What's the result?
The Humane Slaughter Act (HSA) requires that animals be rendered unconscious with one swift application of a stunning device before slaughter. In today's slaughterhouse this requirement is often not followed. For poultry birds (not legally recognized as "animals"), it is never followed. In the case of large mammals, the HSA, for all intents and purposes, is not enforced by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), so the law serves in no other way than to make people think that food animals are protected from cruelty. Conveyor lines are pushed to breakneck speeds, frequently causing cattle, pigs, horses and sheep to be shackled and throat-slit without first being stunned. Animals often are skinned, boiled and butchered alive.
Why do we let this happen??????
Why do we consume it????
In any factory-farm operation today, a percentage of the animals will be sick or crippled. The industry calls them "downers." Federal law does not protect them in any way. Veterinary care is not wasted on them. If unable to walk, a downer will often be dragged by chain or pushed with a tractor or forklift to slaughter. These animals may be left to starve or freeze to death. The downer phenomenon would be drastically reduced if stockyards refused to receive them.
An employee concealed a camera on his body and was able to record what really goes on inside a slaughterhouse (The tape aired in CBS-TV's 48 Hours). The tape showed how a plant with over 300 employees that processes an average of 50 cows per hour with only four USDA inspectors "keeps the line moving." It showed workers taking dangerous shortcuts in cleaning up fluid that had broken out of an abscess from a piece of chuck beef, a severe violation of USDA rules, which require an extended clean-up procedure. A USDA veterinarian commented, "I can say from my experience of nine years and in talking to other food inspectors around the country, this probably goes on on a daily basis."
The Reagan and Bush administrations were lax in enforcing antitrust laws. Consequently, between 1984 and 1994 a third of U.S. packinghouses went out of business. A more powerful industry was able to get faster kill speeds approved even while the number of line employees was being reduced. Meat and poultry safety has been suffering ever since. Early in 1998, it was found that 138,593 "critical" citations were made by USDA regulators against the country's 6,400 processing plants in 1996 alone. Each infraction cited had the potential to sicken consumers if the food had been distributed. Due to loopholes in the law, plants were almost always allowed to continue operating.
Where did our ethics go?
After years of selective breeding and with the help of modern milking practices, a cow today is robbed of many times the milk her calf would take. The strain on her body is equivalent to what a human would experience jogging six hours per day. Before, a cow might have lived 20 years. Today, once her milk-producing abilities diminish, after about four years, she will be slaughtered and ground to hamburger. In February 1994, the Monsanto company inflicted yet another horror on our friend: a genetically engineered bovine hormone that boosts her milk production by as much as 40 percent. The dairy industry, which was already awash in excess milk (thanks to government handouts), is now begging for price supports.
This is what we have today. Power and money hungry businesses that will easily endanger our health and our lives for profit while government supports it for the same reason...money.
The worst part - no one does anything to challenge their practices and make production, at the very least, safer for consumers.
