Why don't I eat meat? for me, it took only a picture. As they say, a picture speaks a thousand words. Those words I hear are those of despair, destruction, depression, anger, fear. Imagine a field. A field that stretches for miles. You have just given birth or your mate has just given birth. Your child is only minutes old and he is having his first feeding. You look down and to your horror, he is gone. You hear his bellows and run towards him. You are tired and your body is sore. You can hardly move because there are so many cows around you and your hooves keep sinking in the muddy floor. You retreat back to your corner to mourn the loss of your baby. All of a sudden everyone around you begins to bellow and move about. You know that a ranch hand has come into your pen.
Your heart heavy, your body weak, you barely glance at the rancher walking towards you. You know what is happening, you've seen it before. In your rear you feel a pinch, you can't move. Then you feel a poke, harder this time, you still can't move. A moment later you feel extreme pain in you rear which gets you moving slowly. Little do you know that the extreme pain you felt was a cattle prod being jammed into your think hide.
You keep moving, trying to follow the others so as not to feel the sharp pain anymore. The one in front of you collapses. You can not get around her and you become frantic. A rancher approaches, he kicks you, pushes you, pulls you, trying to get you around the fallen one. It is no use, the others try and retreat behind you, they are locked in. The rancher grabs the fallen one and drags her across the concrete, her legs are broken and she screams in agony. You are forced to continue. You enter a large room and all around you are bodies of the other cows. You can see blood, taste blood, feel blood. Your heart begins to race, there are noises all around you that you do not understand. A rancher comes to you and forces you into a small cage, about the width of your body and the length from your chest to your rear. A man stand above you and a sharp, agonizing pain pierces your head. You bellow out to the others to help you but they are trapped and can not get out. The man does this to you a few times before you fall with exhaustion.
Another man comes and wraps something hard around your ankle. In a moment you are hanging upside down. Your hip immediatly burns but the pain in your head is much worse. You begin to kick with every last ounce of strength you have. Another man approaches and your throat is severed. You hang there and watch the blood pour down your nose. You can see it pooling on the ground beneath you.
You are moved to a spot in the corner of the room, hanging above water. As you are lowered you notice that there is intense heat rising upward. You continue to be lowered. Rendered complete immovable, you have no way of communicating your terror and the knowledge you now posess. You are lowered even farther into the steaming cauldrun until your nose touches the surface. Tears begin streaming down your face, you know you will be dead.
I can not go on with this story. I know that this is not normal practice everywhere, but it does exist. Even if you don't believe in this, imagine this life and you will see why I won't eat beef.
Facts
The cow in my "story" is a beef cow, destined to live on a filthy feedlot with hundreds of other cows just waiting for death. Again, I know not all of these situations are truth, there are some farms out there who still have these practices set in place.
~Cows are often left to themselves without much human interacttion. Some suffer from illness and/or disease without receiving veterinarian care.
~Some cows are frightened when the farmers come to get them. Some are even injured.
~A downer is an animal that is unable to stand or walk alone. It is often kicked, prodded, dragged to slaughter. There have been various forms to get a downed cow off of a truck. One such horrific story is of a truck driver tying a rope around the cow's necak and then tying the other end of the rope to something stationary and then just driving off. This has led to the cow's hind legs, hips, front legs, pelvis being broken. she laid in the sun for quite sometime before dragging her broken body towards shade. The Downed Animal Protection Act attempted to help keep these animals off of plates but, it is largely not enforced.
~During transportation, some cows are left in freezing or hot weather. They often either freeze to the sides of transport trucks or they suffer heat exhaustion. Some are injured and/or die. The Twenty-Eight Hour Law attempted to right this wrong by saying that any animal being transported by train must be fed and given water every 28 hours. This does not includes boat or vehicle transportation.
~Cows are then put into feedlots. These feedlots can either be earth based or concrete based. Either way they are dirty. Cows stand in water, mud, and feces. They are packed so tightly that there's barely any room to move around much.
~I will quote from a site that tells of such horrors that can occur in a slaughterhouse:
The cattle were supposed to be dead before they got to Moreno. But too often they weren't.
They blink. They make noises, he said softly. The head moves, the eyes were wide and looking around. Still Moreno would cut. On bad days, he said, doezens of animals reached his station clearly alive and conscious. Some would survive as far as the tail cutter, the belly ripper, and the hide puller. They die, Moreno said, piece by piece....
This was written in April 2001 in The Washington Post.
~The Humane Slaughter Act, The Pure Food and Drug Act are both laws attempting to correct the wrongs but they did nothing as you can see. All that The Pure Food and Drug Act did was ensure that the meat was inspected and then in the 90's it was reformed to test bacteria more effectively.
~Dairy cows are artificially impregnated every year to keep them in milk production all year round. Right after their calf has milked for the first time, it is taken away. If it is a male, he is used for veal. If it is a girl, she is used to replace older, worn out dairy cows.
~A cow can bellow to her calf for as long as she is alive. As long as he is near, she will call him. He will call back. This causes extreme distress among her and her calf.
~The cows are milked using mechanized machines which can sometimes be painful.
~Mastitis is a severe infection occuring in a cow's udder. It is extremely painful and most times goes untreated.
~When a cow goes into "retirement", she is sent to slaughter.
~A dairy cow can produce up to 100 ponds of milk a day.
~Veal is a baby male cow. Taken from his mother hours after birth and confined in a crate.
~Veal is kept in a crate sometimes measuring two feet wide. They are sometimes chained around the neck. All of this is so their meat stays tender. Veal is a very tender meat.
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