaust on defenseless animals! Would you turn your cheek so quickly if this was happening to dogs and cats instead?