Category: Farm Animals

Farm Animals, General News

UK: Undercover filming at Eight (8) Moy Park Farms Reveals Hundreds of (Intensive Farmed) Birds Suffering Agonising Deaths Each Day.

Thanks to Stacey at ‘Our Compass’.  Regards Mark

https://our-compass.org/author/ourcompasses/

Please note that if you consume animals, you should view this brief glimpse into their hell, they have a right to know who’s eating them.

Please also note that although this short video documents UK-based farms, these procedures and “living” conditions are globally standard, considered routine and socially accepted. The US, specifically, denies federal protection for all animals exploited for food, and poultry CAFOs are defined as housing for 125,000 animals. Your Free-Range, Red Tractor, and High Welfare categorizations are used to describe a process that controls animals; subjects them to routine bodily intrusion; inflicts pain sans pain-relief (determined to be cost-prohibitive and illegal due to flesh contamination); rejects body autonomy; and violently kills animals, and, therefore, are meant to make humans, and not the actual animals, feel comfortable.

Additionally, poultry in the US are subjected to diseases and conditions including leukosis, septicaemia, airsacculitis, synovitis, and tumors. They are also found dead, listed as cadavers, which includes being boiled to death.

The following is a USDA public government documentation of the victims consumed, begin on page 12 for condemnation reasons:

Click to access pslaan19.pdf

One final comment: if you are unable to exist without consuming flesh, you’ll be happy to learn that there are alternatives that your inner zombie will find satisfying. Please see below for resources.  SL


Source Animal Equality UK

Undercover filming at eight Moy Park farms reveals hundreds of birds suffering agonising deaths each day.

Animal Equality has today released distressing scenes of severe animal suffering on eight British chicken farms across Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire.

All of the farms are certified by the Red Tractor assurance scheme and operated by Moy Park, one of the UK’s largest chicken producers. 

Moy Park supplies the fast-food chain McDonald’s, as well as supermarkets such as Tesco and Ocado.

red tractor – Google Search

Red Tractor Assurance launches new look to mark 20th anniversary | The Pig Site

Tractor Certified Standards – Really ??? – seen the video ???

Tell McDonalds to Sign Up To Better Chicken Welfare. Petition. | Serbian Animals Voice (SAV)

tesco – Google Search

Accessibility Review of Online Retailers Part 5: Tesco - User Vision

ocado – Google Search

Ocado - Wikipedia

The troubling footage, captured covertly by an Animal Equality undercover investigator, reveals:

  • Chickens deprived of water as drinkers are routinely raised to a height that they are unable to reach;
  • Hundreds of chickens suffering agonising deaths each day as workers painfully crush the chicks’ necks in their hands;
  • Chickens developing raw skin burns on their feet and chests from filthy, urine-soaked floors;
  • Chickens bred to grow so big, so quickly, that they suffer from excruciating leg injuries and are unable to carry the weight of their own oversized bodies;
  • Chickens crammed into immensely overcrowded barns, barely able to move or stretch their wings.

The filming took place in late 2019. The footage was passed on to Defra’s Animal and Plant Health Agency, the RSPCA, and Red Tractor in early 2020.

Business as usual

These concerning scenes are reflective of an industry that values profit over animal welfare. Chickens raised for meat have been selectively bred over time to grow extremely large, incredibly quickly. As a result, many of them suffer from weak hearts, lungs and legs, their bodies burdened by the strain of their unnaturally heavy bodies. After all this, they’re killed when they’re little more than one month old.

Despite McDonald’s closing its doors earlier in the year, the chain’s supplier, Moy Park, has continued business as usual. Although it saw one factory worker tragically die in May from COVID-19, it has publicly stated that it does not expected to be “significantly impacted” by the pandemic. According to the company’s latest accounts, Moy Park saw revenues of over £1.5 billion in 2019, with reports of “strong financial performance” and with Chief Executive, Chris Kirke, receiving a salary of £700,000.

Not the first time

Concerningly, two of the farms investigated have been the centre of previous serious animal welfare complaints.

Animal Equality filmed similarly poor conditions when last year, we filmed inside Mount Farm, along with two other Moy Park farms. The investigation, released in June 2019, showed chickens crammed into gigantic sheds, in obvious pain from leg and breathing difficulties and being forced to live amongst rotting carcasses. It’s clear that neither Moy Park nor Red Tractor took the animal suffering we found seriously.

In July 2019, thousands of chickens were found to have died at Kettlethorpe Farm due to a sweltering heatwave and lack of appropriate ventilation.

Unrelenting greed

Upon reviewing the footage, Abigail Penny, Executive Director of Animal Equality UK, said: “These poor chickens never stood a chance. Moy Park’s actions are consistently underpinned by profit; this is a company that spends an eye-watering £700,000 on a CEO salary, yet instructs workers to kill vulnerable chicks at just a few days old, simply because they’re no longer considered profitable. Moy Park’s greed is unrelenting.”

She added: “McDonald’s, Tesco, Ocado and others buying from this supplier are refusing to show even the smallest ounce of mercy to these innocent chickens. Consumers appalled by these practices can go vegan and do better by chickens today.”

You have the power to make a difference for chickens. With every meal, you can spare them from a lifetime of suffering. Please, leave chickens off your plate today – visit our loveveg.uk website to get started.


Download Your FREE Vegan PDF HERE

Order a FREE vegan kit HERE

Download Your FREE Dairy-Free PDF HERE

Take the Dairy-Free Challenge HERE

Click HERE for more Dairy-Free

Fish alternatives can be found HERE

Learn about eggs HERE

Find bacon alternatives HERE

Take PETA’s Cruelty-Free Shopping Guide along with you next time you head to the store! The handy guide will help you find humane products at a glance. Order a FREE copy HERE

Searching for Cruelty-Free Cosmetics, Personal-Care Products, Vegan Products, or more?
Click HERE to search.

Click HERE to find out How to Wear Vegan!

Want to do more than go vegan? Help others to do so! Click below for nominal, or no, fees to vegan literature that you can use to convince others that veganism is the only compassionate route to being an animal friend:

PETA HERE

Vegan Outreach HERE

Get your FREE Activist Kit from PETA, including stickers, leaflets, and guide HERE

Have questions? Click HERE


Farm Animals, Fur and Fur Farming, General News

Russia: Now Developing a Covid 19 Vaccine to Protect Mink At Its Vast FUR FARMS.

Russia says it is developing a Covid-19 vaccine for mink and CATS after boasting it has made first treatment for humans

  • A vaccine for animals is being worked on and is expected to be tested in autumn 
  • Russia has around 100 fur farms specialising in mink for the large fur industry  
  • Vladimir Putin hailed the country’s human vaccine as a world beater 

russian mink fur farms – Google Search

mink at russian mink farm | Animals, Animals images, Mink

russian mink fur farms – Google Search

Russian mink farms where thousands are slaughtered and left to rot to make $1m coats | Daily Mail Online

Russia says it is developing a new Covid-19 vaccine to protect mink in its vast fur farms, as well as domestic cats. 

Rosselkhoznadzor, Russia’s veterinary watchdog, announced it is working on a vaccine for animals that is expected to be tested in the autumn.

This follows cases of domestic cats with Covid-19 in Moscow and Tyumen.

‘We are working on the creation of a vaccine for animals against the new coronavirus infection,’ said the organisation’s head Sergey Dankvert.

‘The vaccine is needed primarily for mink,’ he said.

russian mink fur farms – Google Search

Russian mink farms where thousands are slaughtered and left to rot to make $1m coats | Daily Mail Online

russian mink fur farms – Google Search

Fuck everything about this. Fur farm in Russia(post from WTF). : vegan

russian mink fur farms – Google Search

I have no sympathy for the animals: Russian fur farms where thousands are slaughtered to make coats and blankets then left to rot in stinking corpse mountain

Above – the reality of fur farming in Russia.

‘They quickly transmit the virus to each other.’

A case was reported of a mink infecting a human in the Netherlands.

Russia has around 100 fur farms specialising in mink farming for its large fur industry.

‘People will want to vaccinate pets as well – for example, cats that become infected with a new coronavirus infection,’ he said.

This comes after Russia claims that the West is actively seeking to poach the scientists behind its controversial new Covid-19 vaccine.  

The head of Russia’s Gamaleya Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology, Professor Alexander Gintsburg, the key scientist behind the human vaccine hailed by Vladimir Putin as a world beater, said in several interviews that the ‘jealous’ West was seeking to ‘buy out’ the top brains in his team.

Any American or European university can only dream of having such researchers,’ he said.

‘And they are seeking to lure them away.

‘But they will not be able to.’

The team that made the Covid-19 vaccination had been together ten years, he said, claiming they were resisting lucrative approaches.

The rush to announce the Sputnik V vaccine – only tested on dozens of people – has been widely criticised in the West, and key figures inside Russia.

Russian health chiefs have been forced to make clear that it cannot be used on this under 18 or over 60 because tests have not been carried out on these age groups.

‘A large amount of additional work is certainly required,’ admitted Gintsburg, who is starting post-registration tests on 30,000 people.

Mass vaccination will start in around one month, it is expected.

But the head of Rospotrebnadzor, Russia’s public health watchdog, Anna Popova, made clear that the country will not solely rely Gintsburg’s vaccine announced with such fanfare by the Kremlin last week when the drug was registered.

‘It is absolutely certain that each country, including the Russian Federation, should have several different vaccines. This is what we are doing today,’ she said. 

Farm Animals, Fur and Fur Farming, General News

Canada: Where has all the money gone ? – Canadian taxpayers handing out millions to failing fur factory farms.

Where has all the money gone ? – Canadian taxpayers handing out millions to failing fur factory farms.

News from ‘Respect for Animals’, Nottingham, England.

Where’s the money gone? Canadian taxpayers are handing out MILLIONS to failing fur factory farms.

The financial crisis enveloping the fur trade has been closely monitored by Respect for Animals over recent years. North America’s fur trade has been particularly hit. Last year the North American Fur Auction (NAFA) had been taken over by Finnish fur group Saga Furs, having descended into near financial ruin. You can read the latest on Saga’s own troubles here: http://www.respectforanimals.org/desperate-saga-furs-moves-fur-auction-online-with-humiliating-results/ .

Now an in-depth report by Canadian news outlet CBC has revealed the astonishing extent of taxpayers’ money being wasted on failed attempt to prop up a cruel and unnecessary industry:

A CBC News analysis of bankruptcy and government records suggests that, since 2014, upwards of $100 million in provincial and federal money has been spent in Canada trying, often unsuccessfully, to keep individual mink farms afloat, or is tied up in loans by Crown agencies that will likely never be repaid.

The bulk of the money spent on the industry appears to have come through Agristability, a program jointly funded by the provinces and Ottawa that amounts to a disaster relief subsidy for farmers who suffer large income declines.

But so long and steep has been the fall of the mink sector that the bailouts dwarf what the industry is now worth. Last year, farms across Canada sold just $44 million worth of pelts, down from $254 million at the peak of the boom in 2013, according to Statistics Canada.

The precise amount of public money that’s been spent trying to rescue the mink industry after global prices took a nosedive in 2014 remains secret, however.

The federal Department of Agriculture refuses to release information on payments to the sector, even under access-to-information laws, citing among other things “international affairs” and “economic interests of certain government institutions.”

Not content with merely perpetuated a trade built upon inherent the suffering of animals, the remarkable actions of some fur farmers to seize profits was also disclosed.

The owners of a fur farm called Silver Hill had claimed that they had, over one March weekend, taken 20,000 mink from their cages and slaughtered them at their farm in western Prince Edward Island. The pelts were estimated to be worth up to $1 million to Asian fashion houses.

However, the fur farmers claimed that somehow all of those pelts had been ruined, meaning their income would suffer and their many creditors could not be paid. In a gruesome image of the fur industry’s environmental disregard, CBC reports that ‘looking for a way to dispose of the rotting pelts, the farm said they put the lot through a meat grinder and flushed it all down pipes and into the Gulf of St. Lawrence’.

Courts records, however, exposed the truth.  The pelts were not destroyed but were instead transported to a freezer off-island, ‘apparently away from the prying eyes of creditors’.

Unsurprisingly this farm has received lavishly large sums of public money — up to $8 million in government loans and bailout payments.

This is a damning indictment of the fur industry and another example of why taxpayer money should not be used to prop up one of the world’s most inhumane industries. Fur factory farming should be allowed to die out and farmers supported to diversify into sustainable agriculture that does not rely upon terrible conditions for its profit margins.

It is clear that the Canadian fur factory industry is financial unviable and a disastrous failure for animals, unable to meet even the most basic standards of animal welfare. Respect for Animals hopes that Canada soon joins the UK and many other countries by introducing a fur farm ban once and for all.

  • You can read the CBC report here
  • Read more about the fur trade’s financial woes here

Environmental, Farm Animals, General News

Coronavirus: world treating symptoms, not cause of pandemics, says UN.

Source – England:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/06/coronavirus-world-treating-symptoms-not-cause-pandemics-un-report

Coronavirus: world treating symptoms, not cause of pandemics, says UN

Ongoing destruction of nature will result in stream of animal diseases jumping to humans, says report

The world is treating the health and economic symptoms of the coronavirus pandemic but not the environmental cause, according to the authors of a UN report. As a result, a steady stream of diseases can be expected to jump from animals to humans in coming years, they say.

The number of such “zoonotic” epidemics is rising, from Ebola to Sars to West Nile virus and Rift Valley fever, with the root cause being the destruction of nature by humans and the growing demand for meat, the report says.

Even before Covid-19, 2 million people died from zoonotic diseases every year, mostly in poorer countries. The coronavirus outbreak was highly predictable, the experts said. “[Covid-19] may be the worst, but it is not the first,” said the UN environment chief, Inger Andersen.

Human impact on wildlife to blame for spread of viruses, says study

The biggest economic costs fall on rich nations – $9tn (£7.2tn) for Covid-19 over two years, according to the IMF’s chief economist. This makes a very good case for investment in the countries where diseases emerge, the authors say.

The report said a “one health” approach that unites human, animal and environmental health is vital, including much more surveillance and research on disease threats and the food systems that carry them to people.

“There has been so much response to Covid-19 but much of it has treated it as a medical challenge or an economic shock,” said Prof Delia Grace, the lead author of the report by the United Nations Environment Programme (Unep) and the International Livestock Research Institute (Ilri).

“But its origins are in the environment, food systems and animal health. This is a lot like having somebody sick and treating only the symptoms and not treating the underlying cause, and there are many other zoonotic diseases with pandemic potential.”

“An intense surge in human activity is affecting the environment all across the planet, from burgeoning human settlements to [food production], to increasing mining industries,” said Doreen Robinson, Unep’s chief of wildlife. “This human activity is breaking down the natural buffer that once protected people from a number of pathogens. It’s critically important to get at the root causes, otherwise we will consistently just be reacting to things.”

“The science is clear that if we keep exploiting wildlife and destroying our ecosystems, then we can expect to see a steady stream of these diseases jumping from animals to humans in the years ahead,” said Andersen.

Wildlife and livestock are the source of most viruses infecting humans and the report cites a series of drivers of outbreaks, including rising demand for animal protein, more intensive and unsustainable farming, greater exploitation of wildlife, surging global travel and the climate crisis. It also says many farmers, regions and nations are reluctant to declare outbreaks for fear of damaging trade.

“The primary risks for future spillover of zoonotic diseases are deforestation of tropical environments and large-scale industrial farming of animals, specifically pigs and chickens at high density,” says the disease ecologist Thomas Gillespie of Emory University in the US, an expert reviewer of the report. “We are at a crisis point. If we don’t radically change our attitudes toward the natural world, things are going to get much, much worse. What we are experiencing now will seem mild by comparison.”

Pandemics result from destruction of nature, say UN and WHO

The report highlights some examples of where zoonotic risks are being managed. In Uganda, deaths from Rift Valley fever have been reduced by using satellite data to anticipate heavy rainfall events, which can produce mosquito swarms and trigger outbreaks.

The report is the latest stark warning that governments must address the destruction of the natural world to prevent future pandemics. In June, a leading economist and the UN said the coronavirus pandemic was an “SOS signal for the human enterprise”, while in April, the world’s leading biodiversity experts said more deadly disease outbreaks were likely unless nature was protected.

“At the heart of our response to zoonoses and the other challenges humanity faces should be the simple idea that the health of humanity depends on the health of the planet and the health of other species,” said Andersen. “If humanity gives nature a chance to breathe, it will be our greatest ally as we seek to build a fairer, greener and safer world for everyone.”

Farm Animals, General News

Slaughterhouse: How do people manage to kill hundreds of animals every day?

 

Two former butchers and a sociologist explain how animals are transformed from living creatures into row materials in professional, industrialized slaughtering, and what helps butchers to cope with their work emotionally.

_Schlachthof betrieb_65291592

“That was actually pretty abnormal,” says Thomas Schalz today, about his work in a slaughterhouse.
He worked there for 17 years, in all areas: driving, stunning, killing, and cutting the animals. The slaughterhouse in which he worked developed over the years into a large-scale slaughterhouse specializing in pigs.
Up to 3,500 pigs were slaughtered every day.

schweinefarm jpg

Above all, the anesthesia of the pigs with CO2, which happens before they are actually killed, is what Schalz still follows in his mind today.

Co2 betäubung3_gal

“The pigs go down in a gondola in over 90 percent CO2 gas. It usually takes 20 to 30 seconds until the animals are unconscious.
And yes, they just can’t breathe anymore. There is no longer any oxygen they can breathe.
The strongest animals try to climb over the others and stretch their trunks up out of the mesh basket to breathe oxygen. But there is no oxygen, ” says Schalz, describing the stunning process.

Peter Hübner also worked in a large slaughterhouse – as part of his apprenticeship as a butcher.
Like Schalz, he is also a dropout. He remembers: “You saw this fear in their eyes, you saw this helplessness and you deliberately drove the animals to their death.”

Looking back, he says: “That was incredibly difficult.”

Verletzte Schweine_n

How did Hübner manage to drive so many animals to their death back then?

How did Thomas Schalz manage to drive thousands of pigs down into the CO2 pit at the push of a button over the years, knowing full well what was going on there?
How do slaughterhouse employees deal with slaughtering hundreds of animals on an assembly line every day?


How does the killing of animals become business as usual?

Continue reading “Slaughterhouse: How do people manage to kill hundreds of animals every day?” →

Farm Animals, General News

After poultry, pigs are the second most popular farmed animal species worldwide. They Suffer – Read On.

After poultry, pigs are the second most popular farmed animal species worldwide.

In 2018, 248 million pigs were slaughtered in the EU, which is the main global exporter of pig meat.

The vast majority of EU pigs are kept under intensive indoor conditions. Industrial husbandry systems largely fail to satisfy even the most basic behavioural requirements of pigs, to the extent that they need to be mutilated to avoid the consequences of abnormal behaviours due to boredom, stress and bad health.

Instead of addressing environmental and managerial shortcomings, the industry still routinely subjects pigs to painful husbandry  procedures such as tail-docking, castration and teeth clipping or grinding, typically without any pain relief. 

Tail docking is the practice of shortening a pig’s tail to prevent tail biting. Tail biting usually occurs when pigs are bored or stressed due to their poor quality environment, poor health or lack of stimulation. The procedure is normally carried out without pain relief on piglets younger than 7 days. Scientific studies have shown that the procedure is painful and can cause the formation of neuromas on the tail stump, potentially leading to chronic pain in the longer term.

Jnzr Animal Castration Pliers, Tail Cutter Castration Banding Tail ...

In addition, tail docking does not in itself prevent tail biting as a significant proportion of pigs with docked tails have tail lesions. While Directive 2008/120/EC on the minimum standards for the protection of pigs (the Pig Directive) forbids routine tail docking in pigs, a recent study showed that 77% of pigs’ tails had been docked in the 24 countries involved in the study.

Another unacceptable practice carried out on farmed piglets is the clipping or grinding of the corner teeth. This is done under the guise of protecting the sow and other competing piglets during suckling. However, this practice opens up a host of other issues for piglets, including infection, gum damage, abscess and fractured teeth.

Male piglets are subject to painful surgical castration to avoid the possibility that, once grown up, their meat will emit an unpleasant odour when cooked, known as boar taint. 

Although boar taint only occurs in 3-5% of pigs, and even though the presence of boar taint can be detected at the slaughter line, most countries still surgically castrate 80% or more of male piglets.

Piglet Swine Castration Device Stainless Steel One Person ...

In 2010, the ‘European Declaration on alternatives to surgical castration of pigs’ was agreed. The Declaration stipulates that from January 1, 2012, surgical castration of pigs shall only be performed with prolonged analgesia and/or anaesthesia and from 2018 surgical castration of pigs should be phased out altogether.

The Federation of Veterinarians of Europe together with the European Commission carried out an online survey via SurveyMonkey© to investigate the progress made in different European countries. This study provides descriptive information on the practice of piglet castration across 24 European countries. It gives also an overview on published literature regarding the practicability and effectiveness of the alternatives to surgical castration without anaesthesia/analgesia.

Forty usable survey responses from 24 countries were received.

Besides Ireland, Portugal, Spain and United Kingdom, who have of history in producing entire males, 18 countries surgically castrate 80% or more of their male pig population.

Overall, in 5% of the male pigs surgically castrated across the 24 European countries surveyed, castration is performed with anaesthesia and analgesia and 41% with analgesia (alone). Meloxicam, ketoprofen and flunixin were the most frequently used drugs for analgesia. Procaine was the most frequent local anaesthetic. The sedative azaperone was frequently mentioned even though it does not have analgesic properties.

pig castration – Google Search

Boar taint and the castration debate | The Pig Site

Half of the countries surveyed believed that the method of anaesthesia/analgesia applied is not practicable and effective. However, countries that have experience in using both anaesthesia and post-operative analgesics, such as Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and The Netherlands, found this method practical and effective. The estimated average percentage of immunocastrated pigs in the countries surveyed was 2.7% (median = 0.2%), where Belgium presented the highest estimated percentage of immunocastrated pigs (18%).

The deadlines of January 1, 2012, and of 2018 are far from being met.

The opinions on the animal-welfare-conformity and the practicability of the alternatives to surgical castration without analgesia/anaesthesia and the alternatives to surgical castration are widely dispersed. Although countries using analgesia/anaesthesia routinely found this method practical and effective, only few countries seem to aim at meeting the deadline to phase out surgical castration completely.

In the majority of cases, surgical castration is still carried out without adequate pain relief.

This happens in spite of the availability of painless alternatives, such as vaccination against boar taint or raising entire boars. 

Regards Mark

Farm Animals, General News, Live Transport

Australia: We Know the Government There Is From Another Planet; But We Have to Continue the Pressure to Stop Live Exports For the Animals. We Are Their Only Voice – Speak Out Link Below.

Exhausted, lying helpless on the scorching road and about to be stuffed alive into a car boot. She is one of thousands of Australian sheep we found being offered for illegal sale and slaughter across Jordan during the recent ‘Festival of Sacrifice’. And, sadly, in Indonesia, we discovered and documented the unthinkable occurring again…

Now we need your help to call for the Australian exporters responsible to be stripped of their licences.

Mark, when Australia’s live export industry ignores regulations, it makes an inherently cruel industry even crueller. Which is why I am so very grateful for your generosity and support which ensured our team of investigators were exactly where animals needed them to be.

Evidence gathered during our latest investigations reveals widespread breaches of Australia’s live export laws, with sheep and cattle being subjected to cruelties that the industry has long promised had been wiped out.

Exporters would have been banking on COVID-19 restricting our ability to monitor their activities, but, as ever, they underestimated the commitment of our supporters and the courage of our investigators. Thanks to you we were able to gather the evidence to lodge legal complaints and we will do all we can to hold those responsible to account.

Here’s just a snapshot of the media confirming a ‘regulatory system’ in complete disarray:

Perhaps our most shocking discovery in recent days is that some Australian cattle exported to Indonesia were still being killed in brutal slaughter boxes that were banned after our landmark investigation in 2011.

In these Australian government-approved — and industry-audited — slaughterhouses, animals were also being subjected to horrific roping slaughter. This is another outlawed practice that sees frightened animals pulled and tripped onto their sides before having their throats cut while fully conscious.

Mark, if live exporters thought a global pandemic would hamper our investigations, they were wrong. If they thought restricted international travel this year would provide them with a protective shield in importing countries, they were also wrong.

Thanks to your support, our dedicated team of local investigators were there for animals in the most difficult of circumstances this year. Our promise to you, to them — and to the animals — is that we’ll use this evidence to push for the strongest possible action. Please take a moment to add your voice to these calls here.

Speak Out Here:

https://secure.animalsaustralia.org/take_action/still-alive/int?r=1&ua_s=e-mail

Mark, having been in Indonesia in 2011 as well as in the Middle East on countless occasions witnessing what animals endure, I know you will also be thinking, ‘when will this end’?

All I can say to you is that a day will come when this industry will be no more. And when that day comes you will know that it was your compassion for these animals, and your commitment to stay the course with us, that was a key reason why.

From the bottom of my heart, thank you for enabling us to be there for animals.

With my deepest thanks,


Lyn White AM
Investigations Director


P.S. Our investigators working across eight countries also gathered evidence that will fuel our efforts to end live export from Europe and South America. We’ll be working with our international team to maximise outcomes for all of the victims of this global trade in animal cruelty, thanks to you.

Farm Animals

Chicken farms: “at the end of the day it’s about making money.”

‘Unprofitable’ chicks at a farm supplying Tesco, Ocado, and McDonald’s were deliberately deprived of water and left to die of dehydration, an undercover investigation has found.

Secret filming also shows how other baby birds deemed too small to be worth raising had their necks crushed or snapped by workers, causing a painful death.

Some were left to die because they were too weak to feed themselves, it was claimed.

An undercover activist for animal protection organization Animal Equality, who was employed by the company, shot footage showing that at one farmworker raised the height of the drinkers every day for about 40 days so that the smaller chicks – those considered not profitable – were unable to reach them.

At two farms, workers were filmed crushing chickens’ necks in their hands so the farm did not “waste” food and water on those that would not be profitable. The investigator said that as a result, hundreds were suffering agonizing deaths each day.

One farm manager was reported to have said: “I can look at a day-old chick and say ‘that’s going to make 1.85[kg] at 32 days or it’s not’; if it isn’t, there’s no point feeding it. It’s cheaper to get rid of it and kill it. Because at the end of the day it’s about making money.”

All the farms are certified by Red Tractor, the UK scheme that claims to guarantee high standards of food and animal welfare. And the practices, filmed at farms operated by Moy Park, one of the UK’s biggest chicken processors, flout animal-welfare law and government codes.
Moy Park, which raises and kills more than 312 million birds each year, is the source of nearly a third of all the chicken sold in the UK.

It is one of Europe’s 10 biggest poultry producers, supplying restaurants as well as smaller grocery stores.
The undercover footage, taken at farms in the East Midlands, also suggests:

– Chicks developed raw skin burns on their feet and chests from urine-soaked floors
– Birds bred to grow so huge so rapidly that they suffered from leg injuries and were unable to carry the weight of their own bodies
– Chickens were crammed into barns so overcrowded they were barely able to move or stretch their wings

Birds in sheds were filmed gasping for air because “their hearts and lungs struggled to cope with their unnaturally huge bodies”. Some struggled to walk, and others could not stand up.

Other animal groups have previously said most chickens in UK farming are selectively bred so that they grow to the equivalent of a human baby weighing 28th at just three years old.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/chicken-farms-ocado-mcdonalds-tesco-thirst-moy-park-red-tractor-animal-cruelty-a9661216.html (Video)

 

And I mean…Anyone who would now think that such a company is only the exception is unfortunately wrong. Nowadays these are the standard methods in meat production.
All over the world!

It is said that animal suffering is systemic.
But what kind of system is that?
The answer is: the operators of the so-called “meat industry” brutally exploit everything and everyone in a kind of “back room” of our society. Although our lives are made of meat, the meat mafia goes to great lengths to keep their criminals secret and invisible to society.

The situation in the German slaughterhouses is not any better. The same grievances or similar situation has existed for over 20 years and maybe it has gotten worse.

By the way, and of course, all of this applies not only to the chicken farms, but also to cattle, pigs, sheep, etc. The (dismantling) personnel, called dismantling columns (!), mostly from third countries, are usually housed in a way that could well be described as ‘barracked’!

But the German government is proud to take the top places in the export world championship league with this criminal industry too.

TODAY we know more about nutrition than ever before, which is why there are no longer any arguments in developed industrial countries why animals and their hormone products MUST be part of a diet. Only the power and the law of the stronger allow us to act in this way.

Animals have a consciousness and the same feelings as we humans, such as grief, pain, fear, wanting to stay alive, wanting to live with their family.
And we can all understand that without any scientific evidence, videos and undercover investigations, right?

I cannot take seriously people who exploit others and also kill them for their own enjoyment or profit and cannot regard them as my friends.

kleines Kücken am Fließbandn

There are many good reasons not to eat meat. But actually one is enough …!

My best regards to all, Venus

Farm Animals

Factory farming: enemy of the planet

Utilizing drone footage, Animal Equality has released an investigation denouncing the serious environmental risks caused by pig farms in Mexico.

BACKGROUND: Industrial animal farming has had a devastating impact on the planet and human health, as well as been extremely cruel to animals. Most scientists agree that the greatest threat humanity faces today is climate change, and our current food production system is helping to accelerate potentially catastrophic environmental changes.

For example, it is estimated that the process of animal farming contributes to around 15% of total greenhouse gas emissions worldwide.

Animal agriculture also is a serious threat to public health, with numerous diseases originating from its practice. These diseases include the swine flu pandemic of 2009 and most recently, COVID-19, which scientists believe originated from a live animal market in China.

THE DETAILS: Given the urgency to stop these risks, Animal Equality has released the short documentary, Enemy of the Planet. The investigative film was produced using drones that flew over two industrial pig farms in Jalisco, Mexico that house more than 89,000 pigs.

The goal of the investigation is to publicize the damage caused by industrial livestock farming.

Continue reading “Factory farming: enemy of the planet” →

Farm Animals, General News

Mass Culling System Shutdowns. The Failures of Factory Farming. Video Graphic Content.

Thanks to Stacey at ‘Our Compass;  https://our-compass.org/author/ourcompasses/ for sending this latest over.  Mark.

https://our-compass.org/author/ourcompasses/

System shutdowns and the failures of factory farming by Stacey

Warning: Graphic Content

A particularly disturbing scene illustrates one method of “euthanasia”, a euphemistic term describing a person sliding a chick’s head off with no hesitation, no remorse.

Animals are “produced” en masse under a human-manufactured moniker of “welfare”. To subject animals to such dismissively indifferent procedures as normalized violence substantiates the fact that “welfare” is only meaningful to humans, and not to the animals who are controlled, violated, and violently killed, in direct contradiction to anything remotely resembling or defining “welfare”.

Please note that exploitation is endemic on all farming sizes, be they small or locally owned 20-animal operations, or CAFOs confining 125,000 animals. And all animals exploited for food in the United States are specifically exempt from the Animal Welfare Act. 

Meat processing plants, or slaughterhouses, have been making headlines these past months as epicenters of the coronavirus pandemic. Outbreaks of positive cases amongst workers have caused the industry’s rapid processing lines to slow or stop for days on end, resulting in a pileup of tens of millions of animals who have reached slaughter weight with nowhere to go.

Much of this burden falls on the farms, which are designed neither to kill nor dispose of animals en masse, and the methods many resort to are truly disturbing. One farmer reported shooting all 3,000 of his pigs over the course of a day. Tanks of carbon dioxide are pumped into barns to gas and suffocate chickens by the thousands. Recently, undercover footage from a pig farm in Iowa documented a deliberate ventilation shutdown followed by the release of hot steam into a barn full of live animals. With temperatures in excess of 140 degrees, the animals inside were slowly roasted.

As a practice, the culling and subsequent disposal of animals en masse pre-dates the current Covid-19 outbreak. It’s the unfortunate answer from a system whose scale defies logic to the challenges presented by unanticipated supply chain disruptions. As factory farms continue to grow in size, and supply chains become increasingly monopolized, times of crisis reveal troubling vulnerabilities in the American food system. The close confinement of factory farmed animals is a death sentence when lethal strains of swine or avian flu spark an outbreak. Rescue is not an option for the millions of chickens or tens of thousands of pigs who become immediately trapped in the face of catastrophic events like hurricanes, tornadoes, or fires. Each time any one of these indisputable disasters strikes, massive numbers of animals are killed, yet each time the numbers are reported, they still continue to astound us.

The number of animals that have and will continue to be culled in the wake of Covid-19 represent a mere fraction of those who are killed for our consumption every single day. Their deaths, now newsworthy, reveal the failings of a system destined to repeat itself.


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Source We Animals Media and We Animals Media YouTube
Text and video by Kelly Guerin
Images by Jo-Anne McArthur