Violence and abuse to farmed animals runs rampant, unchecked by industry, government, or consumers.

Regardless of intent – whether malicious or institutionalized – the cruelty and suffering continues.

It will not stop until YOU stop it.

Evidence:

Above: A Mercy For Animals investigator investigated the largest dairy factory farm in New York State – Willet Dairy in Locke in early 2009. The undercover investigator documented egregious acts of animal cruelty, including neglect:
* Cows with bloody open wounds, prolapsed uteruses, pus-filled infections, and swollen joints, apparently left to suffer without veterinary care
* “Downed” cows – those too sick or injured to even stand – left to suffer for weeks before dying or being killed
* Workers hitting, kicking, punching, and electric-shocking cows and calves
* Calves having their horns burned off without painkillers, as a worker shoved his fingers into the calves’ eyes to restrain them
* Calves having their tails cut off – a painful practice opposed by the American Veterinary Medical Association
* Newborn calves forcibly dragged away from their mothers by their legs, causing emotional distress to both mother and calf
* Cows living in overcrowded sheds on manure-coated concrete flooring
* Workers injecting cows with a controversial bovine growth hormone, used to increase milk production

Above: Another MFA investigation uncovered:
* Workers grabbing piglets by their fragile ears or legs and throwing them across the room and slamming them into transport carts.
* Workers tattooing sows by repeatedly driving sharp metal spikes into their flesh.
* Sows with untreated rectal prolapses and deep, infected sores and scrapes from constant rubbing against the bars of their stalls.
* Workers cutting off piglets’ tails with dull pliers and castrating them by ripping out their testes with their bare hands – all without anesthesia.
* Thousands of pregnant pigs confined in two-feet wide metal stalls so small that they could only take one step forward or backward and could not turn around or lie down comfortably.
* Injured, sick and runt piglets being tossed into overcrowded gassing kill carts, slowly suffocating from CO2.
* Workers firing steel rods into sows’ heads, sometimes as many as four separate times, before the sows fell and died.

Above: This investigation found:
* Rotting carcasses in cages with live hens still laying eggs for human consumption.
* Workers and managers killing birds by grabbing their necks and swinging them around in circles – an attempt to break their necks which often resulted in prolonged, torturous deaths for the hens.
* Supervisors and workers throwing live birds into trash cans, leaving them to be slowly crushed under the weight of other birds’ corpses and unable to access food or water.
* Birds suffering from broken bones, bloody open wounds, and untreated infections.
* Hens confined four to six in tiny wire cages so small they were unable to stretch their wings, move freely or engage in other basic behaviors.
* Birds trapped in the wire of their cages or under the feeding trays without access to food or water, some with body parts, including their faces, pressed against moving conveyor belts.
* Management and workers callously kicking live hens into manure pits where they either drowned in liquid feces or likely died slow and painful deaths from illness, injury or starvation.

Above: Thrown, dropped, mutilated, and ground-up alive. This is the shocking reality faced by hundreds of thousands of chicks each day at the world’s largest egg-laying breed hatchery. More info here: http://www.mercyforanimals.org/hatchery/

Above: In January and February of 2007 an MFA investigator worked on a turkey slaughter line, secretly filming egregious acts of animal cruelty with a hidden camera. Shocking abuses he witnessed include:
* Turkeys with broken wings and legs, bloody open wounds, tumors and other untreated injuries being slaughtered for human consumption
* A worker violently punching live, shackled turkeys for “fun”
* Employees forcefully shoving their hands into the cloacae (vaginal cavities) of live chickens
* Turkeys and chickens being thrown across the facility and up into the air
* Workers ripping the heads off live turkeys
* Birds being crushed to death under the wheels of trucks
* Conscious turkeys having their throats slit

Above: During a four-week investigation between April and May 2010, MFA’s investigator documented farm workers:
* Violently punching young calves in the face, body slamming them to the ground, and pulling and throwing them by their ears
* Routinely using pitchforks to stab cows in the face, legs and stomach
* Kicking “downed” cows (those too injured to stand) in the face and neck – abuse carried out and encouraged by the farm’s owner
* Maliciously beating restrained cows in the face with crowbars – some attacks involving over 40 blows to the head
* Twisting cows’ tails until the bones snapped
* Punching cows’ udders
* Bragging about stabbing, dragging, shooting, breaking bones, and beating cows and calves to death

Conclusion: The deplorable conditions uncovered in the meat, eggs, and dairy industries highlight the reality that animal agriculture is incapable of self-regulation. In order to prevent egregious cruelty to farmed animals, meaningful federal and state laws must be implemented, strengthened, and enforced.

But even without changing the law, there’s ONE thing everyone can do RIGHT NOW to make a HUGE difference for animals: GO VEGAN!

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Sections: Vegan Theory
Topics: beef, cheeseburger, chicken, cows, dairy, eggs, hamburger, investigation, meat, mercy for animals, MFA, turkey, undercover, veal, Vegan