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To add interest I have
interspersed this commentary with thought provoking
quotations from philosophers, ethicists, scientists
and other notable thinkers both past and present.
“Our inhumane treatment of livestock is becoming
widespread and more and more barbaric....These creatures
feel; they
know pain. They suffer pain just as we humans suffer
pain.”
— Senator Robert Byrd, addressing the U.S. Senate
It should not be
believed that all beings exist for the sake of the
existence of man. On the contrary, all the other beings
too have been intended for their own sakes and not for
the sake of anything else.
Rabbi Moses ben Maimon (1135-1204)
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Shocking facts:
Land animals killed in 2001 world wide for human
consumption: 48 billion! Eight times the population of
the world. This does not include other animals including
wild animals or the millions of male chicks who are
ground up.
Aquatic animals: In 2000 89 million tons of fish where
killed for our consumption. There are no figures for
these animals as individuals but the numbers run into
billions.*1
How many animals
are killed each year in the UK?
The total number of animals killed in British
slaughterhouses in 2003 was approximately 900 million.
This included 9.35 million pigs, nearly 15 million
sheep, 28 million turkeys, 20 million ducks, over 850
million chickens and 2.25 million cattle.
This equates to 2.4 million animals slaughtered every
day; 100,000 an hour; 1600 per minute and 26 every
second
*2
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Our
grandchildren will ask us one day: Where were you during
the Holocaust of the animals? What did you do against
these horrifying crimes? We won't be able to offer the
same excuse for the second time, that we didn't know.
Dr. Helmut
Kaplan
It is my hope that
our descendents will look back
at our inhumane system of factory farming and other
animal exploitation with shock and horror and uncomprehending revulsion, much in the same way that we
now look back on the atrocities that we as a species
have carried out on one another throughout the ages and
into the present day.
in Animal
Farm, before unfolding
his vision of how life could be improved for farm
animals if they ran the farm themselves, Old Major
the pig laments the life of misery and
cruelty suffered by farm animals. Although his account
of the suffering experienced by farm animals was being
used by Orwell to highlight the circumstances of many
poor, working people, it is indeed
an accurate summary of the life of a farm animal. His
view of course did not take into account the rise of
factory farming shortly after the end of World War Two,
when the lot of a farm animal was indeed set to become
considerably worse, when the traditional free range
farms would become places of industry for the
manufacture of food and where animals are treated as
though they are inanimate commodities on a conveyor
belt, confined in dark windowless cramped places with
little or no room to turn round, where disease and
starvation are rampant.
Factory farming is
suffering on a scale unimaginable. Indeed few who visit
the supermarket and buy vacuumed packed meat, now barely
resembling a once living creature, know anything about the
conditions in which animals are kept as they endure
their short miserable lives while awaiting their ultimate fate
at the slaughter house to provide us with meat, a food
that we do not need and which we are not biologically
equipped to digest, or simply to be
killed when their useful days are over. I think
ignorance on the matter is one of the biggest problems in putting a
stop to this massive abuse, it is one of the main
reasons that this hideous cruelty has been allowed to
continue for as long as it has.
Very little of the
great cruelty shown by men can really be attributed to
cruel instinct. Most of it comes from thoughtlessness or
inherited habit. The roots of cruelty, therefore, are
not so much strong as widespread. But the time must come
when inhumanity protected by custom and thoughtlessness
will succumb before humanity championed by thought. Let
us work that this time may come.
Albert Schweitzer
What is factory
farming
In short Factory
farming is the practice of raising farm animals in
close confinement at high stocking density, where a farm
operates as a factory.
The aim of factory
farming is to produce as much meat and
dairy products as quickly and as cheaply
as possible in order to maximise
profits. Please do not consider that the
main purpose of factory farming is to
feed people, in fact many people in
developing countries suffer from
starvation partly as a result of
Factory farming.
Please refer to:
Going
Veggie /vegan could relieve world hunger
To keep profits
high and costs down these unfortunate
animals are given the bare minimum to
survive. Housed in huge sheds these
creatures are deprived of everything
that makes life worth living. The
grim reality of factory, or intensive
farming, is the cruel practice of
cramming as many animals as possible,
into as small an area as possible. There
is no room to move, these poor creatures
are unable to stretch even their wings
or legs, let alone roam in the sunshine
or feel the warmth of the sun or the
cool of the wind. They are deprived of
rearing their own young or even to
copulate in the normal way. So cramped
are the conditions in these sheds that
most animals cannot even lie down
comfortably or conversely, in the case of
lactating pigs, they cannot even rise to
a standing position or move at all as
you see in the pictures below.
Other abuses
include the dehorning, castration and tagging of cattle.
For a cow her calves are taken away from her shortly
after birth and she is used as a milk producing machine.
The notorious battery hen system accounts for the
suffering and death of millions of birds each year.
There is no such a thing as humane treatment of any animal forced to live out
whatever life he or she has confined in cages with barely room to turn round, as is the
case for
poultry
And even
pigs,
whom many people do not connect with
factory farming are confined indoors is
shocking filthy conditions, standing in
their own excrement.
Indeed,
unbeknown to many people both pigs and sheep also suffer and die in inhumane circumstances,
the details of which you may read in the links that
follow, or trapped in
fields exposed to the elements without shelter often suffering from exposure, such as
sheep,
who are also increasingly confined to sheds as you will
see from the picture below. It may seem to be a
contradiction to protest about sheep left to suffer from
exposure and to equally object to their confinement in
what could be considered a sheltered environment. There
is however a huge difference. Here you see sheep in a
factory farmed condition, they will never see the light
of day, never be free to roam or behave in a natural
way. The type of shelter to which I refer is access to
natural shelter afforded by trees, often not available
in fields, or barns with free access during inclement
weather, with straw on the floor, not mettle mesh to
stand or sit on as is the case for these poor creatures.
And than when the the unfortunate animal has outlived his usefulness he is taken to
the slaughterhouse to meet a painful end. There is no such thing as a humane way
of killing any creature; in fact to bring about the death of another being, to
deny him his natural course of existence is in itself an act of profound cruelty
that cannot be justified. There is nothing humane about death. Consequently
despite laws and rules about the treatment of animals in captivity either in
zoos or as farm animals these circumstance can never be seen on any level as
humane, (this is particularly the case for factory farmed animals), despite endeavours to make us feel that this is the case. No creature wishes his
freedom curtailed or his life ended, all creatures fear death. Survival is one
instinct all creatures share, including man. I consider that animals exhibit
instinctive behaviours and that includes man, but again like man, in addition to instinct there
is
sentience
in all creatures, and most certainly all
creatures experience both physical and
emotional pain as you can read in the
above linked webpage on Sentience in
Farm Animals
Although reference
is made to the UK and USA, the conditions, and worse, you
will read about here and by visiting the websites at
the end of this page, occur globally.
Here in the UK
alone each year 850 million farm animals are killed
annually, that's three million animals killed each and
everyday, plus countless millions of fish. In the USA
more than 10 billion land animals plus billions
more aquatic animals are slaughtered for food every
year. That is more than 1 million animals every hour, a
staggering number of animals killed every second of
every day, a continual stream of death. Before meeting a
painful death, and bear in mind that no creature can be
slaughtered without experiencing pain, farm animals are
reared in shocking and painful circumstances of
deprivation and confinement; deformed, crippled and in
pain as a result of selective breeding and the use of
antibiotics to produce larger animals than nature
intended. Then they are killed, often after travelling
for miles crammed into lorries in extremes of
temperatures, often when fully conscious
after being painfully or incompletely stunned
to provide you with meat, a food that you really don't
need to be healthy, and the meat industry with huge
profits.
From beasts we
scorn as soulless,
In forest, field and den,
The cry goes up to witness
The soullessness of men.
M. Frida Hartley
Here in the UK we
pride ourselves as animal lovers. Can we really in all
honesty consider ourselves animal lovers if we allow
such atrocities to continue.
Most of the meat
you will eat will have come from a factory farm. I
consider that many people would feel differently about
eating meat if they knew the suffering that is undergone
to put meat on their tables.
But for
the sake of some little mouthful of flesh we deprive a
soul of the sun and light, and of that proportion of
life and time it had been born into the world to enjoy.
Plutarch
Before reading
further you may like to click the
links below to access information about specific issues concerning
factory farming as they relate to:
Poultry
Cattle
Pigs
Sheep
Aquatic Animals
Bees
Also see the video
below from the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animal's website:
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA): The
animal rights organiza.
Meat.org: Meet Your Meat
We have enslaved
the rest of the animal creation, and have treated our
distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that beyond
doubt, if they were able to formulate a religion, they
would depict the Devil in human form.
William
Ralph Inge,
I believe that in
the future people will be horrified, in a similar way as
most of us are today when we learn about the misery of
slavery and the atrocities of WW2, that we took the
lives of these gentle sentient creatures and for no
other reason than to sate our appetite for meat, at the
expense not only of the precious lives of these
defenceless animals but also at the expensive of both people
in developing nations and the destruction of the environment.
When it comes to
having a central nervous system, and the ability to feel
pain, hunger, and thirst, a rat is a pig is a dog is a
boy.
Ingrid Newkirk
The animals
we eat are thinking feeling beings, they like us
experience pleasure, fear and pain, in the case of farm
animals there are however no moments of pleasure.
Consider your cat or dog, you know do you not that your
pet feels emotion, he or she experiences fear; hear your
dog barking if someone comes to the door, or see your
cat bristle, grow tense when she is frightened. You can
experience your dog's pleasure when he plays ball or
rushes in to eat his favourite meal or comes up to you
to be patted. Your cat rubs past your legs and purrs
with obvious delight showing both affection and
pleasure. These same emotions are present in farm
animals. A wide range of emotion is experienced in
all farm animals including pigs, chickens, cattle, sheep
and even fish, a creature which contrary to popular
belief suffers pain and stress and has a nervous system
similar to mammals. Yet despite these similarities, and
the most common without exception and most undeniable is
the ability to feel pain, we treat these animals differently than we treat our cat
or dog.
You would not be
allowed, nor neither would you wish to treat your cat or
dog in the way farm animals are treated. You would not
be allowed to confine your pet cat in a cage with barely
enough room to turn round, standing in her own faeces in
a dark windowless shed with lots of other cats,
artificially inseminate her and take her kittens
away when they are born, and when she has either
outlived her usefulness as a breeding machine to
replenish stock or she is old enough to be slaughtered
for food, usually from around two or three months to
three or four years of age as is the case for sheep,
she is taken in a cramped crowded lorry transported for
many miles in the cold or heat before she ends her life
in the abattoir with her throat cut, often whist still
conscious. You would be prosecuted for animal cruelty
would you not if you did just one of those things to
your cat or dog. Yet every time you go into a supermarket,
your local butcher or eat at a cafe you condone
this kind of treatment to animals very similar to your
cat or dog.
In fact, did you
know that pigs are more similar to us than either your cat or
dog?
Sentient pigs
There is and indeed
should be great concern about both the welfare of farm
animals and the animal called man. In relation to
factory farming in recent years the implications both
for the welfare of farm animals and public health are a
cause of concern, for example the the most
well-known
being the salmonella in eggs scandal and CJD. However in
my opinion not as great a concern as there should be and
more needs to be done to make the public aware of these
issues, in particular the shocking cruelty such as you
see below.
Undercover on an
Iowa Pig Farm.
PETA TV:Hormel Supplier Caught Abusing Mother Pigs and
Piglets
I could not get
this image of this poor pig and her piglets out of my
mind, the suffering this poor frightened sow must be
enduring on both a physical and emotion level surely
must touch the hearts of those who care about animals,
those who care about moral treatments of sentient
intelligent creatures.
In an earlier stage of our development most human groups
held to a tribal ethic. Members of the tribe were
protected, but people of other tribes could be robbed or
killed as one pleased. Gradually the circle of
protection expanded, but as recently as 150 years ago we
did not include blacks. So African human beings could be
captured, shipped to America and sold. In Australia
white settlers regarded Aborigines as a pest and hunted
them down, much as kangaroos are hunted down today. Just
as we have progressed beyond the blatantly racist ethic
of the era of slavery and colonialism, so we must now
progress beyond the speciesist ethic of the era of
factory farming, of the use of animals as mere research
tools, of whaling, seal hunting, kangaroo slaughter and
the destruction of wilderness. We must take the final
step in expanding the circle of ethics.
Pete Singer
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.
Romain Rolland,
Nobel Prize 1915
Farm animals are like us in many ways.
The most important of
which is that they all have a brain and nervous system, just like you, your cat or dog, therefore even without scientific evidence it is common sense
that if you or your pet feel pain than so do they.
Sadly few people
realise that this of course also applies to fish, birds,
and reptiles because all of these creatures like mammals
have a brain and a nervous system, which are the
purveyors of pain. Any creature with a nervous system
experiences pain as injured nerves transit messages to
the brain, which as we know results in the unpleasant
experience we call pain, which we like all creatures wish
to avoid at any cost
Yet many practices in farming overlook this.
“You are not
handling a lump of plastic. You are handling animals
with central nervous systems that feel pain and
suffering.”
Janice Swanson, animal behaviour specialist at Kansas
State University, addressing a United Egg Producers
meeting.
You have just
dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is
concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is
complicity.
Ralph Waldo
Emerson
The only acceptable
option to 'humane' slaughter is no
slaughter.
Quote from:
Vegan Society
I consider that Animals are on earth
for their own purposes, they are not
here for our use to supply us with
food, cloths, entertainment, or
medical research. They should be
left unmolested to go their own way, the only intervention if
any should be in the animal's interests, such as medical
intervention. We I believe should offer medical
assistance or any other assistance that is beneficial to
animals in much the same way as we do for the animal
called man.
Included in his website, my son
has written a thought provoking article: Meat = Death
The insanity of the 'traditional' diet
essay-meat=death
If 'rights' exist at
all—and both feeling and usage indubitably prove that
they do exist—they cannot be consistency awarded to men
and denied to animals, since the same sense of justice
and compassion apply in both cases.
Henry Salt, 1892
References and Links :
References*
1)
Holt S. "The
Food resources of the ocean, Scientific
American.
2)
Viva! - Vegetarians International Voice for Animals
Information and campaigns
End Factory Farming VIVA
PETA UK > Media Centre :
Factsheets:Factory Farming: Mechanised Madness
Farm Sanctuary | Watkins Glen, NY
Factory Farming Homepage
Animal Welfare Institute
Factory Farming UK
Animal Aid: Overview of the factory farming campaign
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