Sometimes my blog won't always be comfortable. This one is not. You don't have to watch the video if it is your custom to protect yourself. But if you really want to see what happens to factory-farmed animals raised for our dinner plates, please steel yourself and watch the video because pictures do not lie. And know that, afterwards, you can take action that may help spare other animals.
One of Hatfield Quality Meats’ pork-producing farms includes Country View Family Farms, an industrial-strength hog plant in Pennsylvania. They also have over a hundred other farms in Ohio and Indiana, as well, and market themselves as the Trusted Producer of Wholesome Pork. Their animal-handling philosophy, as stated on their website, reads: “To be responsible stewards of the animals placed in our care, . . . to constantly maintain the highest level of integrity in animal welfare and biosecurity, . . ..”
However, Country View Family Farms are not the “stewards” of the pigs they factory farm. Caught on video by an undercover worker equipped with a hidden camera, (Please see it for yourself at www.mercyforanimals.org), the abuse is absolutely horrific: tossing piglets by their ears and legs into cages, removing piglets’ testicles, cutting off their tails—all without anesthesia—throwing sick and dying and injured piglets into shopping cart-sized boxes called “gassing carts” where they’re gassed to death by CO2. Pigs in these carts gasp for breath for many minutes before succumbing. Handling of the pigs include striking them with heavy mallets with numerous spikes. And more instances of torture and abuse and neglect abound at these farms. The video will bring anyone with any heart to tears followed by the urgent need to help these intelligent, sensitive creatures and punish those who commit such atrocities.
Unfortunately no federal laws protect food animals during the gestation, birthing and nurturing, and raising of the animals to slaughter. Likewise, no state laws, with the exception of seven states, exist to prevent neglect and abuse of farm animals at any time before and during slaughter as long as the acts are “undertaken in normal agricultural operation.” Therefore, any activity a farmer uses in raising his animals is considered legal in Pennsylvania and in other states where Country View Family Farms operates.
Here’s what you can do to help insure humane treatment of farm animals. First, please sign the petition from Animal Law Coalition’s "Stop farm animal cruelty" on Change.org. Click this link to view the petition--http://www.change.org/animal_law_coalition/actions/view/stop_farm_animal_cruelty.
Second—Boycott purchase of and consuming of any Hatfield Products.
Third—Call on USDA and Food Safety Inspection Service officials to enforce the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act.
Secretary Tom Vilsack
US Department of Agriculture
1400 Independence Ave., S.W.
Washington DC 20250
Phone: 202-720-3631
Alfred V. Almanza, Administrator
Food Safety and Inspection Service
United States Department of Agriculture
Washington DC 20250-3700
Phone: 202-720-3700
Fax: 202-205-0158
Fourth—Call on Congress and US representatives: <https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml%20 Call on US Senators: <http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm and demand they provide laws for the humane treatment of farm animals.
Fifth--Call on Pennsylvania lawmakers at <http://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/legis/home/member_information/email_list.cfm?body=H> and <http://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/legis/home/member_information/senators_alpha.cfm> and ask them to apply animal cruelty laws to farm animals and adopt a simple law that 7 states have already enacted that would ban gestation crates and unnecessary violent handling and neglect of farm animals. Sixth—Ask the above Pennsylvania lawmakers to join forces with Michigan, Maine, Colorado, Arizona, Oregon, Florida, and California in their efforts against cruel and inhumane handling and raising of farm animals. You may access this information at http://www.animallawcoalition,com/farm-animals/article/938#new. Seventh—Send an email to all your friends, relatives, and people with common sense asking them to view the undercover video of Country View Family Farms at www.mercyforanimals.org and ask them to boycott Hatfield meat products. A Country is only as civilized as its treatment of its animals.
To be honest, Tecu'Mish is crying just from your descriptions. She has watched similar films on the beef industry and will not watch this one because she just can't handle it. We will write letters to the people and addresses you have suggested. We would like to offer another thought on this. Some of you might think this a bunch of hoodoo voodoo, but think about it....nowadays, there is a lot more sickness and disease in humans. We believe the pain, suffering and horror these factory farmed animals have for lives is deposited into their bodies. That in turn ends up in the supermarkets and in turn on peoples dinner plates and therefore into peoples bodies. What we do to them, we do to ourselves. The circle is complete. For the more scientifically minded, when I am under stress, pain or fear, my body secrets all kinds of detrimental hormones and chemicals....they settle in my muscles until such time as they can be processed out...these animals don't get to process them out.....we end up eating them. So if you eat meat and don't believe in treating them well on a moral level, think of treating them well for self-centered reasons.
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