Crushing me

There are days when it all gets so overwhelming that I'm not sure I can feel such despair and still go on. Knowing that abuses like these happen to innocents multiplied literally billions of times every hour of every day is appalling.

I know how seductive it can be to avoid looking at these videos. To avoid "knowing". How much we want to keep the thought that we fund this away and disconnected from us. Frankly, there is a part of me that would rather not live sometimes than feel the helplessness and deep sadness that I feel when I see images like this.  I can't fathom the type of person who can do this and what they have had to experience to be so numbed and disconnected from the suffering and pain they are creating in another living thing.

Besides living in as compassionate way possible, supporting the organizations that expose these crimes and by sharing this information, I feel that I have to do more than just sit here, remotely, crying from what I see. I want to shout it from the roof tops. I want to take these practices - industry standards that encourage violence and pain - and bring them into the light and show them to everyone. 

Why?

Because I have trust and faith that my friends, family and fellow humans really do want to do what is right. That they would never, if they just knew, keep perpetuating this system just for some ice cream or a burger or any other food item. That they want to also be healthier. That they want to see the world be better off too.  And that they are empowered to do so every single day just by choosing a different food to eat.  Just by being vegan.

So, I don't stop looking. I try to wipe my tears and look again.  I keep breathing. I keep shouting and sharing. Some days I can guide and smile, speaking with joy. Some days I am so filled with rage that I shake and speak out harshly. Some days I sit in my car and bawl until I'm spent. I know I may not always be popular but I have to try. 

If I don't speak out I may not be to speak at all.



A new Mercy For Animals undercover investigation provides a horrifying look into E6 Cattle Co. in Hart, Texas.


E6 Cattle rears calves for use on dairy farms, confining approximately 10,000 calves and subjecting them to lives of prolonged neglect and misery. For over two weeks in March of 2011, an MFA undercover investigator documented the operation's deplorable conditions and brutal mistreatment of animals.

Due to an outbreak of Foot and Mouth disease, South Korea began "culling" pigs in late December. To date, it is reported that as many as 3 million pigs have been buried alive. The cost of the cull is estimated around 230m pounds, whereas a mass vaccination program would've cost only 63m pounds, been far more humane, compassionate, and conscious of our fellow beings.

I Have No Words

All I can do is pass this along to you and beg you to please consider not eating meat. The emotions I feel are such despair at thinking that these abuses happen and that we blithely ignore or disregard these facts.

A new Mercy For Animals undercover investigation reveals unconscionable cruelty to mother pigs and their young piglets at a Hatfield Quality Meat supplier - "Country View Family Farms," in Fannettsburg, Pennsylvania. The hidden camera video provides consumers with a jarring glimpse into the nightmarish world of factory pork production.

MFA's investigation uncovered:

* Workers grabbing piglets by their fragile ears or legs and throwing them across the room and slamming them into transport carts.

* Workers tattooing sows by repeatedly driving sharp metal spikes into their flesh.

* Sows with untreated rectal prolapses and deep, infected sores and scrapes from constant rubbing against the bars of their stalls.

* Workers cutting off piglets' tails with dull pliers and castrating them by ripping out their testes with their bare hands - all without anesthesia.

* Thousands of pregnant pigs confined in two-feet wide metal stalls so small that they could only take one step forward or backward and could not turn around or lie down comfortably.

* Injured, sick and runt piglets being tossed into overcrowded gassing kill carts, slowly suffocating from CO2.

* Workers firing steel rods into sows' heads, sometimes as many as four separate times, before the sows fell and died.

Numerous veterinarians and animal welfare experts have harshly condemned the conditions documented at this "family farm" - which confines nearly 3,000 breeding sows. Dr. Nedim C. Buyukmihci, Emeritus Professor of Veterinary Medicine at the University of California, Davis, asserts, "I can state unequivocally that the pigs in this facility suffered immensely...These people showed complete disregard for the welfare or well-being on the pigs."

The findings of MFA's newest investigation are consistent with those documented at pig farms across the country in recent years - illustrating that animal neglect and abuse are the pork industry norm, not the exception.

Not only are the abuses documented at this facility standard within the industry, they are legal in the state of Pennsylvania. Like most states, Pennsylvania's anti-cruelty statute exempts farmed animals from legal protection. Pigs, like all farmed animals, also lack federal protection during their lives confined on factory farms.

As consumers we can choose compassion over cruelty at every meal. Adopting a compassionate vegan diet is the most powerful action we can take to put an end to needless animal suffering and the conditions documented during this investigation.

I promise to personally help anyone and everyone who will make this switch. It is very simple and easy - you just need an open heart and mind.