Social Justice Group Reveal Horrors In Pig Breeding Facility

British Supermarkets Support The Despicable Pig Farming Industry.
British supermarkets are pouring millions of pounds into rescuing the UK’s beleaguered pig farming sector.
Farmers say they have been unable to send thousands of pigs to slaughter.
More than 40,000 pigs have been killed on farms since October 2021 and their bodies discarded while a number of pig farmers have left the sector.
In response, major supermarkets are now paying more for British pork, and some have promised support packages to cover production costs including labour, fuel, and feed.
At the beginning of May 2022, Waitrose promised £16million and Sainsbury’s £2.8million.
After an appeal for help from the National Pig Association (NPA), Tesco has now agreed to provide £6.6million until August 2022 in addition to the £3.4million it has already paid since March 2022.
The Co-op is the latest to put forward a support package and has outdone its larger competitors by stumping up £19million.
Most of the roughly 10 million pigs farmed in the UK are raised in intensive farming systems and fed on a mixture of grains and legumes, with about 10% of their feed made up of imported soya, much of which has been linked to deforestation in South America.
Rob Percival, head of food policy at the Soil Association said: “Industrial pig farming not only raises grave animal welfare concerns, it’s ultimately unsustainable. Instead of propping up a broken system, retailers and the UK Government should be working to phase out intensive production and bring an end to industrial pig farming.”
( Claire Hamlett, 24.05.2022 )  Source:  sentientmedia.org

Only when we all see the soul in all living beings, and not just the face or the body or the race or the species, will there be peace in the world and we will be able to call ourselves civilised.

Dairy Products.
In order to produce milk, a cow needs to get pregnant.
Farmers make this happen by guiding a sack of sperm (forcibly extracted from a bull) into the cow’s uterus by pressing against the wall of her anus.
When the calf is born (after nine months of pregnancy), he or she is taken away from their mother so her milk can be used to make dairy products.
A male calf will be killed and discarded (often on the same day they are born) or used and then killed to make veal.
A female calf will follow in her mother’s footsteps.
The mother cow will suffer from this despicable procedure (some would call it rape or sexual abuse) until she becomes exhausted and no longer profitable, normally after four to six pregnancies.
She will then be carted off to the slaughterhouse and butchered for cheap meat.
( Rose Winfold )

One of the greatest gifts we can bestow upon another, animal or human, is kindness.
True kindness lies within the act of giving without the expectation of something in return.

Banned, A TV Advert Shedding Light On The Brutality Inflicted On Farm Animals.
The advertising watchdog has banned a TV ad for Vegan Friendly UK after receiving just 63 complaints.
The ad, shown in March 2022, was intended to highlight potential hypocrisy among meat-eaters who said they cared about animal welfare.
Vegan Friendly UK, which campaigns to increase the consumption of plant-based food and certify businesses as “vegan-friendly”, said that it had carefully selected the clips of animals used in the campaign.
It clarified that the clips were sourced from licensed stock footage sites or from the public domain, and believed they would not be out of place in a cookery programme or nature documentary.
The group believed that the clips used in the advert did not portray actions of violence or harm and that such imagery was seen regularly in butchers’ or fishmongers’ windows on the average UK high street.
“Our ad was simply shedding light on the harsh and brutal reality millions of farm animals endure every day,” Vegan Food UK stated on Instagram. “It was banned because it made some viewers uncomfortable.”
Many like to think of farm animals living a happy life on green pastures before they are killed for meat.
But this is often not the case.
Around the world, two-thirds of farm animals (that’s about 50 billion) are raised on factory farms.
“The discomfort a viewer could feel from watching the advert is only a fraction of what farm animals experience every day. We will not stop being a voice for the animals and advocating veganism to promote equality for all living things.” said Vegan Friendly UK.
( Charlotte Pointing, 09.06.2022 )  Source:  plantbasednews.org

What most people don’t realise is that the animals they are eating are really just middlemen, since the majority of these animals get their protein from plants, where all protein originates.
In fact, most of the world’s strongest animals, such as elephants, rhinos, hippos, bison, horses, giraffes and gorillas, are herbivores.

Since I’ve been spending my time in Nature with animals, I found out that we are the wild savages and they are the ones who are actually civilised.
( Jim Carrey )

Inhumane Slaughter Of Millions Of Pigs In Thailand.
Humane killing practices are virtually unknown in the majority of Thailand’s abattoirs, with millions of pigs dying in pain.
Photos of workers clubbing pigs with bats in a Thai slaughterhouse have prompted campaigners to call for wider training and monitoring of humane welfare practices.
Undercover images taken in the central Thailand abattoir show workers stunning the animals on their eyes with what appear to be homemade stunning machines, contrary to equipment recommendations.
Although Thailand does have specific guidelines for pig slaughterhouses – which require that the animals be killed “without suffering” – humane slaughter practices in the Buddhist country’s small and medium-sized abattoirs are virtually non-existent, say campaigners.
Animal rights activist Wadchara Pumpradit said: “The Thai public, in general, is not aware of the need for humane killing practices. Farm animals are born to be killed for food and people do not consider their needs or their right to be respected. While the Thai government runs training courses on humane slaughter, regulations are not enforced and smaller-scale producers and processors are largely unmonitored. The current monitoring system regarding humane slaughter needs to be strengthened. How can we be sure licensed slaughterhouses are complying with the law when they are not directly monitored?”
Around 18 million pigs are raised every year by various-sized producers, ranging from an estimated 200,000 smallholders to multinational giants.
In a slaughterhouse in central Thailand where 500 pigs are killed every day, photo-journalist Jo-Anne McArthur recently documented the animals arriving on pick-up trucks.
She then followed the slaughter process as they were clubbed with a large wooden bat, slit open with a knife, allowed to bleed out, and finally dragged into a vat of boiling water.
( Kate Hodal, 11.06.2019 )  Source:  theguardian.com

You didn’t feel my pain.
You didn’t feel my fear.
You didn’t hear me cry,
You didn’t see me die.
You didn’t see me bleed,
For the meat you didn’t need.

Low Animal Welfare Standards Supported By British Supermarkets.
Animal advocacy charity Animal Equality released its latest undercover footage of four intensive chicken farms in the British Midlands owned by chicken producer Moy Park.
Chickens were shown unable to walk or breathe properly because they had grown too big too fast — a result of selective breeding.
Hundreds of chicks who wouldn’t gain enough weight in time had their necks stretched, snapped, or cut against the edge of a metal bucket.
Not all of them died immediately.
Others were deprived of water so that they die from dehydration instead.
A farmworker admitted on film that if they know a chick isn’t going to reach the 1.85 kg. required for processing within 32 days, “there’s no point feeding it. It’s cheaper to kill it and get rid of it.”
When the footage went public,  Moy Park along with Red Tractor, the farm assurance scheme that certified the farms, and Tesco and Ocado, the supermarket chains that sell the meat, all responded to the investigation by reassuring customers that they take animal welfare “very seriously.”
Ocado said: “We are confident that this supplier adheres and enforces the high welfare standards that are expected across our industry.”
When Sentient Media queried Tesco about the footage, they insisted that chicken welfare was a priority and something they are always trying to improve.
Neither Moy Park nor Red Tractor found any “major breaches” of their welfare standards at the farms in question.
If the chickens are unhealthily large for their age, that is because fast-growing breeds are common in intensive chicken farming.
If the barns look overcrowded in the video, that is because each chicken is only required to have space smaller than a sheet of A4 paper to itself.
If the farm adheres to “enhanced welfare” standards, they get a little bit more.
Lucky chickens.
But it would be a mistake to get mired in a debate about improving the welfare of these animals with Tesco or Red Tractor.
The problem is not that their welfare standards are too low, but that the language of welfare has no place in these standards at all.
The liberal use of the term “good welfare” by Moy Park, Red Tractor, Tesco, and others to describe conditions and practices commonly found on factory farms has not meaningfully improved the life of chickens and other animals.
But it has lowered the bar for what counts as good welfare to such an extent that the term can be applied to practices which cause animals more suffering than they prevent.
( Claire Hamlett, 02.09.2020 )  Source:  sentientmedia.org

If showing children what happens to animals in a slaughterhouse is too shocking for them to watch, then perhaps what we are doing to the animals is wrong.

Social Justice Group Members Reveal Horrors In Pig Breeding Facility.
In the early hours of December 7, 2019, eleven members of the social justice group Rose’s Law entered a barn through an unlocked door at the Porgreg pig breeding facility in Saint-Hyacinthe, Quebec, Canada.
Inside, they videotaped vile conditions.
Seven hours later, they were arrested.
Their trial wrapped up last October 2021.
On April 14, 2022, Justice Marco LaBrie announced his verdict: guilty.
The charges — breaking and entering and obstruction.
A video taken after the break-in shows hundreds of cobwebs dangling from the ceiling and an open flame emanating from a hazardous light.
As videographer Jenny McQueen walks along a corridor of gestation crates, pregnant and nursing sows appear slotted between corroded metal bars like the wheels of bicycles in an apocalyptic bike rack.
She said: “Flies are everywhere. The air is thick with ammonia. In a dark corner, a lone piglet lies dead. In overcrowded pens, young pigs wade through faeces, their bodies coated in filth.”
For those concerned about animal welfare, facilities like Porgreg red-flag the negligence of government agencies tasked with ensuring farmers meet the physical and emotional needs of their animals.
That negligence risks food safety and public health.
Bacteria breed in barns like this, and climate change makes it easier for them to jump from animals to humans.
Whistleblowers have recorded similar conditions at farms in British Columbia and Ontario.
Yet, the pork industry still encourages producers to tell stories of the great job they are doing caring for pigs.
The eleven co-defendants last appeared in court on May 6, 2022, but have not yet received their sentence.
( Karen Levenson, 14.06.2022 )   Source:  nationalobserver.com

It’s sad and disturbing when people who eat meat get upset or annoyed when you point out how animals suffer, rather than getting upset or annoyed at themselves for being the cause of their suffering.

The Most Inhumane Method Used To Kill Millions Of Birds.
New analysis from the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) found that at the peak of the ongoing avian flu outbreak, the majority of producers chose to kill their animals using ventilation shutdown plus heat (VSD+), considered by advocates and veterinarians to be the “most inhumane method available.”
Between February and March 2022, U.S. flocks were hit hard by avian flu.
The disease re-emerged in the U.S. this January 2022 and has since claimed the lives of more than 37 million birds.
Many of the infected birds succumbed to the H5N1 virus, but millions more were killed purposefully, en-masse using a variety of culling methods, some of which are considered more humane than others.
The AWI analysis, which is based on USDA records obtained under FOIA, found that farmers chose to use VSD+ in 73% of the culls orchestrated over the past few months.
VSD+ requires farmers to cut off airflow and heat their barns to 104 deg.F. until the animals die from heatstroke.
The method is only intended to be used if no other method can successfully kill the entire flock in 48 hours.
But USDA records show that eight of the 12 largest culls that used VSD+ between February and March took more than 48 hours to complete.
While USDA endorses the use of VSD+ in some scenarios, the killing method is opposed by a growing contingent of veterinary professionals, who say it causes extreme suffering and should be avoided at all costs.
In 2014-2015, an avian flu outbreak resulted in the death of 50 million chickens and turkeys and cost taxpayers approximately $850 million.
While the current outbreak is concentrated in a handful of states, the virus has affected chicken and turkey flocks nationwide.
( Matthew Zampa, 03.06.2022 )  Source:  sentientmedia.org

Put yourself in their place.
For once, just once, imagine and feel exactly what they feel.
Their sadness, their pain, their fear, their feeling of hopelessness.

Live Animal Export.
More Than 15,000 Sheep Drown When The Ship Carrying Them Sank.
More than 15,000 sheep drowned in the Sudanese Red Sea port of Suakin after the ship carrying them sank.
The transport ship was carrying 15,800 sheep, about 6,000 more than it was able to hold when it went down, drowning most animals on board but with all crew surviving.
The vessel was exporting the animals from Sudan to Saudi Arabia when it sank after several thousand more animals were loaded on board than it was meant to carry.
Around 700 sheep were able to be pulled out of the sea, although they are in bad condition and not expected to survive.
The president of the Sudanese Chamber of Exporters, said the ship took several hours to sink, stressing that the vessel and its cargo “could have been saved”.
Source:  aljazeera.com

Federal Government Prosecute Lamb Slaughterhouse.
Undercover investigations at factory farms and slaughterhouses constantly produce damning evidence of animal abuse.
Most of the time the authorities shrug it off.
At best, the company fires a few bad apples and the supplier cuts ties with them.
But rarely, if ever, does the federal government step in and prosecute animal agriculture.
This time they did.
The animal advocacy group Animal Outlook, formerly Compassion Over Killing, and the Public Justice Food Project brought suit on behalf of a whistleblower following a hidden-camera investigation inside the Superior Farms lamb slaughterhouse conducted in Dixon, California, from May to November 2016.
Superior Farms is the largest lamb producer in the country and supplies the nation’s top two grocers, Walmart and Kroger.
The company also supplies the National School Lunch Program and the U.S. military with fresh and frozen meat.
Following the lawsuit brought by Animal Outlook, the company has agreed to reform its killing practices, thanks in no small part to the work of one of its undercover investigators.
That whistleblower witnessed what Animal Outlook believed were a variety of humane handling violations, despite the company’s claim to be using slaughter practices in keeping with federal and religious law.
Over the course of the six-and-a-half months at Superior Farms, the undercover investigator documented purposeful and repeated violations of the humane and halal slaughter law, as well as serious food safety concerns, like boxes of meat carried around the metal detector instead of passing through it and “Best By” dates scratched off and replaced.
Footage from the investigation shows a slaughterhouse worker using a knife to saw in a back and forth motion along one side of the lamb’s neck.
He then lifts the knife and makes the same sawing and slicing motion on the other side of the animal’s neck.
Superior Farms slaughters around 1,000 animals per day.
At the time, the company was also under contract to supply the USDA and Department of Defence, meaning a significant portion of meat from Superior Farms, which was totally unsafe to eat, was distributed by the federal government to students through the National School Lunch Program and to serving members of the U.S. military.
( Matthew Zampa, 14.06.2019 )  Source:  sentientmedia.org