190590:

“Pigs are beaten to death on ‘ethical’ farm”

(Click through photo for full-sized article)

An article printed today in the UK Sunday Times in regard to an investigation on Harling Farm, a British pig farm whose Red Tractor scheme assures “high standards of safety, animal welfare, and environmental protection”, the footage (over 200 hours and more than 300 photos) and detailed accounts given were referred to as “one of the worst cases of animal abuse” the RSPCA had seen.

Some of the abuse witnessed included:

• Piglets who had recently been separated from their mothers being thrown several feet through the air by their legs and ears, and kicked hard across the floor.

• Pigs who were reluctant to move being slapped, kicked and beaten into submission with the use of pig boards, iron bars and gate rods; and workers scraping a knife across the backs of pigs to force them to move.

• Clipping of teeth on piglets

• Sick, injured and depilated pigs were left to languish with no veterinary attention. Rectal and vaginal prolapses that were left to rot and drop off so that the animals could be sent to the slaughterhouse. Pigs who had difficulty walking with shoulder sores, injured or infected joints, and hind end paralysis.

• Lacerations that were large and deep enough to require suturing being lanced by workers so that pus came out. The wounds were subsequently left untreated. Pigs suffered tumours - some with ulceration. One apparently malnourished pig had a large abdominal hernia.

• Dead bodies that were dumped in an illegal shallow and uncovered pit to save the farm money.

• The killing of animals, for example by blunt force trauma - swinging pigs so hard that their heads slammed against concrete floors, and the battering of animals with gate rods. Workers were observed walking away as bleeding pigs struggled violently on the floor. Some were thrown into a ‘dead-bin’ whilst still alive. The bodies of live pigs in the bin convulsed on top of the dead.

• Lactating pigs being forced to endure the intensive confinement of metal farrowing crates scarcely larger than their bodies for weeks on end whilst crushed, emaciated and ill piglets lay dead or dying in the crates. Pigs unable even to stand were artificially inseminated.

(Source)

This is industry standard. Don’t let any bullshit artist tell you otherwise.

‘Well, this is just an isolated case’? ‘not all meat production is so cruel’?. Meat production is, by it’s very nature, cruel and how many of these stories need to be seen before things like this become anything other than ‘isolated’ incidents?

Open your fucking eyes and go vegan.