All day every day this naturally clean girl lay in her own excrement on the hard concrete floor. Her muscles ached and drew tight, and she developed sores from rubbing against the steel bars. In the pain and intense stress that this confinement caused her, she bit the bars of the steel cage that surrounded her, and her mouth filled with white foam that spat from her mouth when she cried out her distress.
Sandra Kyle is the owner of End Animal Slaughter, website, which she started in 2018
with the goal of closing all slaughterhouses in the Western World by 2025.
If we regarded (animals) as sentient beings with rights to life and to agency over their life, it would help to ensure that they are treated with respect.
We think that animals bred for their meat or milk or eggs have a purpose. But it is not so – all animals are sentient and feel negative emotions like pain and fear, as well as positive ones like joy. Any farmer will tell you that.
Dr Lynley Tulloch is an animal advocate, and Lecturer in Education
It will soon be five years that I have been standing outside slaughterhouses on a weekly basis. I do my vigils as part of the Worldwide Save movement.
These peaceful vigils to ‘bear witness’ to the lives of the animals, take place outside slaughterhouses. The aim is to say goodbye, and give comfort to the animals who are being taken to their brutal deaths. When we see the animals in the trucks, we tell them we’re sorry. We apologise on behalf of the human race for the atrocities we commit against the animal kingdom. We tell them we love them.
We take photographs and videos, and share these on social media, to help meat eaters make the connection that the meat they consume was once a living, breathing, feeling animal. We stand on the roadside, so passing motorists can read our signs. When we can we ask the drivers if they could stop for a moment while we say goodbye to the animals. From time to time a truck driver will stop, but in the majority of cases they do not.
The two slaughterhouses I do my vigils at in Whanganui, New Zealand, are Land Meats, that kills cattle and pigs, and AFFCO Imlay, that kills sheep and bobby calves. I am usually at the cow and pig slaughterhouse, and have seen countless trucks of cows arriving over the years. The animals are visibly distressed. Many are covered with mud, and also their own excrement. The smell is often overpowering. I have seen many foam at the mouth and others rolling their eyes so you can see the whites. Some desperately try to get out of the truck. Just last week when I was joined with friends from another centre, we saw one cow ramming his head against a wall, and another kicking his back legs against the locked door.
If we make eye contact with the animals, we often think about them for hours and even days afterwards, after they have met their gruesome end.
While vigils can be emotionally exhausting we feel it’s important that we keep this happening. We refuse to turn a blind eye to the terrible animal holocaust that goes on every single day, when it is completely unnecessary.
When you look into the eyes of an animal you can feel their souls. Pigs especially have human-looking eyes. Pigs are said to be as intelligent as three-year-old human children. I have sometimes heard them screaming at the slaughterhouse, a heartbreaking, bloodcurdling sound that is impossible to forget.
Over the years I have mainly seen cows arriving, and because I know they like music, I sing to them, or play music for them. I seek to give them a little gentleness and comfort, possibly the only expression of love they have had in their lives. It is distressing for me to see how the drivers and ground staff handle them, using an electric prod. From a distance, I have witnessed how they beat them to get them to move up the chute to the stunbox.
I and my friends in the Save Movement here in New Zealand, and all over the world, are proud to take this stand for the animals. The animals need us. We are their voice. They depend on us to act on their behalf.
If you think that this kind of deeply compassionate action and outreach is for you, wherever you may be in the world, then you can learn more about it from thesavemovement.org
Follow the Save Movement on FB: Animal Save Movement
Follow the SAVE Movement on Instagram: @thesavemovement
Follow the SAVE Movement on Twitter: @animalsavemvmt
All photos taken at a vigil at Land Meats slaughterhouse, Whanganui, New Zealand, 24 May 2020.
– Sandra Kyle
Sandra started endanimalslaughter.org in 2018 with the aim of having all slaughterhouses in the western world closed by 2025.
An anonymous UK mother from Blackpool who served her son KFC with feathers in it has complained to the KFC branch concerned. She also posted pictures on Facebook with the offending feathers (feature photo).
This customer was so appalled that she wrote ‘I won’t ever eat KFC again’.
I don’t get it. Chicken is a bird. Last time I looked they came complete with feathers.
A healthy ‘Cobb’ chicken, the same breed commonly used as chickens reared for meat on factory farms.
If you think your chicken should have the feathers removed before you consume them then perhaps consider what you are eating. Which, to be fair, she has – but it took the presence of the bird’s feathers to engender such outright disgust.
I’m offended as well. I’m offended for the chicken. What, seriously, do you think the chicken felt when his life was brutally ended in a medieval assembly line torture chamber?
In the UK chickens bred for their meat are killed though electrical systems or gas systems. Electrical systems involve hanging the chickens upside down on metal shackles and stunning them using electrified water. They then have their throats slit with an automated knife.
Due to individual variation in resistance to the stunning process, some birds are inevitably only electro-immobilized (paralyzed but fully conscious). They are then bled out and plunged into a tub of scalding water to remove their feathers. I guess the poor chicken in the KFC box of the UK woman just didn’t get all his feathers removed.
Chickens in New Zealand are also killed by this system of electrical stunning and throat slitting. It is notoriously inhumane, considering that many birds are not unconscious during the process and get their necks cut while paralyzed. They also may break their legs while being shackled.
If you are happy to gamble on which bird you are eating (the stunned or electro – immobilized) then hands – up I am offended. I’d write a letter, for all the good it would do me, to complain to the factories that raise (and I use that term very loosely) these birds to be killed and send them to slaughter.
And that is the problem isn’t it? Consumers get heard, they get listened to and apologies and refunds.
Thrown onto the barn floor at a few days old, the little chicks at first have some room to run around. However, as they are bred to grow rapidly to reach slaughter week at just 6 weeks old they become so cramped that they can barely move.
Animal activists, on the other hand, have to actually twist themselves inside out to get footage of animal suffering, document it, analyse it to see if it breaches welfare standards – before they even complain. And they have to use their own money. And then more often than not, it does not get taken seriously. They definitely don’t get a refund.
Walk into any ‘broiler’ factory farm and you will find a percentage of dead birds. The overburdening of the birds’ underdeveloped cardiopulmonary systems often causes congestive heart failure before they reach slaughter weight.
Take for example, Direct Animal Action who investigated a chicken factory farm owned by Tegal in 2018. This farm was a KFC supplier. The investigators found countless lame chickens unable to reach water, slowly dying. Ammonia in the shed from chicken waste was so strong the activists had to wear masks. The crowded sheds housed dead and live birds together.
The Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) did not take action against this farm. There is really not a lot I can say about that, because it is so devastating that the people responsible for ensuring the animal welfare code is adhered to choose to look the other way. But I guess that is what you get when they have a vested interest in the ongoing continuation of animal agriculture.
The Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) did not take action against this farm. There is really not a lot I can say about that, because it is so devastating that the people responsible for ensuring the animal welfare code is adhered to choose to look the other way. But I guess that is what you get when they have a vested interest in the ongoing continuation of animal agriculture.
Basically, the suffering of chickens is a necessary evil if you want your KFC. You simply cannot raise that many animals, that quickly without factory farming them.
So yes, I am offended. Every chicken in that shed is quite literally a dead chicken walking (if they are not lame). They all have a target on their feathered backs, and live a life of misery while they wait. Well, when I say a life, I mean six weeks. These birds are bred to reach slaughter weight fast – too fast for their legs which collapse under them.
A chicken unable to right him or herself will die from dehydration, because they are physically unable to even reach the water nozzles in their sheds.
A chicken is a sentient being – meaning they have feelings including fear, joy, and pain. We may associate such emotions with humans, but our emotional repertoire is not unique to us. We have more in common with animals than we don’t. In fact, the emotional make-up of animals is very similar to that of humans.
I can’t begin to think what they are going through during their time incarcerated in a factory and the slaughter process. It’s a horror film.
So back to the UK scenario of the fried feathers. Reading further in the article it says: ‘It doesn’t meet the Colonel’s usual high standards, and it’s certainly not the reunion we want people to have with their favourite fried chicken after some time apart!’
Say, what? A reunion with fried chicken after some time apart because of lockdown? Seriously?
KFC is using this Covid-19 situation to continue their marketing line that the Colonel (who is now dead along with the chickens in the boxes) has high standards. High standards for who? Not for the chicken who hobbles around, lame from the excess weight his legs cannot support the plump juicy breasts of your favourite meal.
I remain incredulous that people can consider meat of chicken as something they have grown emotionally attached to. In reality, they are attached to the fried batter, the oils and herbs and spices. Give them a plain chicken breast and they would not be so excited.
There is nothing wrong with the enjoyment of herbs, spices, oils and so forth. This can be wrapped around a fake meat if you like. Just please leave the chickens, and their feathers out of it.
As well as lameness and heart failure, other common causes of death pre-slaughter are heat prostration, cancer—in an animal less than seven weeks old—and infectious diseases. Ammonia blindness and ammonia conjunctivitis are eye conditions the birds can suffer from.
Not your feathers, not your body, not your food.
So to the ‘angry Mum’ in this article – get angry about the suffering of the chicken and the destruction of our planet caused by fast food outlets like KFC. Don’t be angry at the feathers. They are poignant and sad reminder that someone once lived.
They belonged to somebody. Just not you.
Dr Lynley Tulloch is an animal advocate, and a Lecturer in Education
A couple of days ago as I was scrolling through my Facebook feed somewhat absentmindedly, one story managed to capture my attention. It was a beautiful story with a substantial ‘feel-good’ element to it. A story of two sheep.
Somewhere in the United States of America there is a sheep farm. There is nothing particularly interesting about this farm. It is owned by a couple I know nothing about, and their children participate in the American 4-H programme, in which farming children are encouraged to raise ‘their own’ animals, invest in them emotionally, then once ready – sell them off to slaughter. I’ll get to that bit a little later.
In this said farm, there live two sheep. Of course, there were more sheep, but only these two are of interest to this story. To refrain from referring to them as ‘Sheep One’ and ‘Sheep Two’ I shall hereby name them Agnetha and Anni-Frid.
Like all sheep in farms around the world, Agnetha and Anni-Frid were bred to serve a purpose. This purpose is monetary. Their female reproductive systems are exploited for man’s financial benefit. Like their sisters, Agnetha and Anni-Frid are routinely forcefully impregnated, so that a new generation of lambs can then be ‘harvested’ to feed people who enjoy feasting on decomposing young flesh.
Agnetha and Anni-Frid were pregnant together. In silence they carried their babies to full term. I don’t know about you the reader, but as a mother who experienced this miraculous phenomenon first hand, I know the magical feeling of having a baby inside your uterus. Sensing it grow, the first tingling bubbles, the movements and the kicks, the hormonal storm, the growing heaviness of the breasts as their feeding role nears. As fellow mammals, I have no reason to doubt that Agnetha and Anni-Frid experienced such emotions as well, to some degree.
It was Agnetha who felt the pain of child birth first. It was early, her lamb was not yet due. In sadness she gave birth to her son. He was dead. In the morning, the farmer took away the lifeless little body.
I have another secret to share with you. I have experienced a silent birth. My son Gilead was born and died at twenty-week gestation. I know the emotional blow this tragic event causes. The deep sense of loss, the sorrow, the longing. One might think only human mothers can be riddled with the severe pain of a baby’s loss, but that is a very selfish and cynical human-centric view. All mammalian mothers are similar. Sheep are no different.
I have another secret to share with you. I have experienced a silent birth. My son Gilead was born and died at twenty-week gestation. I know the emotional blow this tragic event causes. The deep sense of loss, the sorrow, the longing. One might think only human mothers can be riddled with the severe pain of a baby’s loss, but that is a very selfish and cynical human-centric view. All mammalian mothers are similar. Sheep are no different.
Agnetha was devastated. Her grief was palpable. She didn’t stop crying. For days she kept calling for her baby, but he never came back.
A couple of weeks later, it was Anni-Frid’s turn to give birth. In pain she delivered two healthy lambs. Twins. Indeed, a happy occasion for the farmer; the birth went smoothly, without any losses to bear. Mazel Tov.
It was a few days later that an astounding discovery was made. On the sun-kissed field there stood Agnetha and Anni-Frid. But low and behold – BOTH were gently licking and tending to a precious little lamb! It was not down to a miracle, but rather a very poignant display of deep care and selfless love. Moved by the immense grief of her distraught friend, Anni-Frid has gifted one of her new-born lambs to Agnetha!
Agnetha (l) with the newborn lamb given to her by Anni-Frid (r) after her own was still-born. They are Suffolk sheep, one of the most popular of English breeds.
From the update I have read, the little lamb and Agnetha have deeply bonded. She mothers him gently, and he in turn follows here everywhere. She is his mother, and he is her baby. Forever.
Hold on a minute. Forever?
Well, no. In an ideal world the ending should have been “and they lived happily ever after…” but this is the real world, and this is a sheep farm, and there are no happy endings to these sheep.
One day soon-ish, as the lambs grow and fatten enough, they will be taken away from Anni-Frid and Agnetha. Imagine the horror and the desperation Agnetha will experience all over again. How many nights will she call him? I don’t know. A broken heart of a sheep must feel the same as that of a human. It was her miracle child. The epitome of the most beautiful friendship. But there is no mercy in the industry of flesh harvesting. How many more lambs will Agnetha be forced to deliver before her time is up and she and Anni-Frid are loaded on the truck that takes them to their horrific death? I couldn’t tell you. But the ending is a given. They will not escape it.
Now, I could have finished the story here, and allow you the reader to make the connections yourself, to draw the conclusion about the cruelty of flesh eating. To realise the insanity in sentencing such incredible beings to death simply because that’s what we’re used to. But there is another point I still wish to make.
As mentioned, the particular farm where Agnetha and Anni-Frid’s tale took place, promotes the 4-H programme. This programme, like the AAF and probably others, encourages children to raise animal friends all the way to slaughter. Children are assigned a young animal, be it a calf, a lamb, a kid etc., and they raise it with the devotion only a child can show when they want to prove themselves to adults. As can be expected, with time a bond is formed between the two children, the human and the non-human. The animal child learns to trust their human friend, and the human child cannot help but deeply connect with ‘their’ animal. But the time comes when the animal is ready to be sold for slaughter and it is the child’s duty to prove maturity as they are forced to say goodbye to their animal friend and leave them behind. Social media is full of soul-destroying images of distraught children crying, while their disconnected parents are full of praise for their children who managed to handle the devastating situation so well.
When I first came across this travesty, I couldn’t believe it at first, but I’ve been on social media for long enough to have come across this insanity time and time again. What does it really teach children, this practice of allowing them to connect with animals, knowing that this bond is doomed, and their trusting friend is scheduled to die sooner or later? What does it tell them about values such as compassion? Empathy? Loyalty? Trust?
What it does is desensitise these children to violence in the most abhorrent way possible. It makes them betray their friends whom they love in such an unforgivable manner, while the adults around them cheer on. These children’s natural sense of compassion is being actively lobotomised out of them, replaced with cold apathy and detachment from the cruelty they are directly responsible for. It is hard to comprehend how it’s not legally considered as parental child abuse.
And so, while Agnetha and Anni-Frid have shown us the kindest, deepest form of selfless love between two beings, what farming clearly shows us is that it’s time for it to end.
Maya Cohen-Ronen is an animal rights activist, and author of two dystopian suspense novels.
