Cows for Meat
Cows are gentle giants, large in size but sweet in nature. They are curious, clever animals who have been known to go to amazing lengths to escape from slaughterhouses. They are very social, preferring to spend their time together, and they form complex relationships, very much like dogs form packs. Like all animals, cows form strong maternal bonds with their children, and on dairy farms and cattle ranches, mother cows can be heard crying out for their calves for days after they are separated.
Cattle raised for beef are subjected to numerous painful procedures during their lives, such as repeated infliction of third degree burns to their skin (branding), having their testicles ripped out, and their horns cut off. To minimize costs, all of these practices are routinely conducted without any painkillers.
The image of cattle grazing contently on green pastures is another myth. The majority of cattles’ lives are spent on overcrowded feedlots, “standing ankle deep in their own waste eating a diet that makes them sick”, as Michael Pollen writes in the New York Times.
Typical cattle feed isn’t grass. It includes corn, which the animals cannot properly digest, and “fillers” such as sawdust or chicken manure. This unnatural diet can lead to an array of health problems, such as bloat, acidosis (bovine heart burn), diarrhea, ulcers, liver disease, and general weakening of the immune system.
Cattle are usually born in one state, fattened in another, and slaughtered in yet another. During transport to feedlots, auctions, and slaughterhouses, cattle endure extreme cruelty. Food is not given to the animals the day before or during transport since it will not be converted into profitable flesh. Many cattle die from pneumonia, dehydration, heat exhaustion, or freezing to the sides of transport vehicles during long trips, through all weather extremes.
Dr. Lester Friedlander, a former USDA veterinarian, put it this way: “In the summertime, when it’s 90, 95 degrees, they’re transporting cattle from 12 to 15 hundred miles away on a trailer, 40 to 45 head crammed in there, and some collapse from heat exhaustion. This past winter, we had minus-50-degree weather with the wind chill. Can you imagine if you were in the back of a trailer that’s open and the wind-chill factor is minus 50 degrees, and that trailer is going 50 to 60 miles an hour?”
When the surviving cattle arrive at the slaughterhouse, they are supposed to be stunned first so they are insensible to pain, according to federal law. Industry practice is to shoot the cow in the head with a “pistol” that thrusts a metal rod through the skull and into the brain. However, the law is rarely enforced and routinely violated since shooting a struggling animal is difficult and production lines move at an alarmingly fast speed. As a result some animals go through the slaughter process kicking and screaming as they are skinned and dismembered while fully conscious.
An April 10, 2001 Washington Post exposé revealed: “It takes 25 minutes to turn a live steer into steak at the modern slaughterhouse where Ramon Moreno works… 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 are wide and looking around.’ Still Moreno would cut. On bad days, he says, dozens 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,’ said Moreno, ‘piece by piece.’”
