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Animal Rights Stories
1. Mass Murder of Kangaroos
In 2021, Australia's New South Wales saw the murder of 417,000 kangaroos, prompted by the pressure of massive sheep ranch
owners, pushed by the desire of Nike, Adidas and others to use the leather, and of certain restaurants and groceries
in which the flesh of dead kangaroos was sold. A true kangaroo court would vote against these atrocities.
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2. Skinned Alive
12% of animals in slaughterhouses are not stunned into unconsciosness by a metal bolt which slams them on the skull.
These even more unlucky victims are skinned alive.
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3. Link Between Slaughterhouses And Crime
Commendations to the Toronto Star for a 2010 article
'Probing the link between slaughterhouses and violent crime'..
... but the title should read
'Probing the link between slaughterhouses and OTHER violent crime'..
https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2010/05/14/probing_the_link_between_slaughterhouses_and_violent_crime.html
In a previous century, butchers were not permitted on British juries. It was known that
killing animals desensitized people to violence against humans.
It has also been reported that the rate or spousal abuse is higher
among military men who have killed in combat. Some blamed
the Roche drug Lariam.
Sarah Barmak in the Toronto Star writes that
Socialist Upton Sinclair’s abattoir labourers got so desensitized to violence rates of murder, rape and brawls among them rose. She interviewed a University of Windsor criminology professor Amy Fitzgerald who reported that statistics show the link between slaughterhouses and brutal crime is empirical fact. Fitzgerald had analyzed data from the FBI's Uniform
Crime Report data base and other data between 1994 and 2002. Abbatoir owners blamed
the immigrant workers they exploit with low wages. It is the
work they are required to do which creates a situation in which
the laborers are absorbing the terror, agony, and anger of
of the animals they are murdering.
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4. Hormel Factory In Austin Minnesota is Paralyzing Workers
Ted Genoways writes that
'Every hour, more than 1,300 severed pork heads go sliding along the belt. Workers slice off the ears, clip the snouts, chisel the cheek meat.
They scoop out the eyes, carve out the tongue, and scrape the palate meat from the roofs of their mouths.' He writes that the brains are processed into a pink slurry and shipped to
a factory in Asis which adds it to a stirfry product.
Workers can be literally paralyzed from inhaling the blood mist in the room in which
pigs' heads are processed.
They stand 8 hours a day, get carpal tunnel from the repetitive motion and the cold,
ear problems from the deafening shrieks of animal screams all day long. They are often
kicked as terrorized animals fight for life.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/06/hormel-spam-pig-brains-disease/
5. Horse-Killing Santa Anita Racetrack
Some people quit their jobs
Some people quit their jobs in slaughterhouses because they noticed the effect on their mental health. Becoming desensitized is the only way to survive such a job. The actual death of the living being is only part of the brutality. So much torment, hormones, antibiotics, unsanitary practices and dangerous chemicals goes into the flesh sold in stores.
If everyone knew the facts behind their food, the meat industry would lose a lot of money, which is why they go to great lengths to ban cameras from their factory farms.
These heart-wrenching stories have one thing in common: deregulation caused by greed.
Thank you for getting the word out.
Disturbingly fascinating
I wish to play a (sort of) devil's advocate here:
Is it possible that the poor working conditions and low pay led to increases in violence, rather than the butchering of animals? Or perhaps, a bit of both?
We know that poverty is connected to increases in community crime. We also know that abuse can create violence, in turn. Such working conditions as low wage workers have often been faced with in factories could certainly be regarded as abuse.
Just offering some possible alternate partial or full explanations. Not that it isn't reasonable, when thinking about this, to imagine that someone who was involved in killing hundreds of kangaroos (or other slaughterhouse animals) a year, getting practiced and desensitized in using a weapon, might become more violent. Historically, when killing for food, a participant might only successfully hunt several wild beasts a year, if that. In many societies, even agrarian ones with domesticated animals, the number might even have been lower. And, in many cultures, there was a ritualistic prayer or other symbolic gesture related to understanding the sacrifice involved, that often prevented it from becoming mindless violence.
p/s no shock that Nike is involved.
thank you for reading it and commenting
thank you for reading it and commenting
it's obvious you put a lot of thought into it
Learned something new and valuable
And your writing invited me to explore new theories, new contours of human behavior, that I hadn't previously. To be honest, at it's most basic, I wasn't even aware that kangaroo were slaughtered for things such as leather to begin with, let alone that so many are slaughtered. I probably wouldn't have even imagined that there were 400,000 kangaroo in existence. So yes, you definitely gave me a lot to contemplate and explore here.
Dear John, Re'Is it
Dear John,
Re'Is it possible that the poor working conditions and low pay led to increases in violence' Sarah Barmak reports that none of the factories in which those
conditions prevail are correlated to such increases in violence unless the
assembly line murder of animals is involved.
Good follow up,
thank you.
This has me thinking about Chicago: One of the historic slaughterhouse districts and one of the most violent cities in the US. Hmmm.