This Sunday is Mothers Day - that day of the year celebrated around the world
to honour mothers and motherhood
Officially recognized in the USA in 1914, it came into being after a seven
year campaign by West Virginian, Anna Jarvis. Though not a mother herself, she
was devoted to her own mother and, after her death in May 1905, she came up with
the idea of having a day set aside to permanently honour all mothers.
On this day of the year mums are typically pampered and their children do things
to make them feel special and loved.
Tragically, however not all mums will be pampered or shown affection.
For farmed animal mums this day will be as sad as every other.
Forced - usually by artificial insemination - to become mothers, they are
cruelly denied all the joys associated with motherhood.
Cows are devoted mothers, yet year after year they are forced to endure the pain
of having their babies stolen from them shortly after birth.
An ex dairy farm worker recalled the day he witnessed this callousness first hand. "The calf had just been born and I had gone to the pasture to see it with the farmer. When we reached the couple, the mother cow was licking her sleepy eyed baby with firm strokes of her tongue. The calf lay on the grass, legs folded beside it, wet with amniotic fluid. Suddenly it's mother took two fumbling steps away, bringing up her head and letting out a startled cry. The farmer had just slammed his body into her, knocking her off balance. With violent determination he did it again, making her move farther away. Shouting and slapping her flank he forced her to start walking back to the barn.
Her calf, born that morning , was carried to the barn over the deep ruts of
the pasture in the cold steel bucket of a skid steer and is now long dead".
Despite years of giving birth and providing the farmer with milk, the mother cow
is disposed of equally callously.
"I can't forget", recalled the farm worker, " the panicked calls of an older
cow chained in her stall after the herd had filed outside, growing hoarse in a
nearly empty barn while she waited to be picked up for slaughter."
Where is the respect for mothers and motherhood here?
Pig mothers are treated even more harshly. Severely confined in body hugging
metal and concrete pens for most of their lives, these sensitive and intelligent
females suffer both from the loss of their babies and the stress and pain of
being imprisoned - and giving birth - in such intolerable conditions.
Chicken mothers don't even get to see their adorable fluffy chicks - and perhaps
it's just as well.
How would they feel seeing their beautiful male babies being dropped live into industrial mincing machines or suffocated shortly after being born? How would they feel seeing their female babies subjected to agonizing de-beaking with lasers or red hot blades?
How would "broiler" mums feel seeing their blue-eyed babies already in
chronic pain and crippled by the tender age of six weeks?
Surely all of us who are mothers can empathize with these, our non-human
"sisters".
And surely too, it's time we stood up for them by refusing to support, with
our consumer dollars, these industries which so heartlessly and ruthlessly
exploit them.
Doesn't every mother have the right to know and nurture her offspring - and,
doesn't every baby have a right to it's mothers love?
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