Planet Debate 2011 September/October l-d release Animal Rights
Farm Animals Subject to Abuse and Exploitation Now
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Farm Animals Subject to Abuse and Exploitation NowCHICKENS ARE SERIOUSLY MISTREATED IN CAFOs Robyn Mallon, Attorney, 2005, Journal of Medicine and Law, Summer, 9 Mich. St. J. Med. & Law 389, p. 404-5 Even though the Humane Slaughter Act is virtually unenforced for the animals it is supposed to protect, chickens and other poultry are completely exempted from Humane Slaughter Act protection. n134 This is especially baffling considering that 80% of animals slaughtered for meat are chickens. n135 The lack of legal protection leaves doors wide open for cruelty towards chickens. In fact, "[t]he on-farm death rate ranges from a low of 4 percent for cows and calves to 12 percent for turkeys, 14 percent for hogs, and 28 percent for some types of chickens." n136 Perhaps so many chickens are dying on the farm because of the lack of legal protections they are afforded. Broiler chickens are those chickens raised for meat while egg-laying chickens are raised for eggs. Broilers were the first species to be confined to factory farms and just one person could be responsible for 10,000 chickens. n137 Broilers share their cage with many other broilers and do not have space to flap their wings which is an innate behavior that chickens engage in. To compensate for this close confinement, factory farmers (without anesthetic) remove the beak (debeak) of the chickens with a hot iron so that they cannot peck each other or become cannibals. n138 Therefore, the factory farmers torture the birds due to a close confinement condition that they create. If the birds were given more space, they would not have to be painfully debeaked. The fact that the chickens exhibit such dysfunctional behavior when they are placed too close together demonstrates that it is cruel and unnatural to confine the chickens in this manner. The egg-laying chickens are kept in the infamous "battery cage" device, where four or five chickens are expected to live in a "twelve by twenty inch space" which is also too small to allow the chickens to flap their wings or turn around. n139 These metal wire cages cause foot sores and prevent the chickens from scratching the ground. n140 Egg-laying chickens are starved so that egg producers can shock the birds into laying more eggs. n141 PIGS ARE TORTURED – GESTATION CRATES PARTICULARLY CRUEL Robyn Mallon, Attorney, 2005, Journal of Medicine and Law, Summer, 9 Mich. St. J. Med. & Law 389, p. 400 Pigs have many of the same problems as chickens. Pigs are also closely confined to small spaces and this practice causes the pigs to painfully bite the tails of other pigs. n142 In order to deter this behavior, pig farmers, again without costly anesthesia, practice tail docking where the pig's tail is cut and teeth pulling. Pigs in CAFOs can be seen trying to bite the metal bars in an attempt to escape their cages. n143 Pigs also suffer similar abuses to cows in that the Humane Slaughter Act is violated. High line speeds make it possible and even likely that many pigs are sent to the hot scalding water vat alive, which is the station they pass through before they are skinned. n144
Leo Horrigan et al, Center for a Livable Future, Johns Hopkins, 2002, Environmental Health Perspectives, Vol. 110, No. 5, May, [http://www.ehponline.org/members/2002/110p445-456horrigan/EHP110p445PDF.PDF], p. 449 By concentrating hundreds or thousands of animals into crowded indoor facilities, factory farms raise ethical issues about their treatment of animals. Each full-grown chicken in a factory farm has as little as 0.6 ft2 of space. Crowded together in this way, chickens become aggressive toward each other and sometimes even eat one another. For this reason, factory farms subject them to painful debeaking (64). Hogs, too, become aggressive in tight quarters and often bite each other’s tails. In response, factory farmers often cut off their tails. Concrete or slatted floors allow for easy removal of manure, but because they are unnatural surfaces for pigs, they result in skeletal deformities of the legs and feet (65). Ammonia and other gases from the manure irritate animals’ lungs, making them susceptible to pneumonia. Researchers from the University of Minnesota found pneumonia-like lesions on the lungs of 65% of 34,000 hogs they inspected (66). Factory farms chain veal calves around the neck to prevent them from turning around in their narrow stalls. Movement is discouraged so that the calves’ muscles will be underdeveloped and their flesh will be tender. They are kept in isolation and near or total darkness during their 4-month lives and are fed an iron-deficient diet to induce anemia so that their flesh develops the pale color prized in the marketplace (65). ANIMAL CONFINEMENT VIOLATES BASIC ETHICAL STANDARDS Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production, 2008, Putting Meat on the Table: Industrial Farm Animal Production in America, [http://www.pewtrusts.org/uploadedFiles/wwwpewtrustsorg/Reports/Industrial_Agriculture/PCIFAP_FINAL.pdf], p. 58 In addition, intensive confinement systems increase negative stress levels in the animals, posing an ethical dilemma for producers and consumers. This dilemma can be summed up by asking ourselves if we owe the animals in our care a decent life. If the answer is yes, there are standards by which one can measure the quality of that life. By most measures, confined animal production systems in common use today fall short of current ethical and societal standards. Directory: file -> view view -> Western Europe after wwii view -> Author study: paul fleischman view -> Qpa1 7ela study Guide view -> Arctic Oil/Gas Neg view -> November 1970 Approximately 150,000-500,000 deaths Bhola Cyclone Bangladesh view -> Grade Level: 6 Unit of Study: Caribbean glce view -> Citation: Duffield, Katy view -> Table of Contents Lesson # view -> Chinese Wind Energy Disad Download 1.43 Mb. Share with your friends:
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