A follow-up guest post from Kestrel
Just when I thought I had learned the depth of depravity of the pork industry, I found this new piece of information from Twyla Francois of Canadians for Ethical Treatment of Farm Animals (CETFA) and posted on Youtube:
“Millions of piglets are killed inhumanely each year in Canada by PACing – Pounding Against Concrete. Many survive the practice but are thrown into the garbage bins regardless. There they suffer for upwards of seven days as the rendering trucks come to pick them up only once a week.
Footage of this same practice has been taken around the world – most recently in The Netherlands.’
Please, don’t support this cruelty. Reduce or eliminate your consumption of pork or only buy from certified free-range farms.”
Now the Canadian government will take our ethically earned tax dollars and bail out these people.
Sows in gestation crates
A refresher on some of the many other horrors of the pork industry:
- Atrocities against pigs as a daily practice and way of life through factory farming practices such as tail docking and neutering without anaesthetic, weaning babies at two weeks and imprisoning sows in tiny crates where they cannot turn around or even lie down comfortably.
Read more … - Burning pigs alive
Note on the live burnings: The federal government is currently determining eligibility criteria producers must meet for pork industry bail-out funds. The decision is expected by late September.
TIME IS CRITICAL! PLEASE CONTACT MINISTER RITZ AND DEMAND THAT THE BAIL-OUT FUNDING ONLY BE AVAILABLE TO PRODUCERS WHO INSTALL SMOKE DETECTORS AND SPRINKLER SYSTEMS.
Contact Gerry Ritz, the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-foods
http://www.gerryritzmp.com/contact.php - Production of superbugs and lethal viruses such as MRSA and Swine Flu
- Contamination of ground water through manure lagoon (lakes)
- Air pollution and making residents around confinement operations sick with respiratory illnesses
- Filling children up with chemicals and plastics
- Expecting tax payers to pay for their financial problems
Learn more about factory farming!
Read Time Magazine’s just published article:
Getting Real About the High Cost of Cheap Meat
Stop the Live-Burnings (circulate this pdf flyer)
Filed under: animal rights, environment, factory farming | Tagged: MRSA, piglets pounded against concrete, pork producers buring pigs alive, swine flu
Thank you for posting this! Readers, please cross post widely..and there is a flyer at the end you can circulate about the live burnings
Thanks for getting the word out. There must be a large number of seriously disturbed individuals willing to work in this cruel industry. My hope is that as the word gets out, people will not support the industry. However, so far, I have noted the desire NOT to know, to look the other way, so people don’t have to deal with the reality. I wish I knew how to overcome that barrier. Here’s to keep on keeping on!
Only buy from certified free-range farms? Really? Don’t those pigs go to slaughter the same way?
See the quotes around the statement about free-range farms? Yeah, that means neither I nor Kestrel said or wrote that. It comes from Twyla Francois, and that’s who should question.
Oh pardon, missed the quotes. Now it makes more sense coming from you guys.
No worries.
Hi all,
I just read your comments and you’re exactly right re the “humane” meat labels. I provided the response below to another person who brought this up. It’s a difficult thing we struggle with as we know consumption of any meat product (thus I’m vegetarian/mostly vegan) is inherently cruel and requires the suffering of an animal. The worry is that if we don’t include these statements about trying to eat less cruelly we alienate a certain proportion of the public who are not yet ready to go veg. I struggle with this myself and wish I didn’t have to include statements like this at the end of my videos so I was glad to read your comments ;> Ok, onto my response:
“That’s a good point and no, we don’t know with any level of certainty that certified free-range farms are not killing piglets in this manner.
If someone were still interested in purchasing pork they need to do their due diligence and request the criteria required for the label they are buying.
Most humane labels don’t involve many basic things we all assume they do (the one that thankfully does however is the BCSPCA label. Kudos to them!). For most others though, transportation, livestock auctions, collecting stations and slaughter are all NOT covered under most humane certification programs. Many producers simply have one barn with the higher standards but the rest of their barns in the industrial standard. They use this one barn to mislead the public into believing all products from that farm/producer are humane, when in fact they are not.
Be very wary when purchasing humanely-labeled products. They are – hopefully – produced in a less cruel manner but the key words here are “less cruel”, not more humane.”