Mustering

        

Mustering is when cattle are rounded up and chased by motorcycles, horses, and helicopters. Some stations even use shotguns to scare the cattle from bushes and trees, often fired from the helicopters. Needless to say, cattle can be inadvertently shot and killed. Even worse, some stations fly very low to the ground to scare the cattle with the propellers. Sometimes the pilots are even killed because of the impact of the ground and the propellers. For cattle that are not accustomed to physical contact, mustering is very stressful and when animals do not comply, they will face rough handling. Rough handling increases stress in animals and causes them to be even less compliant.  Cattle will be mustered up to 10 miles, pushing them over the verge of exhaustion, hyperthermia, and dehydration. Injured and sick cattle will go long periods of time untreated and sometimes die unnoticed.

Stop the Cruelty

       
         Cows in the meat and dairy industry are faced with devastating issues and it is up to us to solve them. Because cattle are just a huge profit more many industries, they are not given the legal protection in slaughterhouses that other animals are given. Their lives are disregarded and their suffering is dismissed simply because they cannot speak. They have parts of their bodies cut off without pain relief, and as mentioned in other posts, they are often still alive while being cut open.
There are no consequences to this neglect.

        Cows are seen as waste products when they cannot provide profit for the industry any longer. Many young calves are killed and thrown out if not taken to be raised for slaughter.
But if these issues are brought to the attention of the public, cows can get the protection they deserve.

Gentle Giants

    Their brains are just as abstract as ours...

   Cows are just as diverse as people. They are inquisitive animals who enjoy solving mental puzzles and get excited when they find a solution. "According to research, cows are generally very intelligent animals who can remember things for a long time. Animal behaviorists have found that cows interact in socially complex ways, developing friendships over time and sometimes holding grudges against other cows who treat them badly" (PETA.org). According to research, cows clearly understand cause and effect relationships- showing their advanced cognitive abilities. "cows can learn
 how to push a lever to operate a drinking fountain when they’re thirsty or to 
press a button with their heads to release grain when they’re hungry" (PETA.org).

Just like humans, they mourn
 the death and separation of 
their loved ones. They even 
shed tears when deeply emotionally disturbed.  Aforementioned, cows have
 a particularly strong bond to 
their babies. When they 
become separated, it is extremely common for the mother to cry 
out in order to find their babies who, beyond their knowledge, 
have already been sold to veal or beef farms.

      And most importantly, like all animals, cows value their lives and they 
don't want to die. 

Slaughterhouse Hygiene Problems

     Apart from the environmental pollutants, illegal preservatives, and growth-promoting agents found in most meat, the conditions of the slaughterhouse and meat handling are detrimentally unhygienic.  There is an excessive amount of contamination of meat that happens during transportation and during the routine slaughtering.

A main principle of maintaining well hygiene in the slaughterhouse is to avoid contact between the carcass and the floor especially after the cow has already been skinned. Many slaughterhouses use incorrect practices. Cows carcasses are allowed to touch the floor, carcasses are hung too close together- some that are skinned and some un-skinned, allowing the hair and contamination to touch the skinned carcasses. Cows are often slaughtered on the same slaughter slab causing large bacterial loads through cross contamination. This increases the risk of food poisoning microorganisms such as salmonella and E. coli.

   

Just another animal rights activist...

It's true...

      We have already learned about the trouble with factory farming from the movie Food Inc., the horrors in slaughterhouses from the movie Earthlings, the health detriments of eating animals in the movie Forks Over Knives, and how animal farming contributes to global warming in the movie Conspiracy.
 
So why do we keep reminding people about the devastation of animal agriculture? Well, it is because most consumers are still not actively aware about the environmental and health drawbacks and they lack of perspective on animal welfare. They completely miss the gap between the farm to the plate.

 
Now we must respect every individual's food choices, however those individuals must be aware of how these animals die to become our food and the truth behind the labels "Humanely raised", "Certified Humane", and "Animal Welfare Approved". Most people find comfort in seeing this on their packaged food next to a picture of a seemingly happy cow. Concern about where our food comes from has grown but there is still a hidden conversation about what happens behind the closed doors of the slaughterhouse.

  The truth behind these labels must be uncovered.


 Despite the "humane" label the farmers smack onto their products, most animals are treated the same way as those without that tag. Their lives are still miserable from birth to slaughter, being chained and caged. "Humane slaughter" is so poorly understood, and most importantly poorly practiced.

  

Clothes by Cows

Leather from Cows:

Truck driver cruelly handling cows in the Indian state of Tamil

    Leather can be made from many different animals, including cows.  Much of the leather industry is places in developing countries such as India or China, where laws against the cruel treatment of animals is non-existent. In an investigation conducted by PETA in India, "workers break cows’ tails and rub chili peppers and tobacco into their eyes in order to force them to get up and walk after they collapse from exhaustion on the way to the slaughterhouse" (peta.org).  The slaughter of cattle has been banned in some states of India such as Delhi, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh.

However, in the U.S., the millions of cows that are slaughtered have to endure the horrid conditions of the factory, such as extreme crowding, castration, branding, tail-docking, and dehorning without ANY form of anesthetic. It is also common that cows have their throats cuts, are skinned, and dismembered while still conscious. 

Leather is a highly important source of income for the meat industry and with every item made of leather that a person purchases,  it sentences an animal to a lifetime of torture. 

In Their Place

Cows cannot give consent:


 Imagine asking a mother if you could take her breast milk for billions of people to drink.

 Imagine someone raping her then steal her baby. Imagine asking a woman if you could manipulate her reproductive system into a baby-making, milk-producing machine.

Imagine asking a woman if you could use her body, her flesh, and her secretions for your taking.

What do you think the answer would be? NEVER.

      Would anyone want their reproductive system or their body to be used for someone else's pleasure and profit? Would anyone want their body to be taken from their control without their consent and basically used as a machine? There are NO morally acceptable reasons to use someone's body as a resource, much less someone who cannot give consent. Just because cows cannot defend themselves does not give anyone the right to manipulate and torture their bodies.





     To give a piece of my own opinion, it deeply saddens me as a woman to know that other females are being abused this way. Just because cows are not human, they are still persons who have the right to maintain control over their own bodies and reproductive systems. Equality must take place now. 

Got Pus?

 Cows milk is a product of cruelty:

    Farmed animals do not get to reproduce naturally. They regularly get artificially inseminated, meaning semen is injected into the dairy cow's vagina.
    Here is how it is done:

   When a cow is inseminated, she is restrained by what is commonly referred to as the "rape rack". However the use of the word "rape" carries a lot of emotional baggage, insemination is in every way sexual assault of a non-human. Her anus and vagina are forcibly penetrated and bull's semen is injected, (which is also obtained without consent from the bull... yes, they masturbate the bull).

   I could go a little more into depth as to why artificial insemination is in every way rape, however it may get too graphic and perhaps uncomfortable.

Why do they do this?

   Well, what you may not know is that they impregnate the cow over and over against her will in order for her to continue lactating. As for the babies that she births, they are used as meat if they are males or as dairy cows if they are females. Cows cannot even nurse their calves because they are separated from each other after one day! Instead, the calves are fed milk replacers while the milk that the mother produces is sold to humans. Just because they are animals does not mean the separation between mother and infant is not emotionally traumatizing.
   The cycle for the female baby begins again when the calf is inseminated at the ripe age of 1 year old... After about 4 to 5 years, when its milk production begins to slow down, it is sent to slaughter for meat.
 
Disease by Milking:

     A very common disease among dairy cows is called Mastitis. It is the excruciatingly painful inflammation of the milk-producing gland, or the mammary gland. Symptoms are not always visible, so the somatic cell count (SCC) in the milk has to be tested in order to tell if it is infected.

    Somatic cells include white blood cells —also known as “pus”—are produced as a means of combating infection and are shed from the lining of the udder.

"The SCC of healthy milk is below 100,000 cells per milliliter; however, the dairy industry is allowed to combine milk from all the cows in a herd in order to arrive at a “bulk tank” somatic cell count (BTSCC). Milk with a maximum BTSCC of 750,000 cells per milliliter can be sold. A BTSCC of 700,000 or more generally indicates that two-thirds of the cows in the herd are suffering from udder infections" (peta.org).

This means, in a glass of milk there can be up to 135 million pus cells.

  Got pus?

Off the Trailer

Once the cows are unloaded, they are forced through a chute.

Cow restrained for stunning.

Shortly after, they are stunned, which is a bolt which makes the animal unconscious. 

the bolt penetrates the brain with a high concussive impact. For cattle, the stunner is placed on the middle of the forehead on an "X" marked between the eyes and the base of the horns.

Electric stunning is also used on cattle. It is when an electric current is passed through the animal's brain, causing it to temporarily loose consciousness. Sometimes, it is passed through the animal's heart so it is killed rather than just stunned.

Cows and pigs are stunned using electric stunning tongs

After the cow is stunned, it is shackled by a hind leg and hoisted above the ground OR it is placed in a skinning cradle. It is sticked, which means stabbed to ensure death, and then skinned and slaughtered.

Stats of Slaughter

First off:

       

       Starting with statistics, 9.7 billion animals were killed for food in 2000;

           41,700,000 of which were cows and calves. 

Cows being transported to slaughter.

         This statistic does not mention the number of animals which die before even making it to slaughter, and the only reason the meat industry care is because they are losing money for every cow that dies before being used for meat or dairy. 
       In the summer, when its over 90ºF, cattle are transported 1,200 to 1,500 miles on a trailer. In the winter, since the trailer is perforated for the cows to breathe, the trailer is going 50 to 60 miles per hour and the windchill can get as low as minus 50ºF. The cows are crammed in these spaces and are defecating and urinating in the trailer. They have no other option but to step in it, and when they go down, they lie in it for up to 10 hours. Imagine if it were people in this situation, dying in their own feces. Imagine yourself, crammed into a trailer, overheated, dehydrated, or freezing.