Yesterday, the USDA shut down operations at Central Valley Meat Co. in Hanford, Calif. The facility, located at the center of California's dairy industry, slaughters California dairy cows when their milk production declines and sells their meat to make hamburger for the school lunch program. Federal regulators took the action after receiving undercover footage taken at the slaughterhouse by an animal welfare group, Compassion Over Killing.
Central Valley Meat Co. is owned by Brian and Lawrence Coelho. Asked for a comment, Brian Coelho said: "Our company seeks not just to meet federal humane handling regulations, but exceed them."
Meanwhile, the California Milk Advisory Board tells us that "Happy Cows Come From California." In fact, the agency has just this past week once more cranked up the ad campaign with a new twist. Titled "Friends," the new ads use a happy and talkative cow to convey the unmistakable feeling that by eating California cheese and drinking California milk, you are expanding your family to include friendly cows. The tag line is "Make us part of your family."
Factory farm dairies have long employed the PR tactic of telling consumers that they treat their animals "just like members of their own families." Considering the footage provided by Compassion Over Killing, I hope that isn't true. It shows dairy cows bleeding and thrashing painfully after being repeatedly shot in the head with a pneumatic gun in bungled efforts to render them unconscious prior to killing them. One cow is shown still conscious and flailing as a conveyor lifts her by a single leg for transport to the area where her throat will be slit.
If you've eaten at In-N-Out Burger recently, you may have eaten a burger made from the flesh of a cow killed at Central Valley Meat Co. The burger chain has regularly obtained meat from this slaughterhouse but severed ties with the company yesterday after learning of the current situation. After seeing the footage, USDA officials began investigating whether beef from sick cows has reached the food supply and should be recalled. The practice of sending meat to market from sick animals is illegal.
How often are dairy cows treated this badly in today's slaughterhouses? It's anybody's guess. The industry has gotten legislation passed that makes it illegal to take undercover footage of cruelty to farmed animals, so undercover investigators risk years in prison to do so.
The industry considers people who take footage like this to be criminals and wants them jailed. I consider them heroes who are trying to return our society to a semblance of morality in the way we treat dairy cows and other livestock. Either way, I find it difficult to imagine anyone who could watch this footage and find it tolerable.
Here is the footage. Please be prepared if you watch it. It's grotesque. I don't think anyone with a heart could possibly find this tolerable.
WARNING: Video contains graphic content.
John Robbins is author of ten best-sellers, including No Happy Cows: Dispatches From The Frontlines of The Food Revolution. The recipient of the Rachel Carson Award, the Albert Schweitzer Humanitarian Award, the Peace Abbey's Courage of Conscience Award, and Green America's Lifetime Achievement Award, John Robbins is cofounder of the Food Revolution Network, which provides information and inspiration to help you heal your body, and you world... with food. To learn more about his work, visit JohnRobbins.info.
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Are they raising children? Is that what we are teaching them? Not to care about all living creatures? There are humane and compassionate methods the puts these animals down. The adrenaline from the animal's reaction to the fear of being killed is what contributes to behavior problems in children. If you don't care about the animals. What about your kids then?
“That the use of animal food disposes man to cruel and ferocious action is a fact to which the experience of ages gives ample testimony…The barbarous and unfeeling "sports" (as they are called) of the English - their horse-racing, hunting, shooting, bull and bear baiting, cock-fighting, prize fighting, and the like, all proceed from their immoderate addiction to animal food. Their natural temper is thereby corrupted, and they are in the habitual and hourly commision of crimes against nature, justice, and humanity, from which a feeling and reflective mind, unaccustomed to such a diet, would revolt, but in which they profess to take delight.” ~ Joseph Ritson, Essay upon Abstinence from Animal Food: As a Moral Duty (1802)
F&F
As I always say whenever one of these videos comes out it's not a isolated incident. It's an industry-wide problem. Furthermore, it's a social problem. We allow this to happen. We fund these abuses 3 times a day when we sit down and eat. If you don't like what you see, don't support it. Stop eating animals. And if that seems too difficult for you (it's not) then try to eat far fewer animals. Choose compassion.
The dairy industry is notoriously inhumane, which I don't think many people realize. Cows are constantly pregnant; calves are taken from their mothers within 24 hours of birth so their mothers can become milking machines, infused with growth hormones, making their udders unnaturally large and full of milk. Then once they can no longer get pregnant or produce enough milk, they're shunted off to places like this.
And then there are the male dairy calves, who have almost no value. They are killed or become veal calves tied in a crate until they too are slaughtered.
No more dairy products for me, ever. Lots of delicious and cruelty-free alternatives nowadays.
This is why some of us have simply stopped eating meat.
I saw a graph of crime rates in Texas in a town with a horse slaughter plant. It was unbelievable how the crime rates dropped like a stone when the plant closed.
Just more bad things consuming meat enables...
Unfortunately, it's extremely difficult to make that undeniable connection if you condone slaughtering others in the first place.
You could try not eating them or at least eat far fewer animals (the average american eats almost 100 animals a year! almost all of which came from factory farms). If you get a hankering for something meaty there's no shortage of faux meats out there. Or, you could try stuffing a grilled portabello in your burger bun. Or make your own black bean patties. Or roasted eggplant.
Do you realize that if a person's entire meat intake consisted of chicken that equates to an entire chicken roughly every 3.5 days? If you work any beef or pork at all into that the number drops dramatically. Fish, I guess would drive the number up - depending on exactly what kind of fish it was. Do you really believe meat consumption is that high? I eat a lot of meat - and I guarantee you that even my consumption is nowhere near that number. (I guess if they are counting shellfish that number could be correct, but if counting "land animals only, there's no way.)
"Statements in the video that captive bolt guns do not work to make animals insensible to pain are not true. One gun observed appeared to be brand new and state of the art. However, all guns are precision machinery that must be cleaned and maintained every day in order to operate effectively," said Grandin.
She went on to say, "In general, the narration of the video misleads the viewer into thinking some things are happening that are not. For example, the cattle in the video are properly stunned with one exception that I observed. Properly stunned, unconscious and insensible livestock will exhibit some reflexive kicking, especially of the unrestrained rear leg, after they have been stunned. This is normal and occurs because the brain is no longer in control. In fact you can remove the head and the legs will still kick violently. In addition, one animal that showed a trembling head while coming off a conveyor was actually having what is called a 'tonic spasm' and was clearly insensible as evidenced by its floppy tongue hanging out."
It should also be noted that Temple Grandin designed a new, state-of-the-art horse slaughter facility in Canada. That facility was shut down last year for cruelty (also documented in undercover video). The point being, Temple claims she can design humane facilities and practices. Unfortunately the majority of the inhumane treatment is occurring as a result of human handling and lack of government oversight which are two things out of her control.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/vickeryeckhoff/2011/12/06/horse-slaughterhouse-investigation-sounds-food-safety-and-cruelty-alarms/
The problem with promoting animal "welfare" is that it often just aims to improve the conditions leading to an animal's death rather than actually preventing the death itself.
Let's consider a human analogy. If one human was to cook a nice big meal for another human, tuck them up in a nice comfy bed and then sneak in while they were asleep and put a bolt through their head, killing them instantly, would we say, "Oh, what an ethical way to treat them"? I think not!!! We'd call it "murder!"... and probably add the phrase "cold-blooded" to it too.
We totally agree that all animal cruelty should stop BUT we are ALSO reminding people that these animals will be unnecessarily killed regardless of how they are treated. That is clearly against the "rights' of the animal.
There is no such thing as "happy meat". The answer has to be Go Vegan and stop ALL such animal deaths.
This is an abomination of how God asked us to care for animals, and indeed those products and meat are supremely unhealthy.
However this is not a reasonable platform to promote vegen or vegetarian diets. Wild and free range meats are healthy and ESSENTIAL foods. There has never existed a sustainable culture in the last 1000 years that was vegan, it simply doesn't work. As a bow hunter and a biologist I am convinced, we are omnivores and need to harvest our meat, eggs and dairy with compassion and respect as a gift from God and a sacrifice by the animal.
On a separate note, these creatures do not sacrifice themselves for you.
Native Americans understood the spiritual aspect of harvesting meat, which you apparently don't. Name one native American tribe that was vegetarian?
Tell me how many successful professional athletes/ olympians are vegetarian or vegan?
It's a big push by the National and state Farm Bureaus to hide animal cruelty.