You're walking down the street and you hear a dog whimpering down an alley. You take a few steps in and see a huge dog stuck in a wire cage meant for a dog half his size. His mouth and paws are bleeding from his attempts to escape and patches of fur are missing exposing bruised skin. He also seems to have a broken leg. What would you do in this situation? You might call the police and see to it that the dog received medical attention. You might even adopt the dog yourself and nurse it back to health. In the United States, it is illegal to abuse a cat or dog, but every single day thousands of chickens, pigs, cows, ducks, sheep, and geese are mutilated, neglected, drugged and slaughtered on factory farms for human consumption.
Over 850 million chickens are slaughtered every year for the Kentucky Fried Chicken food chain according to KentuckyFriedCruelty.com, a branch of the PETA.org website. The chickens are stored in dark sheds their whole lives, many with broken wings and legs. To prevent the chickens from pecking each other to death, a side effect of their traumatic conditions, their beaks are cut off. When the chickens are at their "processing" weight and it's time to slaughter them, their throats are slit and they are submerged in scorching hot water while they are still conscious.
Chickens, although they are not typically kept as pets, are fascinating animals when seen in their natural habitats. According to PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, chickens have the ability to recognize others and form friendships. They take care of their chicks, bathe and make nests.
Robin Henderson, president of Fox P.A.W. - People for Animal Welfare - at Marist College, works at Farm Sanctuary in Woodstock, New York. Farm Sanctuary, which has two locations in New York and California, was established in 1986 to fight the exploitation of farm animals at factory farms and to give the public a new understanding of farm animals. The first animal they saved was Hilda the sheep, who they found on a "deadpile" outside of a slaughterhouse. She lived at the California farm for 10 years before she died of old age.
At the farm, Henderson visits with the animals while keeping the farm running smoothly.
"Chickens are the most human-like animals in the way that they are curious about everything," Henderson said of her experiences on the farm. "They can like affection or not like affection. They are also very protective of their children."
Henderson said she was really touched by one rooster named Brandy. He was a "byproduct of the egg industry," she said. Since roosters do not produce eggs, many are thrown into large dumpsters. Brandy was picked out of a trash can and brought to the Woodstock Farm Sanctuary, where he was nursed back to health. "He became a really social animal," Henderson said. "He would respond to his name when you called him."
Inspiring stories like Henderson's make the thought of eating meat hard to swallow, which is why people often become vegetarians or vegans. The difference is that vegetarians don't eat animals and vegans don't eat any animal products, like milk and eggs, abstain from wearing any clothing made from animal skin or fur, and do not use products tested on animals.
Nicole Dalsimer, a college sophomore, has been a vegetarian and animal rights activist since she was ten-years-old. She said she became a vegetarian after a "combination of reading Holocaust books and associating the smell of cooking meat with burning flesh and being at horseback riding camp, caring for the animals."
Henderson became a vegan after reading pamphlets and learning about the way animals are treated. "I think factory farming is overall a regression in farming," she said. "The way we do it now harms everything including people, quality of food, animals, and the earth."
"It takes 16 pounds of grains to produce one pound of meat. If we just eat the grains the leave the animals alone, we would feed the entire world and stop starvation," said Russell Simmons, a hip-hop artist and fashion designer, to GoVeg.com. Many celebrities like Simmons publicize the fact that they are vegetarians to help create awareness of the issue.
At Warped Tour, a nationwide punk music tour which attracts millions of teens, a Peta2 tent is set up that distributes free stickers and pamphlets. Peta2 is an extension of PETA specifically aimed at young people. Many of the bands at Warped Tour are known to have vegetarian members like Pete Wentz and Andy Hurley of Fall Out Boy, Benji and Joel Madden and Billy Martin of Good Charlotte, and Ian Grushka of New Found Glory.
The exposure of factory farms is vital in the process of eliminating animal cruelty. In fact, there has been various legislature passed in certain states concerning factory farming.
On April 26, 2006, a vote 48 to 1 at a Chicago City Council meeting decided in favor of banning the sale of foie gras. Chicago, one of America's largest cities, is the first to make this cruel practice illegal.
Foie gras is produced by force feeding ducks and geese about four pounds of grain a day through a pipe stuck down their throats. This severely damages the esophagus and causes the birds' livers to grow to 10 times their usual size. This produces foie gras, which means "fatty liver."
Chicago's City Council voted in favor of this law after viewing a video co-produced by PETA showing the production of foie gras. Chicago City Council member, Joe Moore, stated to PETA, "The fewer restaurants that serve this product of animal torture, the fewer animals who will be subject to this unspeakable cruelty."
Another big step in animal cruelty legislation happened in Arizona on Nov. 7, 2006. Arizona citizens voted yes to "Proposition 204," a proposal to ban gestation crates and veal crates on factory farms. These types of crates are 2-foot-wide crates where animals, especially pigs and calves used for veal, are kept for their entire lives before they are slaughtered. This notable decision by the public made Arizona the second state to ban gestation crates after Florida banned them in 2002 and the first to ban veal crates.
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