Meat and dairy production facilities must be reformed due to the high levels of animal cruelty.
We need more regulations, laws, and penalties in place to protect these animals from violent, neglectful, and abusive acts. We are all Earthlings; No one being's suffering should be marked as less than another's.
“Though some will argue the suffering of animals cannot possibly compare with that of former Jews or slaves, there is in fact a parallel. For the prisoners and victims of this mass murder, their Holocaust is far from over (Joaquin Phoenix, Earthlings).”
Speciesism is prevalent in the world and is demonstrated everyday by human beings everywhere. Examples of this can been seen by just looking at your pet, or going to the nearest farm. We’re limiting a being’s range of movement, diet, and many other things, because we can.
Humans have been at the top of the food chain for millennia, treating other living creatures with less respect than we show our same species counterparts. We believe that we can take an animal, domesticate it, and strip it of its basic rights. We claim other beings as property, because we do not speak the same language or have the same way of existing.
In the documentary Earthlings, we see demonstrations of abuse committed repeatedly.
A voice sounds from somewhere off camera as the screen shows a pen packed with mud splattered pigs, crammed into the enclosure so tightly that they can hardly move. The man calls out as a pig squeals, “I missed you, but I’ll get you again” in a sing-song manor, taunting the frightened creature. There’s a loud bang of metal on metal and the pig drops to the floor, convulsing next to his pen-mates as it draws its last breath. The man sings out, “I got you!” as if it were some fun game he had been enjoying, ready to strike another pig dead without any hesitation.
These actions were caught on a hidden camera by a volunteer posing as a worker for one of the many slaughtering houses in America. This is not an isolated situation, as there are many videos taken that show the same abhorrent behavior. In many cases, the animal suffers throughout most of its life, including death.
The Peta article “18 Images Big Dairy Doesn’t Want You to See” shows us that in the beef industry, the cattle are branded on the face, dehorned without anesthetic while using pliers, and transported in trucks so packed, they are almost on top of each other.
Milking cows are forced into stationary living by chains, restricting movement to zero. A cow’s life span is generally twenty years, but milking cows commonly only live for four before collapsing from exhaustion and being discarded without a thought. We are stealing the vary lives of living creatures, their calls of pain and suffering going unheard by so many. They are no different from the cat one may have at home, or the family dog.
Another list of torments the souls in the meat industry must endure comes in the form of the bolt gun, a process called bleeding, and being dragged off by chains on an assembly line that hoists them into the air by their feet. As shown in the documentary titled Earthlings, one can clearly see that some of the animals are still conscious after being bolted.
This is a term used for the bolt gun being pressed to their head and firing a metal bolt into their brains to render them unconscious. They are then lifted into the air by chains around their hind legs, sometimes the chains are further down the legs, around where their ankles would be.
The next process is bleeding, which involves cutting the animal’s throat and letting it bleed out over the ground. Sometimes the blood is collected, other times it is just washed away by a hose at the end of the day with all the other gore on the floor of the slaughterhouse.
As soon as the bleeding process is over, the animal, sometimes still writhing in pain and fear, is hauled to another room where they cut out their organs and eventually get the carcass ready to be butchered.
Should one not be a hundred percent certain an animal is dead before proceeding to the bleeding process? The ones aiding the factories with these actions are not thinking about how these creatures feel. There is no punishment for these acts of cruelty that are taking place every day all over this country.
In the aforementioned article from Peta, they tell us that with veal, the calves are taken from their mothers within anywhere from one to three days of their birth.
- This causes extreme distress in both the cows and the calves.
- The babies are usually kept in cramped boxes to keep them soft and tender for the few months of life that they will know.
It is inhumane to cause this much trauma to any living being, human or not. Imagine the sense of loss and hopelessness they must feel while all of this is occurring. The only life they’ve known is one of sadness, loss, humiliation, and terror.
Phoenix then guides us through what the regular proceedings are in the pork industry.
Pigs live in a similar fashion when it comes to the meat industry.
- When they are only piglets, their tails are docked, ears are clipped, and their teeth are cut, all while given no anesthesia. This is to prevent other pigs from cannibalizing them due to stress and cramped living situations.
- They are castrated without anything to alleviate the pain, so the meat can have a chance at being a fattier grade.
It is barbaric and sadistic to place a living being in these situations knowingly.
The pigs are subjected to a number of horrors including, but not limited to:
- stress induced cannibalism
- electrocution
- bolting
- cattle prods
- waste pits
- abscesses and infections due to lack of cleanliness in the facilities and lack of veterinary care
- regular beatings given out by the factory workers
The cheapest way for them to be killed is throat slitting, making it a more popular method. This is done while the pig is fully aware of its surroundings and can still feel pain. The procedure is carried out in the same fashion as the bleeding is with the beef industry.
While some of the pigs are still alive, they are then taken away by chains through the air to massive vats of boiling water and drowned. They scream in pain, being scalded and forced to succumb and meet death head on. They are then tossed onto a machine that flips their lifeless bodies while a worker shoots them with a pressure washer to clear off the pealing flesh the was being removed by the boiling water.
8.5 million birds are slaughtered in a week, according to Earthlings.
That’s 8.5 million souls lost to the poultry industry. They’re debeaked, usually when they are younger, to prevent pecking and cannibalism caused by overcrowding. The procedure is carried out as quickly as possible using machines.
- This means that the blade isn’t generally as sharp or as hot as it should be, causing the birds serious harm.
“More chickens are raised and killed for food than all other land animals combined, yet not a single federal law protects them from abuse—even though most Americans say that they would support such a law (Peta, Chickens Used For Food).”
We need to take action to protect innocent creatures from abuse, both psychological and physical. Though it may not be law, common decency should drive knowing beings to be respectful of other living creatures around themselves.
“Chickens are inquisitive, interesting animals who are as intelligent as mammals such as cats, dogs, and even some primates (Stibbe, Ecolinguistics).”
Even with the video evidence of abuse and cruelty toward many animals in the meat and dairy industry, there have been few penalties for the monsters who commit the acts described here. The actions are common place, though unseen and unheard of by many. The violent soulless creatures that taunt the frightened animals can return to business as usual without fear of the same happening to them.
The laws and regulations for acts of senseless aggression and abuse toward a living creature need to be reformed. Those animals are in agony, knowing that they cannot run away, and their doom is certain. They are smarter and more aware of what is happening than we give them credit for, and the factories and their workers are sickening and lacking in morals. Help those that don’t have a voice. Stand up for all life, not just one species. Those who commit such vile deeds of cruelty and abuse are no better than the Nazis of World War II.