Vegan for Life (29 page)

Over the following two years, MFA found similar conditions at two other large egg farms: Quality Egg of New England in Turner, Maine,
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and Norco Ranch in Menifee, California.
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Some of what they observed was typical for egg farms—birds confined in wire cages so tiny they couldn’t walk, stretch their wings, or engage in basic behaviors. But
they also saw birds with bloody, open wounds and hens being kicked by workers into manure pits or being thrown into trash cans while still alive. In both places, workers were observed killing birds by swinging them in an arc to break their necks.

Like hens who lay eggs for human consumption, “breeders” or meat chickens, and sometimes turkeys, have part of their beaks removed when they are very young.
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Farmers may also trim the bills of ducks (sometimes using scissors).
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The toes of turkeys are often cut off without painkillers to prevent scratching.
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In PETA’s investigation of Aviagen Turkeys, they found hens whose beaks were cut with pliers and birds who had collapsed and died of exhaustion or heart attacks.
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Birds may become lame and unable to walk because they have been genetically selected to grow abnormally large. A 2003 COK investigation of a chicken farm found chickens who could not walk due to leg deformities, as well as chickens trapped in the feeders. In studies on the effects of these deformities, lame birds are more likely than non-lame birds to eat feed that is laced with painkillers, an indication that they are in pain. The COK investigation also revealed that the levels of ammonia in the air were high enough to cause eye and trachea lesions in birds.
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Pâté de foie gras, made from the fattened liver of ducks or geese, is not a significant part of most American diets, but it is one example of the extreme cruelty that is legal in factory farming. To quickly produce fattened livers, ducks and geese are force-fed through tubes placed in their throats.

In 2008, an investigator from COK videotaped conditions inside Hudson Valley Foie Gras in Ferndale, New York. The video shows foot-long tubes being shoved down the throats of ducks to force food into their stomachs.
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The majority of breeder pigs spend years in pens so narrow that they can’t turn around.
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They usually live on metal grates or concrete floors amidst urine and feces. Crated pigs develop repetitive behaviors like banging their heads against the cages and biting the metal rails. About 20 percent are killed each year due to lameness.
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The non-breeding pigs raised for meat live in somewhat less cramped quarters and can turn around. But conditions are still restricted and dark, and the air is filled with the scent of ammonia. Because of ammonia levels, respiratory problems are the leading killer of pigs grown for meat.
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Like birds, they are bred to grow faster than their bodies can handle, and many become lame and eventually are unable to walk.

PETA and MFA undertook three undercover investigations of pig farms between 2007 and 2009, and they found numerous abuses. Workers dragged injured pigs out of the facility by their snouts, ears, and legs before killing them with a captive bolt gun, and employees cut off piglets’ tails and castrated them without using painkillers.

On one farm, a supervisor admitted on video that he violently beat pigs. Other acts of wanton cruelty included workers beating pigs, jabbing them in their eyes, shoving a cane up one of the sow’s vaginas, and spraying paint into the nose of a nursing sow. Young pigs who had been gassed improperly were still alive when the gas container was opened. Piglets were tossed through the air among workers. Pigs with cysts, sores, and uterine prolapses received no medical treatment.
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A majority of dairy cows are kept in large feedlots, where they live on a layer of mud and feces and among swarms of flies. To keep milk production high, cows are impregnated repeatedly. Their calves are taken from them soon after birth, often causing extreme anguish to the mother cow and her newborn.

According to USDA statistics, the average dairy cow’s milk production has increased from two to ten tons per year since 1940.
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Their bodies are so stressed by this hyper-production that by the time they are sent to slaughter (once production has declined), many “go down” and are unable to walk into the slaughterhouse. They are then dragged to a “dead pile” and left to die.

In September 2009, PETA released undercover footage of a Pennsylvania dairy facility that supplies the Land O’Lakes company. Over the course of several months, the investigation documented filthy conditions for cows on the farm, such as pens that were filled inches deep with excrement, which caused foot and hoof problems. Some cows were so ill that they had collapsed. The video footage shows cows struggling to walk or unable to stand up. Calves rescued from the farm had pneumonia, “manure scald,” ringworm, pinkeye, and parasites. Some cows suffered respiratory distress and had pus-filled nasal discharge streaming down their faces.
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In order to make milking easier, the cows’ tails were amputated by tightly binding them with elastic bands, causing the skin and tissue to slowly die and slough off, and leaving the animals unable to swat away flies. In one case, workers were told to wrap an elastic band around a cow’s gangrenous, infected teat in order to amputate it. The cow’s condition deteriorated for eleven days before she finally died.

In 2009, at Willet Dairy in Locke, New York, the largest dairy farm in the state, an MFA undercover video shows cows with udders that are shockingly large due to the production of an unnatural volume of milk, and cows with open wounds, prolapsed uteruses, pus-filled infections, and swollen joints. Some were too weak to stand, and dead cows and calves were found on the premises.
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Male calves born on dairy farms are typically taken from their mothers right after birth. Most are raised for “milk-fed” veal.
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They are tethered in stalls where they can’t turn around. This lack of movement and their iron-deficient liquid diet makes the meat from these animals
more tender and pale. The calves live this way for sixteen to eighteen weeks before being sent to slaughter.

About 15 percent of calves are slaughtered when they are just a few days or weeks old for “bob veal.”
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Often, these newborns are too weak to walk. A 2009 HSUS investigation of a Vermont “bob veal” slaughterhouse showed workers kicking and electrically prodding newborn calves who struggled to walk to slaughter. They threw water in some of the calves’ faces to make the electrical prodding more painful. The workers were also filmed cutting portions of skin off still-living calves in front of the USDA inspector.
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Improper stunning of the calves meant that some were conscious when they were shackled by one leg and hung upside down to have their throats slit.

The beef industry paints an idyllic picture of steers grazing contentedly on grassy hillsides. These cattle may be able to move freely, but their lives are not without pain and trauma. Cattle are hot-iron branded and castrated with no anesthetic. And after several months of life on the ranch, the animals are trucked to large feedlots, where they live in pens and are fattened on grains. Harris Ranch in Coalinga, California, holds more than 100,000 beef cows for fattening. They live on a layer of dirt mixed with feces, and the stench can be smelled from miles away.

Ranching impacts the lives of many wild animals as well, especially those that prey on cattle. In 2008, 89,300 coyotes were killed by the USDA Animal Plant and Health Inspection Services’ Wildlife Services Department to protect cattle. Other animals, particularly bison from Yellowstone National Park, that threaten to pass disease to cattle are often killed by government employees or hunters.

As slaughterhouses have consolidated, animals are trucked long distances to slaughter. They are typically not fed for many hours at a time
and are subject to extreme heat and cold, as well as highway accidents. At least one trucker admitted that he leaves cattle on a truck for up to sixty hours without water. Many animals die in transport or are too weak to walk when they arrive at the slaughterhouse.
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Animals that cannot walk are treated horribly. They may be repeatedly shocked with electricity or dragged by chains. Some are pushed by a backhoe and dumped in a dead pile, where they die a slow death.

With the exception of kosher and halal slaughter, mammals are by law to be rendered unconscious before they are killed. This is often done with a shot from a captive bolt pistol. Studies show that the shooter misses the mark in a small but consistent percentage of cases. The American Meat Institute considers a 95-percent stun rate acceptable.
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According to a 2008 survey, 25 percent of beef slaughter plants obtained a level of stunning of 95 percent to 99 percent on the first attempt. But while the percentage of animals who are not rendered unconscious on the first try is small, the actual number isn’t. It may be true that “only” 1 to 5 percent of all cattle are insufficiently stunned, but that means that as many as 345,000 to 1.7 million cows per year must be stunned more than once—or they remain conscious during at least part of the slaughter process.
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Slaughterhouse consultant Temple Grandin said, “Unfortunately, effective stunning and reducing skull fracturing [to prevent the spread of mad cow disease via brain tissue entering the flesh] are two opposite goals. As the amount of damage to the skull is reduced, placement of the shot must become more and more precise to achieve instantaneous insensibility. Shooting on a slight angle may result in failure to induce instantaneous insensibility.”
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In “Modern Meat: A Brutal Harvest,” a 2001 article from the
Washington Post
, the reality of insufficient stunning was made graphically clear:

Fast line speeds at the slaughterhouse are typically to blame for the fact that animals are often conscious as they move down the line. Workers are under too much pressure to keep the line moving and cannot take the time to worry about a still-conscious animal who has slipped by.

In testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Dr. Dean Wyatt, a USDA public health supervisory veterinarian, said that he saw calves being dragged and thrown and left to die without food or water and animals being killed without stunning. Dr. Wyatt testified that he had been directed by his superiors at the agency to “drastically cut back” the time spent ensuring that animals destined for food were treated humanely. He was threatened with termination, and other inspectors were chastised, reprimanded, and demoted for reporting violations.
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Birds (and rabbits) are not required to be stunned or unconscious when they are slaughtered. Although birds’ heads are usually run through water that has an electric current to paralyze them for easier handling, it’s unlikely that this renders them unconscious. When their throats
are cut, if the blade misses—a frequent occurrence when the process is mechanized—birds may be awake and alert when they are dropped into the scalding tank to be boiled alive. The USDA refers to birds who are still alive when they reach the scalding tank as “cadavers” and condemns them from the food supply because they contain too much blood and are discolored. USDA statistics show that over 1 million chickens and over 30,000 turkeys were condemned as cadavers in 2008.
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From December 2004 through February 2005, a PETA undercover investigator worked on the slaughter line of a Tyson Foods chicken processing plant in Heflin, Alabama. Using a hidden camera, he documented the treatment of the more than 100,000 chickens killed every day in the plant:

Shockingly, just two years later, a PETA investigation into Tyson slaughter plants in Georgia and Tennessee showed that the abuses at this company had worsened. The investigator documented birds hung from shackles by their necks rather than their feet, birds trapped under the door at the end of the conveyor belt, and workers urinating on the conveyer belt. Supervisors were sometimes directly involved in the abuses or failed to stop them. One stated on videotape that it was acceptable to rip the heads off live birds who had been improperly shackled by the head.
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