Series 2558: Constituent Correspondence, 2000-2003
36652
From: "J. Zeh, J. Nugent.." <anilib778@yahoo.com>
To: The Honorable Legislator
Created: 11/23/2000 2:41 PM
Subject: THE BUTTER BALL .
Message:
THE BUTTER BALL
Photo Attachment: TURKEYS IN TROUBLE !
Dear Honorable Legislator ,
This year for holiday dinners, more than 40 million turkeys will have
their beaks and claws cut off without anesthesia. Factory farmers cram
tens of thousands of turkeys into single warehouses, where disease,
smothering, and heart attacks are common. At the slaughterhouse, turkeys
have their throats slit while they are still conscious. Those who miss
the automated knife go into the scalding tank fully conscious, and are
boiled alive. (See Reference # 1 )
If you're planning to watch WITNESS this week, don't do it with your
mouth full. Chickens Are People Too ! John Kastner's darkly comic and
disturbing tale of life - and death -in the chicken coop, is not for the
squeamish.
Combining graphic slaughterhouse footage with weirdly compelling
interviews, testimonials from William (Captain Kirk) Shatner, the
late Sir John Gielgud and "the Wayne Gretzky of chicken catchers,"
the film documents the war between the food industry and animal
activists determined to get a chicken out of every pot and back in
the barnyard.
Chief among chicken-rights advocates is Karen Davis, who likens
henhouses to concentration camps, with the chicken farmer cast in the
role of the ruthless Nazi commandant. (see Reference # 2 )
"Chicken catchers are like the Gestapo, in the sense that they are
coming into a place of tranquillity, often during the night," says
Davis, who left her husband and life as a college professor to run a
chicken sanctuary in Virginia.
"It would be the same as if somebody came into your house, or my
house, and suddenly grabbed us by our heels, took us out of our beds,
hung us upside down and just tossed us in a crate."
Davis lets her "companion chickens" roam free in the kitchen and
feeds them their own eggs. "I consider it a kind of Marxist-style
opportunity to allow them to benefit from the product of their own
labour." As founder of United Poultry Concerns, she lobbies zealously
for "compassionate and respectful treatment of domestic fowl."
( "Chickens Are People Too" airs Tuesday on Witness , CBMT-6 at 9
p.m.). (Source: The Gazette (Montreal) November 12, 2000 Sunday
HEADLINE: Death in the chicken coop: Finish dinner before tuning in
darkly comic exploration of poultry politics ) (Reference # 2 )
The number of sentient animals being subjected to intolerable living
conditions and untimely deaths is on the rise, largely because consumers
are replacing red meat with poultry, and birds provide less flesh per
carcass than mammals. Of the nine billion farm animals born in the U.S.
annually, the vast majority are birds. American consumers have doubled
their consumption of chickens and turkeys over the past two decades,
and this pattern is expected to continue, elevating the number of farm
animals raised in the U.S. to unprecedented levels. Chickens and turkeys
raised for meat suffer from severe genetic manipulations, overcrowding,
and filthy living conditions. Hens kept for egg production are packed in
cages so tightly that they cannot even stretch their wings.
(Reference # 3).
Gail Eisnitz, the author of "Slaughterhouse" has excellent
description of how turkeys become "BUTTER BALL " .
She explained :
"Today, thanks to automation in the industry, individual poultry
plants... can kill and process as many as 340,000 birds per day.
Since it's easier to bleed a bird that isn't flapping and
struggling, most live birds have their heads dragged through an
electrically charged water bath to paralyze - not stun - them.
Other industrialized nations require that chickens be rendered
unconscious or killed prior to bleeding and scalding so they won't
have to go through the process conscious. Here in the United States,
however, poultry plants... keep the stunning current down to about
one-tenth of that needed to render a chicken unconscious.
Then a conveyor then carries the shocked and paralyzed birds to
a high-speed circular blade meant to slit their throats but which
occasionally misses birds as they rush past at the rate of
thousands per hour.
After their heads and feet are removed and they've been washed (and
feathered), the chickens are re-hung on an evisceration line. There,
machines automatically cut them open and pull their guts out.
In the scald tank, fecal contamination on skin and feathers gets
inhaled by live birds, and hot water opens bird's pores allowing
pathogens to seep in. The pounding action of the de-feathering
machines creates an aerosol of feces-contaminated water
which is then beaten into the birds. Contamination also occurs
when the birds have their intestines removed by automatic
eviscerating machines. These high-speed machines
commonly rip open intestines, spilling feces into the bird's
body cavities. Rinsing a chicken 40 times does not remove
all of the bacteria.
Water in chill tanks has been aptly named 'fecal soup' for all the
filth and bacteria floating around. By immersing clean, healthy
birds in the same tank with dirty ones, you're practically
assuring cross-contamination. Chickens that bathe together
get contaminated together."
Gail finishes the chapter by quoting Gerald Kuester of USDA :
"There are about 50 points during processing where
cross-contamination can occur. At the end of the line, the
birds are no cleaner than if they had been dipped in a toilet.
(References # 4 )
Dear Legislator , the Turkey business wants everyone to
eat sentient turkeys. However, they will never tell you how the
huge birds become Butter Balls . They will never tell you how much
pain turkeys suffer and they will never tell you the blood accumulated
on the floor of slaughterhouse is more than inches thick !
We have no objections to any commercial business. However,
if the "business" is profiting from killing other sentient animals, it
is totally un-justified , barbaric , selfish , no-class, out-dated and
most of all : CRUELTY !
Please, let's don't turn your eyes away. Just look at the
live turkeys hanging upside down by their feet on metal shackles,
suffering pain and terror beyond belief as they carried on a conveyor
belt to the knife .... or boiled alive in the scalding tanks !
It is the time for the nation and the world to introduce a
PEACEFUL, NO-KILL, ENJOYABLE Thanksgiving Day with
"COMPASSIONATE PLANT BASED TURKEYS"
instead of a Thanks Giving Day full of bloody, screaming , crying ,
massive Slaughtering Day ! The State Congress indeed has the
responsibility to introduce the compassion and peace to the people
in the State.
At the end, we would like to invite you to review some of the
documentary photos of turkeys and chickens : Please click the following
to view the photos of turkeys :
http://www.peta.org/feat/nc/phot.html
http://www.meatstinks.com/h8.jpg
As always, we are so very grateful to you for your compassion,
kindness and help.
Very Truly Yours,
G. Zeh.
M. Schreiber,
S. Abel,
A. Wallace,
J. Nugent
C. Crewell
====================================
References:
1: http://www.peta-online.org/feat/turk/index.html
2: United Poultry Concerns, Inc.
Phone: (757) 678-7875
Fax: (757) 678-5070
Email: info@upc-online.org
United Poultry Concerns - http://www.upc-online.org
3: http://www.poultry.org/
http://www.farmusa.org
http://www.hfa.org
http://www.meatstinks.com
http://www.farmsanctuary.org
4: "Slaughterhouse" by Gail Eisnitz , 1998
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Photo Attachment : courtesy from "Farm Sanctuary" newsletter.
"TURKEYS IN TROUBLE ".
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