10 Cruel Things Done to Farm Animals That No Sane Person Would Do to a Cat or Dog
Some people find it incredibly difficult to understand why the common farming practices carried out on pigs, chickens, cows, geese, goats, and sheep are so cruel and inhumane. This is because society has conditioned us to believe that its okay to treat farmed animals differently than others because they dont feel emotional or physical pain in the same way. However, this is a flat-out lie.
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1. Cutting Their Tails Off
In order to prevent tails being mutilated or bitten off due to overcrowding in pens, tails are cut off shortly after birth, without anesthesia or pain killers.
2. Ripping Their Teeth Out
Piglets also have their teeth ripped out at the same time as they have their tails docked to prevent them from causing harm to each other when theyre confined in their tiny pens.
3. Locking Them in Cages Where They Cannot Turn Around
Factory farmed animals are often kept in cages where there is not even enough room to turn around, stretch their wings fully, or extend their legs.
4. Taking Away Their Babies Immediately After Birth
Its standard practice to take calves away from their mothers within a day of birth, a process which causes immense emotional stress and deprives the newborn of its mothers milk.
5. Forcing a Tube Down Their Throat
Geese in the foie gras industry are force fed huge volumes of corn slop through long metal tubes, giving them no choice but to consume it.
6. Stealing Their Milk
Cows produce milk to feed their own babies, yet in the dairy industry, they are hooked up to machines which steal the milk for human consumption instead.
7. Filling Them Full of Drugs to Make Them Grow Faster
Almost all farm animals on intensive farms are routinely fed drugs and antibiotics in order to make them grow much faster than nature intended. Chickens are forced to grow so big that many suffer from broken legs and joint troubles.
8. Branding or Tagging Them for Identification
One method of identifying cows and pigs is by branding them with a hot iron which causes considerable pain and discomfort. Another way of doing it, for sheep, goats, and sometimes cows, is by punching a tag through the ear, which is also very painful and can become infected.
9. Depriving Them of Sunlight
Locking animals away in darkness and depriving them of ever seeing the sunlight is an industry norm for many industrialized farms.
10. Slaughtering Them at a Young Age and Eating Their Dead Bodies
Farm animal lives are cut extremely short because as soon as they reach the desired size, or they become less productive milk producers or egg layers, they are sent to the slaughter for people to eat.
Even though society deems it acceptable to do every single one of these things on a regular basis to certain animals, if someone were to do them to a dog or a cat, theyd probably be arrested for animal cruelty.
The thought of cutting a dogs tail off, ripping her teeth out, branding her instead of giving her a name, shoving her in a tiny cage for her entire life, making her have puppies and then taking them away, and continuing to milk her so that you can drink the milk, before finally killing her and making dinner with her carcass sounds pretty psychotic. Yet this is what happens to billions of farm animals every single year.
http://www.onegreenplanet.org/animalsandnature/cruel-things-done-to-farm-animals/
villager
(26,001 posts)n/t
Codeine
(25,586 posts)I don't care if they eat meat, but why do they have to be dicks about my diet?
villager
(26,001 posts)WilliamTuckness
(41 posts)Or, if we can't outlaw them, then let's put a 100% national sales tax on each of their "products". So if a kilogram of beef costs $3 then the 100% sales tax on it would make it cost $6.
upaloopa
(11,417 posts)Check out "Vegucated" on Netflix
Very good but makes you extremely sad to see the treatment of animals in it.
undeterred
(34,658 posts)but the view that there is nothing wrong with treating farm animals this way is sacrosanct.
Blue Owl
(54,726 posts)Treating them like trash does not.
mucifer
(24,828 posts)I'm a hospice nurse and I visit several patients in their homes in one day. It makes me so sad when I see this.
Chellee
(2,211 posts)Docking and cropping is still legal in most places.
The AKC not only condones it, they require it.
https://www.akc.org/press_center/article.cfm?article_id=3659
AKC's policy on the issue, which remains unchanged, states:
The American Kennel Club recognizes that ear cropping, tail docking, and dewclaw removal, as described in certain breed standards, are acceptable practices integral to defining and preserving breed character and/or enhancing good health. Appropriate veterinary care should be provided.
Right, it's not cosmetic. It's to enhance their health. Of course.
Because nature couldn't possibly know what a dog is supposed to look like.
Because this doberman is wrong:
And this one is right:
Of course the inbetween stage isn't too pretty:
flvegan
(64,592 posts)Little more than puppy mill pimps, them. Halfwits and idiots bolstered by inbred hillbillies a/k/a the Hunte Corporation, the NAIA and their ilk. Morons, the lot. Sadly, I've just somehow insulted pimps, halfwits, idiots, the inbred, hillbillies and morons in such a short time.
Chellee
(2,211 posts)As far as the AKC, you're right. It would be fine if they were merely pointless, but their actions and inactions are actively harmful. And most people don't know that. I think the majority of the public look upon them as the gold standard of dogs. I just find it sad and frustrating.
LeftyMom
(49,212 posts)I mean, shredded newspaper, wood shavings, the shit of other animals, all sorts of agricultural waste of dubious nutritional value. Stuff that makes the rendered slaughterhouse floor scrapings that make up cheap pet food sound like haute cuisine.
undeterred
(34,658 posts)As the worst drought in half a century has ravaged this year's U.S. corn crop and driven corn prices sky high, the market for alternative feed rations for beef and dairy cows has also skyrocketed. Brokers are gathering up discarded food products and putting them out for the highest bid to feed lot operators and dairy producers, who are scrambling to keep their animals fed.
In the mix are cookies, gummy worms, marshmallows, fruit loops, orange peels, even dried cranberries. Cattlemen are feeding virtually anything they can get their hands on that will replace the starchy sugar content traditionally delivered to the animals through corn.
"Everybody is looking for alternatives," said Ki Fanning, a nutritionist with Great Plains Livestock Consulting in Eagle, Nebraska. "It's kind of funny the first time you see it but it works well. The big advantage to that is you can turn something you normally throw away into something that can be consumed. The amazing thing about a ruminant, a cow, you can take those type of ingredients and turn them into food."
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/23/us-usa-cattle-candy-idUSBRE88M05N20120923
De Leonist
(225 posts)WTF!?
I tell ya living in Iowa I known for a long time that they've been feeding Livestock some crazy shit (seems literally in some cases) but I didn't know it had gotten this bad.
I'm not Vegan or a Vegetarian and have no plans to become one. But after reading that article I think I am going to seriously consider where I get my meat from now on. Glad I live in state where even with all the Corporate Farms there still seem to be Hobby Farmers and Hunters who are willing to part with some free range meat or wild venison for a few dollars.
flvegan
(64,592 posts)you're on the right track (in my opinion) to be more conscious of where your meat does come from.