Could You Spend Your Entire Life in One of These? February 26, 2009

Posted by Rachel-O at February 26, 2009 9:26 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 2 ) | TrackBack

A lot of us who go vegan do so because of a video or because of an image that stayed in our head. Maybe of a single animal who conveyed his or her misery more than any other in "Meet Your Meat" or in a different undercover investigation.

For me it was a few different images. The first one being the pig who falls from the hook while on the slaughter line and tries to scramble to her feet while laying in a puddle of blood in one of the scenes in "Meet Your Meat", and the opening scene, where the two chickens, packed together in a battery cage, somehow forget how miserable they are, and take comfort by cuddling next to each other. One of them closes her eyes tight, and I only imagine that opening them again to find the same life is such a nightmare.

Chickens raised to produce eggs spend their entire lives confined to these "battery cages" so small that they can't ever spread even a single wing. They'll be crammed into these metal boxes with five to eleven other birds, living in the filth and stench of their own urine, feces and corpses of other birds whose bodies couldn't endure the abuse. Chickens used for their eggs have no laws to protect them—and will suffer for years until their bodies are too weak to be profitable, and they're sent off to be killed. Being thrown onto transport trucks will be the first time many of these birds ever feel sunshine on their backs.

You can read about this all day—but it's hard to imagine—and a lot of people just don't want to have to watch what happens to animals. The website AnimalVisuals.com is working on some new projects to give people an idea of just how much animals suffer on factory farms, and the first is a virtual battery cage—check it out below:



The best way to prevent this kind of suffering from happening is to stop paying for it. Don't eat eggs! Download leaflets and speak up for the millions of chickens that will be crammed into these cages this year, and send the virtual battery cage to everyone you know.

(Warning: Graphic Photo) Torture, Tails, and Testicles September 16, 2008

Posted by Marta at September 16, 2008 6:50 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 63 ) | TrackBack

By now, you're likely well aware of how awesome pigs are—remember, they're even smarter than dogs!

That makes what I'm about to share with you that much more disturbing. It's horrifying to imagine any animal being slammed head-first into the ground, right? Imagine this happening to a piglet...

A new PETA investigation of a pig factory farm in Iowa—which breeds and supplies piglets to be grown and eventually slaughtered for Hormel (maker of SPAM and Dinty Moore), has captured extremely disturbing footage of workers abusing sows and their piglets.

In the video, you'll see pregnant pigs kept in gestation crates so small that the mothers-to-be cannot even turn around, workers and supervisors kicking pigs maliciously, beating them with metal rods, and piglets being slammed against the floor to kill them (a "standard practice" in the pig meat industry). Some of the piglets convulsed for more than 12 minutes before dying.

Also documented by PETA's undercover investigators:

• A supervisor repeatedly urinating near crated pigs, his urine running into the only area where food was dropped and animals could lay their heads.
• Dead piglets' entrails removed, ground into a stew and set under heat lamps to grow bacteria. This stew—called "feedback"—was then mixed with feed and fed to the sows.
• Workers cutting off piglets' tails and pulling out piglet's testicles—without any pain killers—as the small animals screamed next to their mothers. Their tails and testicles went onto a pile on the shed floor.

Tails and testicles from baby pigs

This makes me shudder. Seriously, can you believe all this stuff happened before these pigs were even sent to the slaughterhouse?

Watch the undercover video for yourself, forward this investigation to everyone you know, and take action to stop this abuse today!

♥ Marta

PS - Notice the PETA mention at the end of the video. Little did they know!