I think I'll give the Beijing Olympics a miss.
http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30200-1266775,00.html
http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30200-1266775,00.html
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China's Zoos: 'Asylums For Animals'
- Thread starter wsionynw
- Start date
Whenever I see disgusting animal abuse by the Asians, I remind myself that such abuse is no worse than live export, which is practiced by many Western countries. Or chicken batteries. Or a slaughterhouse in general.
I'm for animal rights and a vegetarian except occasionally I eat seafood.
Yet, the most apalling and peculiar phenomena has been western hypocrisy and prejudice on these issues. They repeatedly condemn same treatment for some animals and not for others.
I have yet to figure out why they have circus animals, have disgusting slaughterhouse practices and livestock living in boring, dirty, unnatural and insanity-driving conditions. How they hunt game for sport and think it's okay yet the life of Spot is relegated to humanity and how they feed live domestic animals to other animals.
They need to stfu or fix themselves and then preach elsewhere.
Wow, I watched the videos. I've seen animal abuse all my life. Feeding a cow and a chicken to a tiger? That's horrible to a westerner and since when? So it would be better if it was slowly torn apart in a slaughterhouse? the chicken getting it's bones broken, or treated like dead weight and abused in a chicken factory? pigs in steel cages banging their head against the rail going insane from boredom and being confined?
Yet, the most apalling and peculiar phenomena has been western hypocrisy and prejudice on these issues. They repeatedly condemn same treatment for some animals and not for others.
I have yet to figure out why they have circus animals, have disgusting slaughterhouse practices and livestock living in boring, dirty, unnatural and insanity-driving conditions. How they hunt game for sport and think it's okay yet the life of Spot is relegated to humanity and how they feed live domestic animals to other animals.
They need to stfu or fix themselves and then preach elsewhere.
Wow, I watched the videos. I've seen animal abuse all my life. Feeding a cow and a chicken to a tiger? That's horrible to a westerner and since when? So it would be better if it was slowly torn apart in a slaughterhouse? the chicken getting it's bones broken, or treated like dead weight and abused in a chicken factory? pigs in steel cages banging their head against the rail going insane from boredom and being confined?
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I think I'll give the Beijing Olympics a miss.
http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30200-1266775,00.html
You do that.
No two ways about it: Chinese attitudes toward animals are bad. Still, Western attitudes are only better because we torture animals in private. I mean, how many of the people who talk about animal rights are actually vegetarians? I mean, if you eat meat and then talk about animal rights, you’re pretty much a hypocrite. Visit any slaughterhouse, and I would imagine you’ll see unbelievable torture! The only way for animals to be truly protected from mankind is for everyone to only eat plants.
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http://members.fortunecity.com/ricardo005/Ricardo4you/id5.html
Stop animal cruelty !
Look at the facts and decide.
This website is not maintained anymore. Please go to The Abuse: Animal Slaughter, abuse and cruelty for updates on animal abuse and cruelty.
First it was necessary to civilize man in relation to man. Now it is necessary to civilize man in relation to nature and the animals.
Victor Hugo (poet, novelist, and playwright)
For more slaughterhouse photos of Compassionate Action for Animals click the picture.
for more info from the film project about animal slaughter click the picture.
For more photos of the slaughter of pregnant animals and their unborn babies click the picture.
(Source VIVA)
For more photos from VIVA?s gallery click the picture
Watch a chick trying to escape its fate. Hit the picture.
Video Frags from the Animal Liberation Front
You always hear stories about abused animals. And almost always everyone is very shocked about it. You hear comments like how can it be, and what has become of the world or something like how people can be so cruel. But when it 's about eating meat no one has a problem with it.
How can this be ? Are there such differents between a chicken (for consumption) and a duck from the park ? Is the slaughter of pregnant cows normal ? ...
Sometimes when pregnant animals are hanging on the line bleeding to death, you can see the unborn babies kicking inside their mothers' wombs. (veterinarian Gabriele Meurer)
Click here to learn more about slaughtering Pregnant animals and their unborn babies (Viva!)
click here for the short movie
background information from Animal Freedom (in english)
More short movies and background information about animal transportation. CIWF (Compassion In World Farming) (in dutch)
More video's of animal cruelty at 'League Against Cruel Sports'
All video footage of hunting activities.
A few titles :
Fox being dug out ready to run for its life again
Fox being killed (slowly) by hounds then thrown by hunter
Two people tormenting a fox and enjoying it
Distressed stag being drowned
Stag falling at hedge with hounds upon it
Another distressed wounded stag in a garden
Stag being whipped in a river
Very tired stag - but they enjoy this of course
Quick nip to the neck - deer
Stag being drowned
Hare coursing
More hares
Stop animal cruelty !
Look at the facts and decide.
This website is not maintained anymore. Please go to The Abuse: Animal Slaughter, abuse and cruelty for updates on animal abuse and cruelty.
First it was necessary to civilize man in relation to man. Now it is necessary to civilize man in relation to nature and the animals.
Victor Hugo (poet, novelist, and playwright)
For more slaughterhouse photos of Compassionate Action for Animals click the picture.
for more info from the film project about animal slaughter click the picture.
For more photos of the slaughter of pregnant animals and their unborn babies click the picture.
(Source VIVA)
For more photos from VIVA?s gallery click the picture
Watch a chick trying to escape its fate. Hit the picture.
Video Frags from the Animal Liberation Front
You always hear stories about abused animals. And almost always everyone is very shocked about it. You hear comments like how can it be, and what has become of the world or something like how people can be so cruel. But when it 's about eating meat no one has a problem with it.
How can this be ? Are there such differents between a chicken (for consumption) and a duck from the park ? Is the slaughter of pregnant cows normal ? ...
Sometimes when pregnant animals are hanging on the line bleeding to death, you can see the unborn babies kicking inside their mothers' wombs. (veterinarian Gabriele Meurer)
Click here to learn more about slaughtering Pregnant animals and their unborn babies (Viva!)
click here for the short movie
background information from Animal Freedom (in english)
More short movies and background information about animal transportation. CIWF (Compassion In World Farming) (in dutch)
More video's of animal cruelty at 'League Against Cruel Sports'
All video footage of hunting activities.
A few titles :
Fox being dug out ready to run for its life again
Fox being killed (slowly) by hounds then thrown by hunter
Two people tormenting a fox and enjoying it
Distressed stag being drowned
Stag falling at hedge with hounds upon it
Another distressed wounded stag in a garden
Stag being whipped in a river
Very tired stag - but they enjoy this of course
Quick nip to the neck - deer
Stag being drowned
Hare coursing
More hares
Last edited:
SLAUGHTERHOUSES BUTCHER ANIMALS ALIVE, REVIEW FINDS
Washington Post
UNEVEN OR LAX ENFORCEMENT OF FEDERAL RULES MEANS SOME LIVESTOCK DIE
'piece by piece'.
Pasco, Washington
It takes 25 minutes to turn a live steer into steak at the modern slaughterhouse where Ramon Moreno works. For 20 years, his post was "second-legger," a job that entails cutting hocks off carcasses as they whirl past at a rate of 309 an hour.
The cattle were supposed to be dead before they got to Moreno. But too often they weren't.
"They blink. They make noises," he said softly. "The head moves, the eyes are wide and looking around."
Still, Moreno would cut. On bad days, he says, dozens of animals reached his station clearly alive and conscious. Some would survive as far as the tail cutter, the belly ripper, the hide puller. "They die," Moreno said, "piece by piece."
Under a 23-year-old federal law, slaughtered cattle and hogs first must be "stunned" - rendered insensible to pain - with a blow to the head or an electric shock. But at overtaxed plants, the law is sometimes broken, with cruel consequences for animals as well as workers.
Enforcement records, interviews, videos and worker affidavits describe repeated violations of the Humane Slaughter Act at dozens of slaughter-houses, ranging from the smallest, custom butcheries to modern, automated establishments such as the sprawling IBP Inc. plant here where Moreno works.
"In plants all over the United States, this happens on a daily basis," said Lester Friedlander, a veterinarian and formerly chief government inspector at a Pennsylvania hamburger plant. "I've seen it happen. And I've talked to other veterinarians. They feel it's out of control."
The U.S. Department of Agriculture oversees the treatment of animals in meat plants, but enforcement of the law varies dramatically. Although a few plants have been forced to halt production for a few hours because of alleged animal cruelty, such sanctions are rare.
For example, the government took no action against a Texas beef company that was cited 22 times in 1998 for violations that included chopping hooves off live cattle. In another case, agency supervisors failed to take action on multiple complaints of animal cruelty at a Florida beef plant and fired an animal health technician for reporting the problems to a humane society.
In the past three years, a new meat inspection system that shifted responsibility to industry has made it harder to catch and report cruelty problems, some federal inspectors say. Under the new system, implemented in 1998, the agency no longer tracks the number of humane-slaughter violations its inspectors find each year.
"Privatization of meat inspection has meant a quiet death to the already meager enforcement of the Humane Slaughter Act," said Gail Eisnitz of the Humane Farming Association, a group that advocates better treatment of farm animals. "USDA isn't simply relinquishing its humane-slaughter oversight to the meat industry but is - without the knowledge and consent of Congress - abandoning this function altogether."
The USDA's Food Safety Inspection Service, which is responsible for meat inspection, says it has not relaxed its oversight. In January, the agency ordered a review of 100 slaughterhouses. An inspection service memo reminded its 7,600 inspectors they had an "obligation to ensure compliance" with humane-handling laws.
The review comes as pressure grows on both industry and regulators to impove conditions for the 155 million cattle, hogs, horses and sheep slaughtered each year. McDonald's and Burger King have been subject to boycotts by animal rights groups protesting mistreatment of livestock.
As a result, two years ago, McDonald's began requiring suppliers to abide by the American Meat Institute's Good Management Practices for Animal Handling and Stunning. The company also began conducting annual audits of meat plants. Last week, Burger King announced it would require suppliers to follow the meat institute's standards.
Industry groups ackowledge that sloppy killing has tangible consequences for consumers as well as for company profits. Fear and pain cause animals to produce hormones that damage meat and cost companies tens of millions of dollars a year in discarded products, according to industry estimates.
Industy officials say they also recognize an ethical imperative to treat animals with compassion. Science is blurring the distinction between the mental processes of humans and lower animals, discovering, for example, that even the lowly rat may dream. Americans thus are becoming more sensitive to the suffering of food animals, even as they comsume increasing numbers of them.
MANY VIOLATIONS:
Clearly, not all plants have gotten the message.
A Washington Post computer analysis of government enforcement records found 527 violations of humane-handling regulations from 1996 to 1997, the last years for which complete records were available. The offenses range from overcrowded stockyards to incidents in which live animals were cut, skinned or scalded.
Through the Freedom of Information Act, the Post obtained enforcement documents from 28 plants that had high numbers of offenses or had drawn penalties for violating humane-handling laws. The Post also interviewed dozens of current and former federal meat inspectors and slaughterhouse workers. A reporter reviewed affidavits and secret video recordings made inside two plants.
Among the findings:
One Texas plant, Supreme Beef Packers in Ladonia, had 22 violations in six months. During one inspection, federal officials found nine live cattle dangling from an overhead chain. But managers at the plant, which announced last fall it was ceasing operations, resisted USDA warnings, saying its practices were no different from those of others in the industry.
At the Farmers Livestock Cooperative processing plant in Hawaii, inspectors documented 14 humane-slaughter violations in as many months. Records from 1997 and 1998 describe hogs that were walking and squealing after being stunned as many as four times. In a memo to the USDA, the company said it fired the stunner and increased monitoring of slaughtering.
At an Excel Corp. beef plant in Fort Morgan Colo., production was halted for a day in 1998 after workers allegedly cut off the leg of a live cow whose limbs had become wedged in a piece of machinery. In imposing the sanction, U.S. inspectors cited a string of violations in the previous two years, including the cutting and skinning of live cattle. The company, responding to one such charge, contended that it was normal for animals to blink and arch their backs after being stunned and such "muscular reaction" can occur up to six hours after death. "none of these reactions indicate the animal is still alive," the company wrote to the USDA.
Hogs, unlike cattle, are dunked in tanks of hot water after they are stunned, to soften the hide for skinning. As a result, a botched slaughter condemns some hogs to being scalded and drowned. Secret videotape from an Iowa pork plant shows hogs squealing and kicking as they are being lowered into the water.
USDA documents and interviews with inspectors and plant workers attributed many of the problems to poor training, faulty or poorly maintained equipment or excessive production speeds.
Preventing this kind of suffering is officially a top priority for the USDA's inspection service. By law, a humane-slaughter violation is among a handful of offenses that can result in an immediate halt in production - and cost a meatpacker hundreds or even thousands of dollars each idle minute.
In reality, many inspectors describe humane slaughter as a blind spot:
Inspector's regular duties rarely take them to the chambers where stunning occurs. Inconsistencies in enforcement, training and record-keeping hamper the agency's ability to identify problems.
Some inspectors see little evidence the agency is interested in hearing about problems. Under the new inspection system, the USDA stopped tracking the number of violations and dropped all mention of humane slaughter from its list of rotating tasks for inspectors.
Washington Post
UNEVEN OR LAX ENFORCEMENT OF FEDERAL RULES MEANS SOME LIVESTOCK DIE
'piece by piece'.
Pasco, Washington
It takes 25 minutes to turn a live steer into steak at the modern slaughterhouse where Ramon Moreno works. For 20 years, his post was "second-legger," a job that entails cutting hocks off carcasses as they whirl past at a rate of 309 an hour.
The cattle were supposed to be dead before they got to Moreno. But too often they weren't.
"They blink. They make noises," he said softly. "The head moves, the eyes are wide and looking around."
Still, Moreno would cut. On bad days, he says, dozens of animals reached his station clearly alive and conscious. Some would survive as far as the tail cutter, the belly ripper, the hide puller. "They die," Moreno said, "piece by piece."
Under a 23-year-old federal law, slaughtered cattle and hogs first must be "stunned" - rendered insensible to pain - with a blow to the head or an electric shock. But at overtaxed plants, the law is sometimes broken, with cruel consequences for animals as well as workers.
Enforcement records, interviews, videos and worker affidavits describe repeated violations of the Humane Slaughter Act at dozens of slaughter-houses, ranging from the smallest, custom butcheries to modern, automated establishments such as the sprawling IBP Inc. plant here where Moreno works.
"In plants all over the United States, this happens on a daily basis," said Lester Friedlander, a veterinarian and formerly chief government inspector at a Pennsylvania hamburger plant. "I've seen it happen. And I've talked to other veterinarians. They feel it's out of control."
The U.S. Department of Agriculture oversees the treatment of animals in meat plants, but enforcement of the law varies dramatically. Although a few plants have been forced to halt production for a few hours because of alleged animal cruelty, such sanctions are rare.
For example, the government took no action against a Texas beef company that was cited 22 times in 1998 for violations that included chopping hooves off live cattle. In another case, agency supervisors failed to take action on multiple complaints of animal cruelty at a Florida beef plant and fired an animal health technician for reporting the problems to a humane society.
In the past three years, a new meat inspection system that shifted responsibility to industry has made it harder to catch and report cruelty problems, some federal inspectors say. Under the new system, implemented in 1998, the agency no longer tracks the number of humane-slaughter violations its inspectors find each year.
"Privatization of meat inspection has meant a quiet death to the already meager enforcement of the Humane Slaughter Act," said Gail Eisnitz of the Humane Farming Association, a group that advocates better treatment of farm animals. "USDA isn't simply relinquishing its humane-slaughter oversight to the meat industry but is - without the knowledge and consent of Congress - abandoning this function altogether."
The USDA's Food Safety Inspection Service, which is responsible for meat inspection, says it has not relaxed its oversight. In January, the agency ordered a review of 100 slaughterhouses. An inspection service memo reminded its 7,600 inspectors they had an "obligation to ensure compliance" with humane-handling laws.
The review comes as pressure grows on both industry and regulators to impove conditions for the 155 million cattle, hogs, horses and sheep slaughtered each year. McDonald's and Burger King have been subject to boycotts by animal rights groups protesting mistreatment of livestock.
As a result, two years ago, McDonald's began requiring suppliers to abide by the American Meat Institute's Good Management Practices for Animal Handling and Stunning. The company also began conducting annual audits of meat plants. Last week, Burger King announced it would require suppliers to follow the meat institute's standards.
Industry groups ackowledge that sloppy killing has tangible consequences for consumers as well as for company profits. Fear and pain cause animals to produce hormones that damage meat and cost companies tens of millions of dollars a year in discarded products, according to industry estimates.
Industy officials say they also recognize an ethical imperative to treat animals with compassion. Science is blurring the distinction between the mental processes of humans and lower animals, discovering, for example, that even the lowly rat may dream. Americans thus are becoming more sensitive to the suffering of food animals, even as they comsume increasing numbers of them.
MANY VIOLATIONS:
Clearly, not all plants have gotten the message.
A Washington Post computer analysis of government enforcement records found 527 violations of humane-handling regulations from 1996 to 1997, the last years for which complete records were available. The offenses range from overcrowded stockyards to incidents in which live animals were cut, skinned or scalded.
Through the Freedom of Information Act, the Post obtained enforcement documents from 28 plants that had high numbers of offenses or had drawn penalties for violating humane-handling laws. The Post also interviewed dozens of current and former federal meat inspectors and slaughterhouse workers. A reporter reviewed affidavits and secret video recordings made inside two plants.
Among the findings:
One Texas plant, Supreme Beef Packers in Ladonia, had 22 violations in six months. During one inspection, federal officials found nine live cattle dangling from an overhead chain. But managers at the plant, which announced last fall it was ceasing operations, resisted USDA warnings, saying its practices were no different from those of others in the industry.
At the Farmers Livestock Cooperative processing plant in Hawaii, inspectors documented 14 humane-slaughter violations in as many months. Records from 1997 and 1998 describe hogs that were walking and squealing after being stunned as many as four times. In a memo to the USDA, the company said it fired the stunner and increased monitoring of slaughtering.
At an Excel Corp. beef plant in Fort Morgan Colo., production was halted for a day in 1998 after workers allegedly cut off the leg of a live cow whose limbs had become wedged in a piece of machinery. In imposing the sanction, U.S. inspectors cited a string of violations in the previous two years, including the cutting and skinning of live cattle. The company, responding to one such charge, contended that it was normal for animals to blink and arch their backs after being stunned and such "muscular reaction" can occur up to six hours after death. "none of these reactions indicate the animal is still alive," the company wrote to the USDA.
Hogs, unlike cattle, are dunked in tanks of hot water after they are stunned, to soften the hide for skinning. As a result, a botched slaughter condemns some hogs to being scalded and drowned. Secret videotape from an Iowa pork plant shows hogs squealing and kicking as they are being lowered into the water.
USDA documents and interviews with inspectors and plant workers attributed many of the problems to poor training, faulty or poorly maintained equipment or excessive production speeds.
Preventing this kind of suffering is officially a top priority for the USDA's inspection service. By law, a humane-slaughter violation is among a handful of offenses that can result in an immediate halt in production - and cost a meatpacker hundreds or even thousands of dollars each idle minute.
In reality, many inspectors describe humane slaughter as a blind spot:
Inspector's regular duties rarely take them to the chambers where stunning occurs. Inconsistencies in enforcement, training and record-keeping hamper the agency's ability to identify problems.
Some inspectors see little evidence the agency is interested in hearing about problems. Under the new inspection system, the USDA stopped tracking the number of violations and dropped all mention of humane slaughter from its list of rotating tasks for inspectors.
It should be required that suppliers immediately and humanely dispatch any animals who arrive at the slaughterhouse unable to walk, with broken limbs, or in severe pain (frozen, suffering from heat stroke, etc.). These animals should not be dragged or forced to walk to the kill floor, nor should they be left in "dead piles."
Downed animals, animals too sick or weak even to stand, suffer horribly at stockyards, auctions, and slaughterhouses throughout the United States. Incapable of getting to food or water troughs, downed animals endure hours or days without receiving their basic needs. Downed animals are commonly moved by the most convenient, though least humane methods, and are dragged with wenches and chains or pushed with tractors and forklifts--procedures which cause injuries ranging from bruises and abrasions to broken bones and torn ligaments. Incapacitated animals lay in alleyways or "out back" until it's convenient to take them to slaughter--usually the next day. Thousands of downed animals die of gross neglect before ever reaching the slaughterhouse.
Farm Sanctuary on Downed Animals
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Slaughterhouse takes readers on a frightening but true journey from one slaughterhouse to another throughout the country. Along the way, we encounter example after example of mistreated animals, intolerable working conditions, lax standards, the slow, painful deaths of children killed as a result of eating contaminated meat, the author's battle with the major television networks, and a dangerously corrupt federal agency that chooses to do nothing rather than risk the wrath of agribusiness, before the whole affair is blown wide open in this powerful exposé.
In the last 15 years, thousands of America's small to mid-sized slaughterhouses have been displaced by a few large, high-speed operations, each with the capacity to kill more than a million animals a year. With fewer slaughterhouses killing an ever-growing number of animals, slaughter "line speeds" have accelerated and a production mentality has emerged in which the rapid slaughter line never seems to stop for anything -- not for injured workers, not for contaminated meat, and, least of all, not for slow or disabled animals.
While investigating the slaughter industry, Eisnitz gains the trust of dozens of workers across the United States. Without exception, the individuals interviewed admit to deliberately beating, strangling, boiling, or dismembering animals alive in violation of the federal Humane Slaughter Act or failing to report those who did -- all in an effort to "keep the production line running." Many also discuss the web of violence in which they have become ensnared and the alcoholism and physical abuse that plague their personal lives.
In an effort to understand how such rampant violations could occur right under the noses of United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) inspectors -- the individuals charged with enforcing humane regulations in slaughterhouses -- Eisnitz examines the inspectors' track record for enforcing meat and poultry safety regulations, their primary responsibility. Following a long paper trail, she learns that contaminated meat and poultry are pouring out of federally inspected slaughterhouses and, not surprisingly, deaths from foodborne illness have quadrupled in the United States in the last 15 years.
Determined to tell the whole story, Eisnitz then examines the physical price paid by employees working in one of America's most dangerous industries. In addition to suffering disfiguring injuries and crippling repetitive-motion disorders, employees describe tyrannical working conditions in which grievances are met with severe reprisals or dismissals.
FAST FOOD RESTAURANTS AND STORES
In 1997, McDonald’s was found “culpably responsible” for cruelty to animals in a court of law. Here are just three examples, among many, of McDonald’s indifference to animal suffering:
Chickens raised for McDonald’s are crammed into crowded, filthy warehouses with less space per bird than a standard sheet of paper. This overcrowding causes disease, suffocation, and heart attacks.
Some breeding pigs raised for McDonald’s live their entire lives in cement stalls, unable to turn around, lie in a comfortable position, or nuzzle their babies.
U.S. federal standards for slaughter say that all animals should be fully stunned before their throats are slit, but McDonald’s considers it acceptable if slaughterhouses inadequately stun 1 in 20 animals, and refuses to even ask their suppliers to hire extra stunners, an action their own animal welfare experts say would markedly improve stunning efficacy.
Downed animals, animals too sick or weak even to stand, suffer horribly at stockyards, auctions, and slaughterhouses throughout the United States. Incapable of getting to food or water troughs, downed animals endure hours or days without receiving their basic needs. Downed animals are commonly moved by the most convenient, though least humane methods, and are dragged with wenches and chains or pushed with tractors and forklifts--procedures which cause injuries ranging from bruises and abrasions to broken bones and torn ligaments. Incapacitated animals lay in alleyways or "out back" until it's convenient to take them to slaughter--usually the next day. Thousands of downed animals die of gross neglect before ever reaching the slaughterhouse.
Farm Sanctuary on Downed Animals
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Slaughterhouse takes readers on a frightening but true journey from one slaughterhouse to another throughout the country. Along the way, we encounter example after example of mistreated animals, intolerable working conditions, lax standards, the slow, painful deaths of children killed as a result of eating contaminated meat, the author's battle with the major television networks, and a dangerously corrupt federal agency that chooses to do nothing rather than risk the wrath of agribusiness, before the whole affair is blown wide open in this powerful exposé.
In the last 15 years, thousands of America's small to mid-sized slaughterhouses have been displaced by a few large, high-speed operations, each with the capacity to kill more than a million animals a year. With fewer slaughterhouses killing an ever-growing number of animals, slaughter "line speeds" have accelerated and a production mentality has emerged in which the rapid slaughter line never seems to stop for anything -- not for injured workers, not for contaminated meat, and, least of all, not for slow or disabled animals.
While investigating the slaughter industry, Eisnitz gains the trust of dozens of workers across the United States. Without exception, the individuals interviewed admit to deliberately beating, strangling, boiling, or dismembering animals alive in violation of the federal Humane Slaughter Act or failing to report those who did -- all in an effort to "keep the production line running." Many also discuss the web of violence in which they have become ensnared and the alcoholism and physical abuse that plague their personal lives.
In an effort to understand how such rampant violations could occur right under the noses of United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) inspectors -- the individuals charged with enforcing humane regulations in slaughterhouses -- Eisnitz examines the inspectors' track record for enforcing meat and poultry safety regulations, their primary responsibility. Following a long paper trail, she learns that contaminated meat and poultry are pouring out of federally inspected slaughterhouses and, not surprisingly, deaths from foodborne illness have quadrupled in the United States in the last 15 years.
Determined to tell the whole story, Eisnitz then examines the physical price paid by employees working in one of America's most dangerous industries. In addition to suffering disfiguring injuries and crippling repetitive-motion disorders, employees describe tyrannical working conditions in which grievances are met with severe reprisals or dismissals.
FAST FOOD RESTAURANTS AND STORES
In 1997, McDonald’s was found “culpably responsible” for cruelty to animals in a court of law. Here are just three examples, among many, of McDonald’s indifference to animal suffering:
Chickens raised for McDonald’s are crammed into crowded, filthy warehouses with less space per bird than a standard sheet of paper. This overcrowding causes disease, suffocation, and heart attacks.
Some breeding pigs raised for McDonald’s live their entire lives in cement stalls, unable to turn around, lie in a comfortable position, or nuzzle their babies.
U.S. federal standards for slaughter say that all animals should be fully stunned before their throats are slit, but McDonald’s considers it acceptable if slaughterhouses inadequately stun 1 in 20 animals, and refuses to even ask their suppliers to hire extra stunners, an action their own animal welfare experts say would markedly improve stunning efficacy.
I saw it on Sky News this morning. It was horrible.
Basically, visitors to the zoo can pay to feed the tigers (who have already eaten and are overweight). £2 buys you a live chicken which you then release out the window of the tourist viewing bus. £3 for a duck and if your feeling flush £100 buys a live cow which is driven in to the compound and then tipped into the waiting pack of 10 or more tigers. After 10 minutes (and they showed it) the cow was still alive as these captive tigers do not know how to kill their prey, especially when they're not even hungry. Cow was then dragged out of the compound on a tow rope.
Made horrific viewing. The worst was the hundreds of Chinese in the buses watching and LAUGHING.
Disgusted, but it will be a real battle to change their societies thinking about this matter as they do not hold the same regard for animals as we do here in the UK.
Warning - If you don't want to see animals really suffering then don't watch it, it's not nice.
Western hypocrisy is the most disgusting. The highlighted part is the most laughable.
There are many animals who die of exposure and lack of water as they suffer and pant being cooked alive or frozen slowly tossed on top of eachother in the UK in transit among other heinous cruelty.
Western hypocrisy is the most disgusting. The highlighted part is the most laughable.
There are many animals who die of exposure and lack of water as they suffer and pant being cooked alive or frozen slowly tossed on top of eachother in the UK in transit among other heinous cruelty.
It's true that terrible animal abuse happens all over the globe, not just Asia. However the point of this story is to highlight the practice of abusing animals for family entertainment. Here in the UK we are educated enough to understand that bears don't enjoy performng tricks, yet the opposite seems true in parts of Asia, specifically China. We also have laws that protect animal rights (though not nearly enough laws), whereas these laws do not exist in China. It's about educating these people and shaming them into action.