Every year, millions of animals are transported on long journeys that end in violent slaughter in a process called “live export.” Nearly 400,000 animals are exported hundreds of miles from Australia to Indonesia every year, and many more animals are shipped from Australia to countries throughout the Middle East and Asia. The animals are often jammed together onto extremely crowded multilevel ships, where there are so many animals and so few workers that sufficient husbandry and veterinary care are often denied. With often filthy conditions and temperatures that sometimes exceed 40°C , painful and debilitating diseases—such as salmonellosis (a type of gastroenteritis), pneumonia, and scabby mouth—frequently run rampant. Thousands of animals die during live export every year.

In many countries that import live animals, when animals reach their destination, they are often lined up to wait—sometimes longer than two days—to be unloaded. Many animals who cannot stand are beaten with metal bars and kicked by workers. If they cannot walk or crawl, they are often dragged off the ship by their ears and legs.

The next stop for the animals in most countries is the live-animal market. The animals are bought by small operators or people who slaughter animals at their homes. For transport, animals are often tied up in car trunks or on motorbikes or thrown on roof racks or in the backs of trucks. Already weak from harsh transport conditions, the animals can only watch helplessly as their shipmates are killed, and they fearfully await their fate.

At slaughter, the animals’ leg tendons are often cut, and their throats are cut while they are still conscious.

The only way to stop the atrocities of live-animal imports is to ban the trade.

> Please urge the Indonesian Minister of Agriculture to ban live-animal imports immediately .

Dear Friends,

Please email or write a letter to restaurants and caterers that use cruel meats such as veal and foie gras. Feel free to use the following as a draft to customise your letter. (For those living in British Columbia BC, of Canada, you can find a list of restaurants that serve such cruel cuisine here . URL : http://www.liberationbc.com/campaigns/foie_gras )

——-draft letter as follows—-

TO: [Name of Restaurant]

AGAINST CRUEL CUISINE : VEAL & FOIE GRAS

I am writing on behalf of my friends, relatives and fellow volunteers to state our stand against the use of veal and foie gras in restaurants and caterers. We are also requesting that your restaurant stop serving these meats which are seen by many as cruel cuisine. Until then, we, our friends and their friends will not be visiting your restaurant for dining, or to celebrate special occasions.

The following are the reasons why we advocate against serving veal and foie gras :

VEAL

Male calves are taken from their mothers shortly after birth. Some are slaughtered soon after birth for “bob veal.” Others are raised in “open pens,” a kind of minimum security prison, and even then they are sometimes chained. Most are destined for the veal crate.

Solitary Confinement

The veal crate is a wooden restraining device that is the veal calf’s permanent home. It is so small (22″ x 54″) that the calves cannot turn around or even lie down and stretch and is the ultimate in high-profit, confinement animal agriculture.(1) Designed to prevent movement (exercise), the crate does its job of atrophying the calves’ muscles, thus producing tender “gourmet” veal.

“Feeding” Time

The calves are generally fed a milk substitute intentionally lacking in iron and other essential nutrients. This diet keeps the animals anemic and creates the pale pink or white color desired in the finished product. Craving iron, the calves lick urine-saturated slats and any metallic parts of their stalls. Farmers also withhold water from the animals, who, always thirsty, are driven to drink a large quantity of the high-fat liquid feed.

A Fate Worse Than Death

During their brief lives, these claves never see the sun or touch the Earth. They never see or taste the grass. Their anemic bodies crave proper sustenance. Their muscles ache for freedom and exercise. They long for maternal care. They are kept in darkness except to be fed two to three times a day for 20 minutes. The calves have committed no crime, yet have been sentenced to a fate comparable to any Nazi concentration camp.

(Source: www.britishmeat.com)

For videos to see how veal is produced, go to www.youtube.com, type “veal cruel” in the search box to watch any of the videos.

FOIE GRAS

is produced by cruel and inhumane farming practices. At just a few months old, ducks are confined inside dark sheds and force-fed enormous amounts of food several times a day. A farm worker grabs each duck and, one by one, thrusts a metal pipe down their throats so that a mixture of corn can be forced directly into their gullets. In just a matter of weeks, the ducks become grossly overweight and their livers expand up to 10 times their normal size.

(Source : www.nofoiegras.org)

For videos to see how veal is produced, go to www.youtube.com, type “foie gras force feeding” in the search box to watch any of the videos.

CONCLUSION

We applaud and celebrate the few Vancouver restaurants that have removed foie gras from their menus:

Cioppino’s Mediterranean Grill, Meinhardt, Pearl Drops Tea House, West.

Even Celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck, has banned foie gras from his restaurants after learning the immense suffering that ducks, geese, cows and calves go through. We ask for you to have some compassion and kindness. Put yourself in the shoes of these defenceless animals. If you are them, you wouldn’t want your entire life to be such a misery.

Please remove cruel cuisine from your restaurant.

Yours sincerely

[Your full name]

I’m happy to share with you good news for these animals, thanks to the hard work of the People For The Ethical Treatment of Animals. Quoting a letter from PETA:

Animals No Longer Given Away as Carnival Prizes

When someone contacted us about a Dalhart, Texas, carnival in which live rabbits, ducks, and chicks were being given away as prizes at a ring-toss booth, PETA was on the case right away. Many of these animals were reportedly being drowned, run over, tossed off Ferris wheels, and dumped alive into trash cans by the people who won them. PETA convinced the carnival operator to adopt a permanent policy against using animals as prizes, and the ring-toss vendor’s contract was terminated.

You might think that a case like this is rare, but it isn’t at all. PETA handles hundreds of individual cruelty cases just like this one every month—and every time, we do whatever we can to get positive results for the animals involved. > A blog entry about this issue

Verizon Pulls Ad With Harmful Message About Pit Bulls

Telecommunications giant Verizon is no longer running a cell phone commercial that featured two growling, chained pit bulls—whose ears were cut in a “fighting crop”—guarding a junkyard. Pit bulls are possibly the most abused breed of dogs, and this commercial sent the message that it is acceptable to chain them to junked cars and use them as cheap security devices. According to animal behaviorists (and common sense), chained dogs often become agitated, frustrated, and aggressively protective of their tiny territories. When chained dogs break free, children are most often the victims of their aggression.

PETA contacted Verizon about the ad’s damaging message, but Verizon failed to respond. So PETA issued an action alert to our members, which generated more than 7,000 e-mails to two company executives! Two days after PETA contacted Verizon, the ad was gone! With your help, PETA continues to work to get anti-chaining ordinances passed and to quash the cruelty of using dogs as disposable toys and living burglar alarms.

This little case is the latest example of PETA pressure that has caused a major corporation to drop an ad that uses live animals in a disrespectful manner or depicts animals in any way that could contribute to their suffering. Subaru, Honda, and PUMA are just a few of the other companies we’ve changed for the better.

Anjelica Huston Helps Expose Cruelty to Great Apes

PETA’s exposé on the abuse of great apes by the film, television, and advertising industries was recently distributed to all major U.S. studios. Academy Award winner Anjelica Huston narrates our powerful video, which urges people in the entertainment industry never to use great apes. She describes how newborn chimpanzees and orangutans are taken away from their highly protective mothers and often beaten with fists and blackjacks—and even kicked in the head—during terrifying training sessions.

The video features undercover footage taken by a PETA investigator at a pseudo-sanctuary where we found a chimpanzee who reportedly had been used in the filming of Planet of the Apes. This poor old chimpanzee was living in an underground cement pit strewn with rotted food and feces. Many “performing” chimpanzees suffer similar fates; they are simply discarded or sold away to shoddy roadside zoos or given to pseudo-sanctuaries when they grow too strong to be handled. The video received a hearty endorsement by the Los Angeles Times and is making waves throughout the entertainment industry.

This is the latest salvo in our campaign to help great apes—and it’s working. As a direct result of PETA’s efforts, great apes are no longer used in ads run by numerous companies, including Honda, PUMA, Subaru, MovieTickets.com, furniture chain HomeUSA Warehouse, Keds, Yahoo!, and car dealership Malouf Ford. That’s great news!

None of these important victories for animals could have been won without the support of PETA members like you. Thank you for giving PETA the power to fight and win the battle against animal abuse!

Kind regards,

Ingrid E. Newkirk
President

Source: People For The Ethical Treatment of Animals

The recent cross-country listeriosis outbreak across Canada adds to the ever-growing list of viral diseases and food poisoning cases as a result of contaminated meat consumption.

This should not come as a surprise, considering that factory farms cramp live poultry and cattle in unhygienic conditions. The un-natural injection of hormones and force-feeding is widespread in farm animals to spur their growth and speed them onwards to the slaughterhouses. Genetic engineering experiments have also interfered with these animals’ natural immunity systems and could facilitate the attack of ever-evolving viruses as they mutate to adjust to cellular changes.

Please visit the websites below to learn more about the various kinds of meat you eat:

> Factory Farms > Facts about Meat > Truth about Organic & Free Range Meats > Mad Cow Disease

> Listeriosis Victims Swelled Up like Balloons > Salmonella deaths alarming > Watch Video .

Watch The Last Dance by Ashima Narain  here .

The horror that cows, chickens, and pigs face on factory farms goes on for a long time too. Chickens are violently tossed into cages with dozens of other birds and forced to live amid their own waste. Baby pigs have their testicles ripped out without any painkillers. And male calves are starved and chained inside tiny stalls until their flesh becomes soft and milky white before being slaughtered for someone’s veal dinner.

Extract from The Peta Files .

Today, I read the news of an animal rights organization comparing the Manitoba beheading to animal rights abuses, as follows :

…. “an innocent victim’s throat” being cut, referring to the slaughter of cows, chickens and pigs on factory farms.

“His struggles and cries are ignored … the man with the knife shows no emotion … the victim is slaughtered and his head cut off … his flesh is eaten,” reads the ad, which is posted on the website.

“If this ad leaves a bad taste in your mouth, please give a thought to what sensitive animals think and feel when they come to the end of their frightening journey and see, hear and smell the slaughterhouse.”

“Like human victims, animals in slaughterhouses experience terror when they are attacked by a knife-wielding assailant,” Lindsay Rajt of PETA said in a news release. “We are challenging everyone who is rightly horrified by this crime to look into their hearts and consider leaving violence off their dinner plates.”

Rajt said the ad was intended to be shocking and is meant to spur people to think about the terror and pain experienced by animals who are raised and killed for food.

What are my thoughts about this ?

First of all, I myself am shocked by the incident of the manslaughter, and in my comparison, I have NO intention of belittling the horrific death of an innocent victim.

To a great extent, I agree with the observation of the animal rights organization (not that I would publish the ad but I still credit PETA for the many other great things they’ve done for animals). There are some similarities, only that the killers at the slaughterhouses are not psychiatric cases; and that the animals are widely conscious and awake and shivering in fear as they await the much dreaded butcher knife or grinding machine.

Animals, no matter how “different from humans” others consider them to be, STILL HAVE FEELINGS OF FEAR & PAIN. In fact, many of their lives are much worse - in factory farms, they live their entire lives in confined cages/ pens, waiting painfully for that day of slaughter. Moreover, many of these animals are thoughtlessly (or worse- intentionally) abused by those who breed them for their products (milk, eggs, foie gras liver and meat.) Don’t take my word for it: read more about the poor treatment of these animals at Factory Farms (Article Factory Farms: Mechanized Madness Videos : Here ) .

Almost all of us have never stepped in a slaughterhouse. With the exception of those with a strong stomach and/or sado-masochistic nature, I suspect many of us will re-think the piece of meat on our plates. I have seen and heard what happens on factory farms . I am no saint, but I’m staying away from meat, eggs and dairy as much as I can.

If you were involved in our 2-year-long KFC Campaign,  you’ll remember that almost every week of it was spent at the KFC on Davie Street.  On Monday, Pamela Anderson made a surprise visit to that very location to promote KFC’s new vegan chicken sandwich as well as their improved welfare standards.

Read more about Pam’s visit at The PETA Files.

Source : Liberation BC Picture from PETA Files