Here’s yesterday’s DawnWatch Alert about Mercy For Animal’s outstanding undercover investigation of cruelty at a dairy farm. The factory farm corporations are trying their best to prevent these investigations into their heinous practices, so if you’re still consuming dairy products it’s time for you to step up and watch.
This evening, Tuesday January 26, ABC News, both on World News Now and on Nightline, is covering the horrendous abuse of cows that is standard agricultural practice on dairy farms.
The ABC NEWS Web story is headed, “Got Milk? Got Ethics? Animal Rights v. U.S. Dairy Industry Undercover Videos Show Ugly Realities Behind the Scenes of ‘Factory Dairy Farms.’” It is online at: http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/animal-rights-us-dairy-industry/story?id=9658866&page=2 or http://tinyurl.com/ylq8c4p.
On the right side of that page, under “The Blotter from Brian Ross News” you’ll see a link that says, “Watch: Hidden Video Camera: Tail Docking.” The video of a cow’s tale being amputated, shot undercover by Mercy for Animals, is hard to watch. I was surprised the cow was being relatively quiet — not bellowing. But then it is revealed that she has thrown up.
The Nightline page includes video, as the page explains it, of “a cow in obvious pain as it horns are burned off.” It is equally horrifying to watch. It is online at: http://blogs.abcnews.com/nightlinedailyline/2010/01/darker-side-of-dairy-farming.html or http://tinyurl.com/ye3dmyb.
What have these animals done to deserve torture?
Even if you can’t bear to watch all of the videos, please go to the pages, as ABC News tracks which stories are most viewed. Then e-mail them to your friends as you will be spreading an important word and because the station also notes “most e-mailed.” And please post comments.
As for watching the video: if it so happens that you support the dairy industry, I do hope you will not allow yourself the luxury of averting your eyes. I am sure we all wish to make informed choices. And as the late Gretchen Wyler used to say, “We must not refuse to see with our eyes, what they must endure with their bodies.”
Most importantly, ABC NEWS takes programming feedback at http://tinyurl.com/2nowvh. It is vital that the programmers learn that viewers appreciate the inclusion of animal cruelty matters in the news programming, so please take just a moment to send a message to World News Now or/and Nightline using that form. Let them know what you think of the dairy industry practices and how much you appreciate the coverage.
Yours and the animals’,
Karen Dawn(DawnWatch is an animal advocacy media watch that looks at animal issues in the media and facilitates one-click responses to the relevant media outlets. You can learn more about it, and sign up for alerts at http://www.DawnWatch.com. You may forward or reprint DawnWatch alerts if you do so unedited — leave DawnWatch in the title and include this parenthesized tag line.)
Please go to www.ThankingtheMonkey.com for a fun celeb-studded promo video and information on Karen Dawn’s book, “Thanking the Monkey: Rethinking the Way we Treat Animals,” which was chosen last year by the Washington Post as one of the “Best Books of The Year” And check out Karen’s new blog at www.ThankingtheMonkey.com/blog !
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Filed under: animal rights, factory farming | Tagged: dairy farm cruelty, mercy for animals | Leave a Comment »













The footage, which was requested by Deschanel, will educate thousands of mainstream viewers about the cruel conditions animals are forced to endure on factory farms. The episode also features a character who rescues a pig and asks her coworkers for donations so that she can sponsor her at a sanctuary.

