by kathy
(Ingleside, Ill, USA)
Last night I saw a program on HBO on the horrors of the factory farming of pigs. I know this is supposed to be about cats but I felt I had to share what I saw on there with my animal loving friends. First the animals are not allowed to ever lay down. I had seen pamphlets on factory farming but had never actually seen the horrors first hand.
The animals were not treated even as living beings. I believe the farmers saw them as dollars. The sow pigs were kept in small pens until they delivered their piglets. Then they were put in a (I don’t know what you would call it) so called pen and forced to lay on one side the whole time they nursed their piglets. (about 6-8 weeks) The piglets were allowed to nurse 24 hours a day. The sows nipples were raw and bleeding and they were covered with sores from not being able to stand and laying in their own feces.
Then when the piglets were weaned the sows were usually so weak and depressed that they couldn’t even stand so they were called a “Downed Pig”. They then were pushed out a door after laying in feces with no food or water (some died and the others were forced to cannibalism).
They dropped 4 feet to the ground. They then put a chain around their necks and hung them from a fork lift until they were presumed dead.
Sometimes they hung up to 4 at a time. The piglets were thrown from cart to cart sometimes up to a distance of about 6 feet. The so called skinny ones were pulled out. The farmer and his employee then bashed their heads against a wall and they were thrown screaming and bleeding into a bucket. It was very graphic. They never actually showed what ever happened to the piglets after they were loaded onto a converted school bus.
They did show rows and rows of half grown pigs standing in stanchions, not able to ever lay down. If they did they had to fall straight down with their legs buckled under them. One pig had her head caught between the bars, bleeding, they just said to leave her there until she died.
Nowhere in this program did I see any feed buckets or food for any of the poor pigs. It was an undercover program and needless to say the judge in the end let the farmers off. They had only one conviction out of 10 counts of animal cruelty.
This is how mankind treats the animals that so faithfully give up their lives so we can survive. I will not be eating pork any more. Some of the people on the program insisted the farmers have to what they have to do. They also said that hanging was considered a humane way of euthanising pigs. I don’t agree. Some of the pigs were not even dead but since there was no way to prove it and they actually had one money hungry vet who they probably paid to support them, the judge agreed with the method.
This program shows how inhumane some of our fellow humans are. I’m seriously thinking about becoming a vegetarian like Ruth. I very seldom do eat meat and when I do I always offer a prayer for the poor animals soul and hope that it lead a decent life. This program just pushes me one step towards my loss of faith in my fellow humans.
Kathy
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Do you know where these were taken? This is awful…how could our species do this, when they give their lives for us?
Hi Colleen. I don’t know but you might like to check out the website of the organisation who provided the picture:
http://www.farmsanctuary.org/
Thanks for visiting. Our species is rather unpleasant a lot of the time unfortunately.
Thank you….I just wanted to f/u on the conditions there. Thank you!