tagged w/ animal suffering
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Sea Life in the Gulf of Mexico continues to suffer and then dies, dies, dies, and, no, it's not over; the death, dying, and depletion will continue.Sea Life in the Gulf of Mexico continues to suffer and then dies, dies, dies, and, no,... more
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The Friendly Face of Torture, Death, and Animal Exploitation
Posted by Gary L. Francione
If you question whether animal welfare reform is in the interests of industry, look no further than the October 21, 2010 article in the New York Times about controlled-atmosphere stunning of poultry, which, as I discussed in an essay here in 2008, is promoted by PETA and PETA award-winning slaughterhouse designer, Temple Grandin.
From the New York Times article:
“When you grab a chicken, turn it upside down and put it on the line, it’s stress, stress, stress,” said Scott Sechler, the owner of Bell & Evans. “Our system is designed so that we put them to sleep without stress and we kill them without stress.”
Anglia Autoflow, the company that is building the knock-out systems for the two processors, calls the process “controlled atmosphere stunning,” but Mr. Pitman [owner of Mary's Chickens] said his company was considering the phrase “sedation stunning” for use on its packages. Also on the short-list: “humanely slaughtered,” “humanely processed” or “humanely handled.”
The trick, he said, is to communicate the goal of the new system, which is to ensure that the birds “not have any extra pain or discomfort in the last few minutes of their lives.”
Mr. Sechler said the system was designed to put birds to sleep gently, in the same way that a person undergoes anesthesia before surgery.
To evoke that image, he wants to put the words “slow induction anesthesia” on his packages and advertising, which already tell customers that the birds are raised in roomy conditions with natural light and given feed free of antibiotics or animal byproducts. Customers who want to know more will be able to go to the company’s Web site.
Mr. Sechler said the system he chose, after years of research, was better than similar gas-stunning systems used in Europe. Those systems, he says, often deprive birds of oxygen too quickly, which may cause them to suffer. They are also designed to kill the birds rather than simply knock them out, something that Mr. Sechler is not comfortable with.
“I don’t want the public to say we gas our chickens,” he said.
And, of course, better treatment means better meat:
Mr. Sechler and others promoting the new system said that they expected the meat to be of higher quality because the birds faced less stress and also there would be less bruising and broken wings when they died.
PETA, which promotes the gassing of chickens, also maintains that gassing is in the economic interests of producers. In its Analysis of Controlled-Atmosphere Killing vs. Electric Immobilization from an Economic Standpoint, PETA argues for the gassing of poultry, claiming that the electric stunning method of slaughter “lowers product quality and yield” because birds suffer broken bones and the process results in contamination dangerous to human health. The electric stunning method also “increases labor costs” in various ways. PETA argues that gassing “increases product quality and yield” because broken bones, bruising, and hemorrhaging are supposedly eliminated, contamination is reduced, “shelf-life of meat” is increased, and “‘more tender breast meat’” is produced. PETA also claims that gassing “lowers labor costs” by reducing the need for certain inspections, reducing accidents, and lowering employee turnover. Gassing provides “other economic benefits” to the poultry industry by allowing producers to save money on energy costs, and by reducing by-product waste and the need to use water.
This sort of campaign is doing nothing but making the public feel better about animal exploitation. Indeed, the large animal welfare groups have become active partners in animal exploitation by helping industry to put a little smiling happy face on death, torture, and exploitation while, at the same time, helping industry to make animal exploitation more economically efficient and profitable. If you are questioning whether “happy” meat is, and is intended to, make the public feel better about animal exploitation, you are not paying attention.
This “happy” exploitation nonsense represents a very big step backward. People are never going to go vegan if they believe that they can exploit morally. And that is exactly the message that the “happy” exploitation movement is trying to convey: we can continue to exploit animals and treat ourselves to animal products as long as animals are treated “humanely.” As Peter Singer has stated:
[T]o avoid inflicting suffering on animals—not to mention the environmental costs of intensive animal production—we need to cut down drastically on the animal products we consume. But does that mean a vegan world? That’s one solution, but not necessarily the only one. If it is the infliction of suffering that we are concerned about, rather than killing, then I can also imagine a world in which people mostly eat plant foods, but occasionally treat themselves to the luxury of free range eggs, or possibly even meat from animals who live good lives under conditions natural for their species, and are then humanely killed on the farm. (The Vegan, Autumn 2006.)
The “happy” exploitation movement represents the promise of “compassionate” exploitation so that we may indulge in the “luxury” of animal exploitation.
That’s a “luxury” that animals cannot afford.
There is no such thing as “humane” exploitation and even if there were, it would still involve the unjustifiable killing of sentient nonhumans. Singer and his “happy” exploitation movement are not bothered by killing because they do not believe that animals have an interest in continuing to live, as I have discussed in other essays, including these: 1, 2, as well as in my new book, The Animal Rights Debate: Abolition or Regulation?, in which I debate the “happy” exploitation movement with Professor Robert Garner.
If you are opposed to animal exploitation; if you regard animals as members of the moral community; if you reject the notions that nonhumans are just things that exist as resources for humans, you have one choice: go vegan. It is easy, better for your health and the planet, and, most important, it is the right and just thing to do. It’s what we owe other animals. If you are not vegan, then you are participating directly in animal exploitation. You don’t get off the moral hook by eating gassed chicken.
If you are vegan, then educate others about veganism in creative, non-violent ways.
The World is Vegan! If you want it.
Gary L. FrancioneThe Friendly Face of Torture, Death, and Animal Exploitation
Posted by Gary L.... more
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PART ONE...
Ingrid Newkirk on Principled Veganism: “Screw the principle”
Posted by Gary L. Francione
In an article in Time Magazine, PETA co-founder Ingrid Newkirk discusses “flexitarianism,” or “[p]art-time vegetarianism.”
The goal for many activists is simply to get more people to eat less meat. “Absolute purists should be living in a cave,” says Ingrid Newkirk, president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). “Anybody who witnesses the suffering of animals and has a glimmer of hope of reducing that suffering can’t take the position that it’s all or nothing. We have to be pragmatic. Screw the principle.”
We can make several observations about Newkirk’s statements:
First, Newkirk repeats the mantra of the new welfarist movement: that animal welfare reforms actually reduce suffering. The reforms that are promoted by PETA and the other new welfarist groups for the most part do not provide significant welfare benefits for animals. They just represent a different form of torture. Waterboarding someone on a bare board and waterboarding them on a padded board is still waterboarding.
Moreover, for the most part, industry would eventually adopt these reforms anyway because they generally increase production efficiency. Giving slightly more space to veal calves or using alternatives to the gestation crate result in increased animal productivity, lower veterinary costs, and a better bottom line for producers. PETA explicitly recognizes that gassing chickens is an economically efficient thing to do. The symbiotic relationship between large animal groups and institutional exploiters is clear when we see that groups like PETA and institutional exploiters are involved in a drama whereby animal advocates target an economically vulnerable practice; industry puts up a token fight; the reform, or some modification of the reform, is eventually accepted because it does not harm, and usually helps, industry; the animal groups declare victory; the animal exploiters bask in the praise that industry gets from animal advocates. Only the animals lose.
Second, Newkirk conveniently ignores that the relentless promotion of these welfare reforms by PETA and other new welfarist groups and the claims that these reforms make exploitation more “humane” make the public feel more comfortable about consuming animals and, as a result, consumption increases. It is interesting to note that per capita consumption of animal products is going up and not down. When groups like PETA give an award to slaughterhouse designer Temple Grandin, or praise animal flesh/products peddlers, or call off the boycott of KFC in Canada because KFC agreed to phase in buying gassed chickens from producers, what does that say to the public? It is nothing less than one big stamp of “animal rights” approval.
PETA has made it possible for people who eat at KFC in Canada or at McDonald’s, or who buy “happy” meat or other animal products at Whole Foods, to proclaim themselves as “animal rights” advocates.
It should be increasingly clear that the “happy meat/animal products” movement is a giant step backwards.
Third, Newkirk conveniently misses the most important point in the debate whether to pursue a clear vegan moral baseline or instead to pursue welfare reforms.
It’s a zero-sum game. That is, we live in a world of limited resources. Every cent of money; every second of time; every bit of effort that we devote to welfare reform is less money, time, and labor that we devote to clear, unequivocal vegan advocacy. If the large new welfarist corporations put all of their resources into vegan advocacy, they could reduce suffering and death by reducing demand and helping to shift the paradigm away from the notion that animals are things that we can use if we treat them “humanely” to the notion that animals are beings with inherent moral value whom we should not be using at all.
CONTINUED...PART ONE...
Ingrid Newkirk on Principled Veganism: “Screw the... more
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PLEASE be sure to look at the four photos, and when you get to the fourth photo, just imagine if that were you... or a child of yours...
http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/08/12/china.performing.animals/index.html?hpt=C2
Performing animals mistreated in China, says report
August 15, 2010 11:21 p.m. EDT
(CNN) -- Bears riding motorcycles, tigers jumping through flaming hoops and pigs leaping off diving boards. Just some of the "entertainment" that can be seen at circuses, zoos and safari parks in China, according to a report by Animals Asia into animals cruelty.
The Hong Kong-based animal rights campaign group visited 13 safari parks and zoos in China and according to David Neale, Animals Asia's Animal Welfare Director, found that the animal shows "portray the animal to the public in a humiliating way" and have no educational value.
"There is a misunderstanding really within China at the moment about what these animals are experiencing," Neale told CNN.
The report says that many of the performance animals that include tigers, lions, Asiatic black bears, elephants and monkeys are born and bred in captivity and brutalized throughout their lives.
Video: Cruelty to performing animals
"These animals have been suffering from birth, really. Once they're born they go into this industry. And straight away the trainers are starting to brutalize them to make them to do these tricks.... We saw some of the training of the younger animals; they were continually hit to make sure they learnt these tricks so that when they're out in the performance ring they perform them to the best standard."
"Once the trick is finished they then go to the backstage area where they're housed in the most shocking conditions. All kinds of animals are held in cages full of faeces, with very little access to water, very little access to food."
The abuse of performing animals isn't specific to China.
"Animal cruelty is happening in every country across the world," said Neale.
However Neale points out that in China there are currently no animal protection laws, a reason why Animals Asia have worked with Chinese academics to draft legislation not just for animals in captivity, but all animals.
Despite the findings of their investigation, Neale is encouraged by a few signs of progress by the Chinese government to take animal protection seriously.
According to a government report on July 29 the Chinese State Forestry Administration accused companies that have animal performance shows of having excessive focus on profits, leading to the mistreatment and death of the animals.
"We're very pleased that the Chinese government has said that they want the zoos and safari parks to look at the conditions they keep their animals in to rectify these problems," said Neale.PLEASE be sure to look at the four photos, and when you get to the fourth photo, just... more
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https://secure.peta.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=3126
Do NOT watch this video! The description enough should be enough to get you angry enough to help do something about this...
Undercover Investigation Reveals Neglect, Cruelty, and Filth at Another Pet Trade Supplier
Another PETCO and PetSmart Supplier Caught on Video Mistreating Animals
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A PETA investigator went undercover at Sun Pet Ltd., an Atlanta-based wholesale animal dealer that supplies animals to numerous PETCO and PetSmart locations, among other retailers across the U.S. Video footage and photos taken by PETA's investigator show the widespread suffering of hundreds of birds, rabbits, guinea pigs, gerbils, mice, and rats in Sun Pet's enormous warehouses. On April 22, 2010, Georgia Department of Agriculture representatives descended on Sun Pet, which was, unfortunately, tipped off well in advance and apparently took the opportunity to clean up its act. PETA has requested an investigation into the leak that prepped Sun Pet for the Department of Agriculture's visit, but so far, no one has been held accountable for it.
In addition to the misery of confinement to extremely crowded containers, forcing animals to eat, sleep, urinate, and defecate all in the same space, PETA's investigator recorded the violent killing and abusive handling of hundreds of animals.
One worker put live hamsters into a bag and then bashed the bag against a table in an attempt to kill them—one of the animals was seen suffering and panting heavily minutes later. Other animals whom Sun Pet could not sell were gassed in a crude, filth-encrusted tank. Animals who got loose in the company's warehouse suffered horribly after ingesting the poison that Sun Pet sets out to kill them.
A supervisor trained PETA's investigator to determine animals' genders by forcefully squeezing their abdomens "like a … PlayStation controller handle" to make their genitals "come out." "You could throw them against the wall and they'll stand back up again and keep on running," Sun Pet's supervisor said to PETA's investigator when ordering him to pack and handle animals more quickly. In more than three months of employment, not once did PETA's investigator see anyone from PETCO's or PetSmart's corporate offices inspecting Sun Pet's facility.
Sun Pet also purchased animals from U.S. Global Exotics, the filthy Texas warehouse from which more than 26,000 animals were seized last December following another PETA undercover investigation. Sun Pet also purchased thousands of animals from unlicensed vendors, in apparent violation of the federal Animal Welfare Act, despite previous warnings by the U.S. Department of Agriculture regarding such practices.
PETA's investigator documented that PETCO and PetSmart stores returned animals suffering from illnesses and injuries, sometimes without food or water, to Sun Pet instead of providing them with veterinary care or basic necessities or even putting them out of their misery. The animals were hauled around in cardboard boxes in the backs of trucks traveling hundreds of miles and many hours from store to store until they finally got back to Sun Pet, and many died as a result. View photos taken by PETA's undercover investigator.
You can help secure justice for the hamsters and thousands of sensitive individual animals peddled for profit by Sun Pet. PETA has received information indicating that Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard Jr. has instructed his office to halt its investigation of animal suffering at Sun Pet. Please complete the form below to urge Mr. Howard to investigate and file suitable cruelty-to-animals charges against the worker caught bashing hamsters against a table and also to file charges against other appropriate parties. Ask Mr. Howard what he thinks constitutes cruelty to animals if it's not bagging them up and bashing them against a table and then leaving them to suffer and slowly die of their injuries.
CLICK ON LINK FOR INSTANT PETITION - THIS MATTERShttps://secure.peta.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=3126... more
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What would you do if you found chickens near your home? This is what we did.
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NO MORE SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENCE!
This is a video of what is being done to helpless PUPPIES & DOGS! This is an outrage! Humans created the animal 'problem' & need to develop another method to correct this issue.
Baghdad authorities launch a controversial campaign to kill street dogs. CNN's Arwa Damon reports. (Viewer discretion)
The story:
The shotgun blast rips into the stray dog's midsection, sending it tumbling over and over. Agonizing yelps echo through the streets as it tries to reach and bite at the gaping wound. Minutes later, the dog is dead.
A few miles away, a puppy eats a piece of poisoned meat. Its body starts to twitch and spasm as the toxins kick in. It dies within 15 minutes.
The two strays were among the thousands that roam the streets of Baghdad. Authorities have been killing them since November, trying to prevent the spread of disease and attacks on residents.NO MORE SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENCE!
This is a video of what is being done to... more
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Bach Rescue Remedy Pet - New improved formula now available
Bach Flower Remedies, a trusted name for 75 years and a favorite of natural medicine doctors and veterinarians around the world for the treatment of stress and emotional problems affecting human and animal health, is now a best seller.
Bach Flower Remedies for pets sales have double every year for a number of years. Consumer surveys indicate that caring pet owners prefer to treat their animals and pets with non-narcotic non-habit forming natural remedies, says Bettina Rasmussen, BFRP with BachFlower.com.
Rescue Remedy Pet is especially formulated for the most delicate of animals and pets and is preserved in natural sweet tasting glycerin. This is the same safe preservative used on Bach Rescue Remedy Kids for children and pregnant women. There are no known side effects or counter-indications for Bach Flower Remedies.
Rescue Remedy Pet has been recently featured in leading Equestrian, Dog and Cat, and Pet magazines. Numerous books have been written specifically about Beach Flower Remedies for pets and animals. Among the best selling in this genre are: “Bach Flower Remedies for Animals”, by Stefan Ball; “Dog Misbehaving – Solving Problems with Bach Flower Remedies”, by Gael Mariani; and “Emotional Healing for Horses and Ponies”, by Heather Simpson. These and many more books are available for reseller purchase at BachFlower.com
Animals have emotions also. They feel fear, anger, jealousy and depression as humans do.
According to Marc Berkoff, Professor of Biology at the University of Colorado, scientists have abandoned the notion that emotion-like behavior is programmed behavior in animals.
Berkoff’s research indicates that elephants can experience grief, mice feel empathy, rats feel joy when playing with a friend, sharks get mad and koalas are very fickle about their changing likes and dislikes. The maligned crocodile mums care for their kids, squid can be shy, fish can be addictive personalities and coyotes can feel emotional depression.
A study published in the journal Nature in 2006 showed that more advanced mammals, like the whale, possess spindle neurons, which in humans are known to be associated with emotional response and social behavior.
In his heart warming book, The Pig Who Sang to the Moon, author Jeffrey Moussaieff, lays out the evidence that our familiar farm animals have feelings and even consciousness. Moussaieff research reveals that pigs, which are curious and intelligent by nature, take pride in being self-reliant.
We love our animals and pets and they reward us by sharing with us their feelings of joy and happiness, if we only take the time to read the signs.
The Bach Flower Remedies help our animals and pets cope with negative emotions that rob them, other animals around them and their owners of the quiet enjoyment of their lives. For a cat, traveling by car across town can be a traumatic experience and dogs and other pets may experience a visit to the vet as a fearful experience.
Read the full article at www.BachFlower.comBach Rescue Remedy Pet - New improved formula now available
Bach Flower Remedies, a... more
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