Fwd: [saldf] Fwd: "Blowing the whistle on animal cruelty" - Article by SALDF President at UI (fwd)

[Alan Sondheim]

apologies for off-topic. This is near where we worked this summer in WV. - Alan

--- Delcianna J Winders <annajoy at nyu.edu> wrote:

> From: Delcianna J Winders <annajoy at nyu.edu>
> To: "Student Animal League Defense Fund"
> <saldf at forums.nyu.edu>
> Date: Wed, 13 Oct 2004 11:49:10 -0400
> Subject: [saldf] Fwd: "Blowing the whistle on animal
> cruelty" - Article
>  by SALDF President at UI
>

---------------------------------


> ATTACHMENT part 2 message/rfc822
> Date: Fri, 08 Oct 2004 16:32:38 -0400
> From: Liberty Mulkani <lmulkani at aldf.org>
> Subject: [saldf] Article by SALDF President
> To: SALDF List <saldf at list.aldf.org>
> 
> To: SALDF List
> 
> The following is an excellent article written by
> Leana Stormont, President
> of the University of Iowa Student Animal Legal
> Defense Fund. Ms. Stormont
> contributes a monthy animal rights column to her
> local paper.
> 
> Liberty Mulkani
> Animal Legal Defense Fund
> 
> ----------------------------------------
> "Blowing the whistle on animal cruelty"
> Guest Opinion
> Published: Thursday, September 9, 2004
> 
> I spent my summer vacation watching slaughterhouse
> employees torture
> chickens.
> 
> Working as a legal intern at People for the Ethical
> Treatment of Animals,
> I was assigned to an undercover investigation of a
> slaughterhouse that
> supplied chickens to the fast-food chain Kentucky
> Fried Chicken. Workers
> at a Pilgrim's Pride plant in Moorefield, W.Va.,
> were caught on video
> stomping, kicking, throwing, and slamming chickens
> against floors and
> walls. The investigator witnessed workers who ripped
> off chickens' beaks
> and heads, spat tobacco into their eyes and mouths,
> and squeezed their
> bodies so hard that the birds expelled feces. I
> helped the supervising
> attorney review evidence, document instances of
> cruelty, and draft a
> formal legal complaint.
> 
> On July 20, 2004, news of the investigation broke in
> the New York Times.
> By day's end, the story was in more than 500 media
> outlets and on "World
> News Tonight." Dan Rather described the footage:
> "The video is grainy, but
> there is no mistaking what it depicts: cruelty to
> animals, chickens
> horribly mistreated before they're slaughtered for a
> fast-food chain."
> When CBS, ABC, NBC, and CNN ran investigation
> footage that night, viewers
> were confronted with images of unspeakable cruelty.
> Many Americans learned
> how living animals are reduced to the sum of their
> dead body parts for the
> sake of a sandwich or box of nuggets.
> 
> The Humane Society of the United States called for
> an immediate
> congressional investigation.
> 
> More than 9 billion animals are slaughtered annually
> in this country for
> food; more than 8 billion are chickens. They are
> warehoused in long
> windowless sheds for the duration of their lives at
> population densities
> between 20,000 to 50,000 birds per shed. Each animal
> is allotted floor
> space equal to a sheet of 8.5-by-11-inch paper. On a
> diet of antibiotics,
> growth hormones, and dubious feed, they reach market
> weight in
> approximately 40 days.
> 
> At the slaughterhouse, chickens are dumped on a
> conveyor belt, their legs
> are shackled, and they are transported to the kill
> room. Their heads are
> dragged through an electrically charged water bath
> designed to stun and
> immobilize them for the automated neck-cutter, and
> then the animals enter
> a scalding tank. Improper assembly-line stunning and
> neck-cutting means
> every day thousands of birds enter the scalding tank
> alive and fully
> conscious. Most Americans are surprised to learn
> there are no federal
> animal-welfare laws governing the manner in which
> chickens are raised or
> slaughtered in this country. In other words, 95
> percent of the animals
> slaughtered for food this year have no federal legal
> protection
> whatsoever.
> 
> The lives of animals raised for human consumption
> are marked by
> confinement and abject misery. Individually and
> collectively, consumers of
> animal flesh are responsible for this suffering.
> When I recognized the
> complicity in my own consumption of animal flesh 17
> years ago, I was faced
> with a choice: I could ignore the profound suffering
> of these animals and
> maintain the status quo through inaction, or I could
> renounce
> industrialized cruelty by boycotting all animal
> products.
> 
> I quit eating meat because I did not want any part
> in the systematic
> exploitation of farmed animals. It was that simple.
> No one had to tell me
> what these industries do to animals is wrong - we
> all know what a crime
> against nature looks like. Getting animals off my
> plate was the most
> effective means I had of extending mercy to the most
> disenfranchised
> beings on this planet. It still is. It was not
> enough to condemn the
> cruelty; action was required in order to bring about
> its abolition.
> 
> I am an unapologetic animal-rights activist. This
> means I believe nonhuman
> animals deserve moral consideration for their lives
> and interests apart
> from our species' designs on them. Compassion is an
> ethical position.
> Animal-rights discourse is often characterized by
> contentious rhetoric
> that seeks to polarize the ethic of compassion. But
> animal-rights
> activists want the same thing we all do: To live in
> a world where there is
> less cruelty as opposed to one where there is more.
> 
> This world does not lack suffering; we don't have to
> contribute to it
> every time we sit down to eat. All we want is for
> human beings to stop
> treating animals horribly. There is nothing radical
> about that.
> 
> Leana Stormont, a UI law student, is president of
> the Iowa Law Student
> Animal Legal Defense Fund.
> 
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