Farm Animal Manifesto: An All Creatures Animal Rights Article

World Farm Animals Day 2008 will be celebrated on or around October 2nd in over 50 U.S. cities this year. October 2nd is Mohandas Gandhi’s birthday, and Farm Sanctuary sponsors the event and hopes awareness of farmed animal rights will spread and the nonviolence and peaceful philosophy of Gandhi may be extended to farm animals. This is an event celebrating the rights of the 55 billion farmed animals and aquatic creatures that are yearly abused and killed in the world’s factory farms and slaughterhouses unseen and far from the eyes of the public. To look at it another way, one hundred million animals a minute are abused and killed each and every day according to statistics published by Farm Sanctuary.

World Farm Animals Day is partly to raise awareness of this wholesale destruction of sentience and partly to promote farmed animal rights. The systematic farming of animals has refined its efforts into a terrible and monstrous efficient machine in which animals are referred to as “production units” and are destroyed without any moral consideration whatsoever. I am currently writing a book titled Elephants are Not Machines which addresses this problem in relation to elephants. However, this particular day and its activities are specifically, and only, for the billions of farmed animals who die in anonymous agony each day. In fact, it is for the one hundred million animals that have been slaughtered since you began reading this piece. I will be speaking in Chattanooga, Tennessee, on September 27th at 10:00 a.m. I am pleased Elizabeth Ferrari and Saving Animals Via Education (S.A.V.E.) have invited me to appear and take part in Chattanooga’s “Walk for Farm Animals,” and that brings me to the subject of this article.

First, in hopes of spreading education, I would like to direct the reader to a short video presentation, Meet Your Meat. People often ask me why I spend my time working in animal rights when it appears so very hopeless that any mass paradigm shift regarding the rights of animals as intrinsically valuable sentient individuals will actually take place. I offer this video as the reason I work for them. Be warned that – as most truth hidden from the American public often is – this video is graphic and may be disturbing. Please watch it now, and then continue reading this article.

The question is not why do I spend some of my free time working on behalf of animals; the question is why everyone else doesn't. I‘ve thought about this a great deal. Usually, once educated, most people agree that circuses are terrible to and for elephants and that the American agribusiness corporate intensive farming systems are disgusting. But the frustration felt for animal rights activists (ARAs) is why people refuse to change their habits. Why do people continue to eat meat? How is it possible that Ringling Brothers continues to sale tickets to their anachronistic horror shows? People do not get involved; people cannot be troubled. And I think I may have a small idea as to why.

That old familiar feeling that you remember from the junior high locker room decades ago. That feeling that surely your pants are unzipped or something else is out of whack when you step on stage in front of five hundred strangers and bright stage lights.

Embarrassment causes inaction. And for some reason in our country, people are embarrassed to take a stand for animals. People often claim health reasons for not eating meat or eating less of it. But there is a fear that if you don’t eat meat for ethical reasons of animal kindness people will label you an animal nut, and extremist, or the like.

In preparation for the Walk for Farm Animals and World Farm Animals Day, I have thought about this embarrassment a good bit. People are hesitant to go out into the public and take a stand for animals. On World Farm Animals Day animal rights activists and others will hold signs, attempt to engage the public, and show investigative videos such as the horrendous one just released that was shot in the Iowa slaughterhouse to passersby. Often, people are simply embarrassed to stand out and to stand up for helpless animals. Some may fear getting chided by friends or being labeled as an “animal nut.” It is unfortunate that some well meaning animal activists have given a pejorative interpretation to the term ARA, but it remains that animals are suffering and we must do what we can to ease their pain and make their lives as good as possible. Of course, if you are not willing to march, hold signs, talk to people, or publicly speak out on behalf of animals you can do a very powerful action that will arguably help farm animals more than anything else: stop eating meat. Besides the fact that I truly do not think humans have the right to kill animals for food, the meat you eat is killing you. It is fattening your heart, hardening your arteries, limiting your sexual performance, adding weight to your body, and dulling your mind.

Stop eating meat for the animals’ sake first and foremost. You will be healthier and live longer because of your choice. At any rate, what’s a little embarrassment if you can help assuage other creatures’ suffering even a small degree? I maintain one should be embarrassed if they do nothing to stop the wholesale slaughter and destruction of 55 billion animals in our world which is, after all, their world too.

I have begun speaking across the country at various venues in defense of animals. I tend to specialize in captive and performing elephants, shark fining, and farm animals, but I have been actively writing on other ethical, political, and personal aspects of the AR movement. Please look into what “mass confinement factory farming” means if you continue to consume meat. Virtually all of the meat you buy at Wal-Mart and other large chain stores is factory farmed. Restaurants mostly offer factory farmed meat as well. The days of the kindly farmer raising pigs and chickens in natural conditions is mostly a thing of the past. Now it is “mass confinement factory farming,” and this is a nightmare. There are few family farmers anymore who walk their land, care for their animal charges, and treat the Earth with respect: now there are only corporations, billion dollar corporations committed to making the most amount of money in the shortest and most efficient way.

And money they do make; mass confinement factory farming operations bring in billions of dollars in profit annually while the vast majority of their customers have no idea what goes on behind their closed doors. Quickly, let me draw upon chapter six of Matthew Scully’s haunting, important, and beautiful book Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy and tell you what mass confinement factory farming is.

Mass confinement "farming" practices of the corporate factory farms are responsible for slaughtering 130,000 cattle, 82,000 pigs, and 24 million chickens a day in America (conservative estimates).

Mass confinement farming operations keep pigs and chickens in dimly lit cement and metal corrals their entire lives. Pigs have been proven to be intelligent as a three year old human child and more so than the average dog. Factory farmed Pigs never leave the confines of the dim cement floored indoor pens in which they are crammed like trash. Chickens either. They never see the sun, never feel the grass, never raise their young, never experience even the least shred of human kindness and compassion. Their hooves never touch earth.

Number of animals killed in the world by the meat, dairy and egg industries, since you opened this webpage.

0 chickens

0 turkeys

0 ducks

0 pigs

0 cattle

0 sheep

0 rabbits

This counter does not include the billions of fish and sea animals killed annually.

(Get this counter)

SMITHFIELD FARMS

Often up to 250,000 animals are kept enclosed in one building. The largest producer of pork, Smithfield Farms, is one of the worst examples of capitalist corruption in the history of the United States. Breeding sows are forced to live in metal stalls seven feet long by 22 inches wide (see pictures of gestation crates at the end of this article). They weigh 400-500 pounds and break their legs trying to turn around. They live in their own filth and are denied the straw they use to make their beds in free range farms. However, they still paw the dank cement floor, slatted so that their excrement runs into vast waste tanks, trying to make piles they can lay upon. They birth their young and nurse for a fraction of the time they do in the wild unable to turn and see their piglets. Then the piglets are taken away from them, an artificial insemination device is crammed inside them, and the dark nightmare begins again.

This is the entirety of their brief and sad life. In the pictures at the end of this, the crates you see them confined in is there existence. They never leave them; they never walk. If a dog was confined this way his entire life, his guardian would be charged with a felony.

Chickens fare no better, but these pigs need socialization and care. In the wild, pigs never urinate or defecate within twenty feet of where they sleep, so one can imagine their revulsion at being forced to nurse their young in such horrid conditions. Mass confinement factory farms treat them as economic items (“production units” is the industry euphemism) and it’s entirely legal for them to do so. If you love dogs or cats and have them in your home, please consider these pigs that are just as loving and intelligent.

Eating chicken, ham, bacon, sausage, pork chops, and ribs comes at a terrible moral price to humanity. Smithfield Farms’ largest hog production facility is in Utah and it houses approximately 1.3 million pigs in its 50,000 acre facility kept indoors away from their natural needs from piglet birth until brutal mechanized robotic slaughtering and dismemberment. Eighty thousand pigs a day, just less than one per second, endure this so we can have pork. Matthew Scully feels in the divine tally of things “he was kind to animals and sacrificed for them” will carry much more weight than “he ate well.” I am in agreement.

Smithfield is only one of the four major pork producers in the U.S. These billion dollar companies are the true future of pig and farm animal farming. Most of us imagine kindly farmers raising pigs and chickens and cows on ranches with huge blue skies and old red barns. As I have said, this is not true. I want to reemphasize: There are few farmers left; there are only corporations – mechanized, efficient, terrible places with offices as glossy and high tech as any Manhattan economic firm. People support these businesses and make their owners billionaires in complete ignorance of their standard production practices. Most people can’t even bear to witness the activities that happen inside these walls.

I can send you links to videos of slaughterhouses, but most people violently tell me not to. “I don’t want to know,” they tell me. They recoil from even the thought of seeing the truth. They can’t bear to witness this crushing cruelty and human induced suffering. Yet they consume and consume factory farmed meats thereby causing the terror they can’t bear to see.

As for the pork brands under the Smithfield Farms umbrella corporation, if you buy Lean Generation Pork, Gwaltney, Valleydale, Dinner Bell, Sunnyland, ReaLEan, Patrick’s Pride, Ember Farms, or Circle Four, you are supporting the mass confinement torture of Smithfield Farms. Keep in mind Jimmy Dean and other big pork plants are no better, Smithfield is just one of them. And as for the equally nightmarish chicken operations, Perdue and Tyson are the industry leaders and the names they control are numerous.

Tyson supplies all Yum! brands chains that use chicken. This includes KFC and Taco Bell. Also they supply McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, Wal-Mart, Kroger, Costco, IGA, Beef O'Brady's, small restaurant businesses, and prisons. Also, according to our good friend and contributor to Wikipedia, Tyson acquired Tyson has also acquired such companies as Hudson Foods Company, Garrett poultry, Washington Creamery, Franz Foods, Prospect Farms, Krispy Chickens, Ocoma Foods, Cassady Broiler, Vantress Pedigree, Wilson Foods, Honeybear Foods, Mexican Original, Valmac Industies, Heritage Valley, Lane Processing, Cobb-Vantress, Holly Farms, and Wright Brand Foods, Inc.

WE ARE NOT POWERLESS

Do not try to avoid all these brands; avoid the eating of meat altogether. People often feel powerless when they are presented with the facts regarding what farm animals undergo. But we are not powerless. We can live any way we choose. We can simply choose to no longer eat meat, to no longer support the horror and abuse, to no longer pay others to torture animals for us. Take a stand of fierce and determined will for farm animals. For Pigs.Chickens.Turkeys. Geese. Cows. Goats. Lambs. All of them.The horrible truth is that they are powerless. We are not. Please use your power to help them. Use your power to stand up for them, fight for them, even.

If you have any questions regarding going vegetarian or the sources used in this piece, please do not hesitate to contact me. I believe all animals deserve our mercy and compassion. Pigs, chickens, minks, foxes, skunks, elephants, chinchillas, birds, turkeys, and all animals look to us for protection and care. Being far from perfect, I have earned people’s trust and lost people’s trust from my past actions. As a result, I truly believe trust is a sacred thing and animals look to us helplessly and in total trust. How can we lead them trustingly down the chute to be torn to pieces and ground up and profited from? We really don’t deserve the animals; they deserve better than what we have given them. Please help me save the pigs.

If you won’t go vegetarian or vegan in the near future, please at the very least join thousands of us who are trying to raise awareness on October 2nd for farmed animals. Please abstain from all meat products whatsoever on World Farm Animals Day and try to one day adopt a plant based diet.

Follows are some pictures from Smithfield Farms and other mass confinement factory farming operations. If you eat pigs, please view the pictures and read the captions, especially if you do not think you can’t handle it. It is, after all, what your hard earned money supports. The pictures depict what your money supports and what you can send a message against by going vegetarian or vegan. Thanks to PETA for allowing me to use and distribute these pictures and captions.

Gestation Crates

In factory farms, mother pigs are intensively confined and forcibly impregnated. A mother pig (sow) spends her entire adult life confined to a metal crate so small that she can't even turn around or lie down comfortably. Forced to live lying in her own feces and urine, she and millions of other pigs like her will not be allowed to step outdoors until they are forced onto trucks headed for slaughter. After their young is taken away, artificial insemination devices are inserted into them, pregnancy is achieved, and the cycle begins again. They never leave these crates. What you see here is their entire existence.

Crippled Pig

Unable to move or stand on her own, this pig has been left to die. Her gaunt body indicates that she is starving to death. When pigs who are unable to walk (called "downers") arrive at the slaughterhouse, they have no protection from the most unthinkable cruelty: These sick and injured animals will be kicked, shocked with electric prods, and finally dragged off the trucks to their deaths.

Factory Farms

This picture shows two of the 100 million pigs killed in the U.S. for their flesh each year. They will be castrated and will have their ears notched without the use of painkillers, and they will be drugged to keep them alive and growing in conditions that would otherwise kill them. Deprived of everything that is natural to them, pigs in today's factory farms will spend their lives in cramped metal pens inside filthy sheds.

Factory Farms

The majority of the 100 million pigs killed in the U.S. for their flesh each year spend their lives in cramped metal pens inside filthy sheds. The animals are given almost no room to move because, as one pork-industry journal put it, "Overcrowding [p]igs [p]ay." They are deprived of everything that is natural to them – they won't be allowed to step outdoors or breathe fresh air until the day that they are loaded onto trucks bound for slaughter. They are pumped full of drugs to make them grow faster, and many become crippled under their own artificially massive weight.

Dead Pigs

"Dead piles" are a constant presence in factory farms. While pigs are fed massive amounts of antibiotics to keep them alive in conditions that would otherwise kill them, hundreds of thousands succumb to the stress of violent mutilations and intensive confinement. Dead pigs are sent to rendering plants, where they are made into dog and cat food or into feed that will be given to pigs, chickens, and other farmed animals.

Workers cut pigs' throats and drain their blood

In many slaughterhouses, other terrified animals watch as the pigs further up in the line have their throats slit and are dunked into tanks of scalding-hot water. One slaughterhouse worker explains, "Bad-sticks [pigs whose necks weren't cut deep enough to open the veins] usually don't have enough time to bleed out. They end up drowning in the scalding tank before they ever bleed to death."

A worker uses a chainsaw to cut a pig corpse in half.
This will be bacon, sausage, ribs, and pork chops.

Transport Accidents

In 2004, a transport truck owned by Smithfield Foods and loaded with 180 pigs flipped over in Virginia. Many pigs were killed in the accident, while others lay along the roadside, injured and dying. PETA officials arrived on the scene and offered to humanely euthanize the injured animals, but Smithfield refused to allow the suffering animals a humane death because the company could not legally sell the flesh of animals who had been euthanized. Similar accidents involving animal transport trucks occur almost every day. After an accident in April 2005, Smithfield spokesperson Jerry Hostetter told one reporter, "I hate to admit it, but it happens all the time."

Pigs are generally given no food or water for the entire trip to the slaughterhouse, which often covers hundreds of miles. One former pig transporter told PETA that pigs are "packed in so tight, their guts actually pop out their butts—a little softball of guts actually comes out." The pigs are shipped through all weather extremes, and many collapse in the heat of summer or become frozen to the sides of the truck in the winter. One worker reports, "In the wintertime there are always hogs stuck to the sides and floors of the trucks. They [slaughterhouse workers] go in there with wires or knives and just cut or pry the hogs loose. The skin pulls right off. These hogs were alive when we did this."

Mike Jaynes teaches English and Women's Studies at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. He is an animal ethics and animal advocacy writer and speaker focusing most closely on the topics of elephants in captivity and ocean life. His current book project examines the stories of performing elephants who have died in American captive environments and who have largely been forgotten.