If you saw the Humane Society’s shocking undercover footage on the news of cows who were too sick to walk to their own death, being jabbed with electric prods, you were sickened just like any normal caring person would be.
What’s even sadder is that this case is just an example of the horrible abuses that occur in slaughterhouses every single day. It just so happened that an undercover agent was able to capture a glimpse of the horror at one particular slaughterhouse on one particular day.
Our legal system recognizes this treatment, caught on video, as animal abuse, but chooses to turn a blind eye to the even more horrifying abuses that occur within the slaughterhouses themselves.
Gail Eisnitz’ book Slaughterhouse is full of eyewitness statements from slaughterhouse workers such as this, “A lot of times the skinner finds a cow is still conscious when he slices the side of its head and it starts kicking wildly” and this about pig slaughter... “it takes a long time for him to bleed out. These hogs get up to the scalding tank, hit the water, and start kicking and screaming.”
These unimaginable horrors are systemic to slaughterhouses that kill as many as 400 cows per hour, and they will continue for as long as there is a demand and a profit to be made from selling meat.
The Great American Meat Out, a program of FARM, is being held on (or around) March 20. Educational events and displays are planned in the
