Bessie What Happened To You?
By Chalissa
An Animal Rights Poem from All-Creatures.org

All of God's creatures have rights, a fact that most people don't seem to recognize. This includes both human and non-human animals, but not all of them can speak for themselves.

Bessie What Happened To You?
By Chalissa

A few centuries ago
Particularly under the Eastern skies
She grazed peacefully under the sun.
Frolicked in the village pond
Walked 3 to 4 miles every day
Had her fill of grasses
Provided milk - nourishment
For the ones that took care of her!

Saved from slaughter
Written into the scriptures
Forbidden!
Died natural death.
After death she benefited the human race with leather & buttons
Carrion usually feasted on the remains!

Modern day Bessy's plight

They don't teach compassion & humanity in MBA courses!

Bessy has no feelings
No needs
Is inanimate 
Goal maximize $$$$'s 
Compassion be damned!

Confined to a stall
In a barn away from sunlight
Excreta - polluta stench unbearable
Who cares!

Concrete floors - goes lame
So what - kill it!

Tail flops around 
in the manure & urine 
into milking apparatus. 
Chop it off!
Wait! too much effort
No anesthesia just bind it
Shuts off blood supply
Painfully falls off!
Hey day for flies!!

No more prairie grass for Bessie
Mix soya bran with Chicken manure!!
Yes Chicken manure!!
She's hungry will eat it
Put lots & lots of Antibiotics

Environment is unclean you know!
We'll lose money if she gets sick!
& Yes give it the bovine growth hormone!

Jacks up milk supply unnaturally 
100 pounds per day instead of 25 that God had planned!
For the calf
But humans,
we can steal 
So what!

The cows udders are not meant to process so much milk!
Mastitis & other diseases set in 
Pus forms, very painful for the cow! Meets regulation - ship it!

Who cares the milk spigots are open 
Money is rolling in!! That's all that matters!

We have clout says Biznusfarmer! Worry not about clean air Act

Putting up 4000 herd dairy farm! 
suckers in Peoria 
know not 
19 acres of open cesspool - open air excreta- renamed 
" Lagoon" 
Flies & vermin enter local water table all kinds of pathogens !
So what, who cares

Green backs come!! Come!! But yes!!
Ah! There's more money yet to be made!!

Bessy has a womb!
Lined with more greenbacks
Keep her constantly pregnant!

Calf given 1 hour to three days to suckle!!

Male calf separated 
veal crate, fed gruel, 
no iron, kept in the dark suffering from constant diarrhea 
grows sickly
Eventually sees the sun en-route to the slaughterhouse
Served as veal - connoisseurs enjoy the white delicacy
With its aura of pain!

Female into the main stream, dairy cow, 
produce 4 calves & the fifth year milk production declines - goes to Slaughter

Bessy's fate Finite probability will get dismembered live or bled alive - 
scripted by elders
Served as hamburger at the lunch counter!

Bessy 
WHAT did you do? 
To deserve this??


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