Yes, you are right about the horrible way pigs are treated at factory farms. Wasn't there a discussion of that before at Feelies? About how pigs are intelligent and excellent problem solvers? I know they are more intelligent than dogs, and very sensitive and affectionate anyway. I think it is extremely strange how we decide which animals are all right to eat and which ones to make pets out of.
Here is some more information on hog farming:
Factory Farming
97%
of the 10 billion animals tortured and killed each year are farm animals
Factory farming is an industrial process in which animals and the products they generate are mass produced. The animals are seen not as individual, sentient beings with unique physical and psychological needs but as a means to an end- eggs, milk, meat, leather, and so on. Because factory farming is a business, its goal is to maximize production and, consequently, profit. And since the animals are seen as mere commodities in this quest, they are bred, fed, confined, and drugged to lay more eggs, birth more offspring, and die with more meat on their bones.
Farmers cut costs by feeding animals the remains of other animals, keeping them in extremely small and soiled enclosures, and refusing to provide bedding. Because animals live in such a manner and are denied normal social interactions, they experience boredom and stress so great that it leads to unnatural aggression. To curb this aggression, conceal the disease that results from such horrendous living conditions, and stimulate aberrant growth, farmers routinely administer drugs to animals, which in turn reach meat-eating consumers. The consequences of this agribusiness are institutionalized animal cruelty, environmental destruction and resource depletion, and health dangers.
PIGS
Sows
Female pigs are kept pregnant continually. After being impregnated, sows are placed in 18 to 24 inch wide pens or metal gestation crates. There is barely enough room for them to stand up and lie down. They cannot walk or turn around. Because straw is considered too expensive, they are not given bedding but instead forced to lie on hard floors which, in part, cause crippling leg disorders. Sometimes they are tied to the floor by a chain or strap. The pigs become so bored and stressed that they bite the bars of their cages frantically or rub their snouts back and forth across the front of their crate incessantly.
After giving birth, sows are only permitted to nurse their newborns for two to three weeks, as opposed to the 13 to 17 weeks they would naturally spend. The piglets are then taken away to be fattened up. By that time, approximately 15% of the newborns will have died. The sow is then reimpregnated, sometimes by being strapped to a "rape" table. When she can no longer breed at such a rapid pace, she is killed.
Piglets
Each piglet's tail is cut off without anesthesia so that other piglets will not bite it; tail biting is an unnatural behavior that results directly from the stress of the factory farm. For identification purposes, notches are removed from the piglets' ears. They are then placed in overcrowded pens with floors made of wire mesh, metal, fiberglass, or concrete. They are not given any straw or other bedding. The stress and disorder of such intense confinement drives some pigs to cannibalism. When they reach six months of age, they are slaughtered for their meat.
Diseases Common to Confined Pigs
Pneumonia
Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome
Miscellaneous respiratory diseases
Swine arthritis
Salmonellosis
Epidemic transmissible gastroenteritis
Bratislava
Parvovirus
Dysentry
Cholera
Trichinosis
The Slaughterhouse
Pigs are hung upside down by their back legs to be slaughtered. Because swine workers, like cattle workers, are in a rush to stay on schedule and kill a large number of animals in a short period of time, the pigs are often treated inhumanely. To accustom themselves to life at the slaughterhouse, workers must desensitize themselves to the animals' suffering and conceive of them as mere objects; this approach clearly leads to inhumane treatment. Moreover, the turnover rate at slaughterhouses is so high that there are a lot of new, inexperienced technicians who cannot properly sedate animals. Although pigs are supposed to be rendered unconscious before being killed, workers frequently do not successfully "stun" them. As a result, conscious, struggling pigs are hung upside down. If a worker does not successfully knife them in the neck, they are dunked in the scalding tank and boiled alive.
lcanimal.org |
