Learn to hate pet-food manufacturers

Footage by peta-tv from one of Iams contract testing laboratories.

Animals used in pet-food studies are in constant pain. They live on slatted flooring that makes their paws swollen and inflamed. The steel slats doesn't ware down their toenails, which become so long that they can hardly walk without slipping. They get their legs caught between the bars of the cage floors and suffer severe injuries. They don't get veterinary treatment and they don't get pain relief.

These animals are only fed canned food, and they are not allowed to chew on anything hard, so tartar builds up on their teeth and their gums become inflamed. This ultimately renders them unable to eat due to the pain. The animals used in studies concerning dental defence diets are given harder foods of course, the studies on them involve inducing painful stages of periodontal disease by cutting and suturing their gums.

The dogs and cats in the pet-food industry live their lives in barren steel and concrete cages, and they suffer severe mental stress from this confinement. Their vocal cords are surgically removed so their cries won't disturb the staff. Their injuries are left unattended, and those in need of euthanasia wait for weeks before they are put out of their misery. They live in hell, for months and years.

This is how we treat the cats and dog of the pet-food industry, we do it so that we can be sure that we are buying high quality menus for our favourite cats and dogs.

Spread your hate, send some to Iams. Read all about what the undercover PETA investigator found at Iams, and if you have ha pet be sure to check out the lists of brands that do not test on animals.

Learn to hate European live equine transports.

A European horse transport filmed by Viva and Animals' Angels. Journeys covering over 3 000 km and lasting for a week are common; this is the way equines are transported to slaughter in Europe. When you see the state of these horses at the end of the film, remember that they are only half way by then.

Every year about 140 000 horses and 7 000 donkeys are imported to the EU from Central and Eastern Europe. They are transported under horrific conditions, mainly to Italy, to be slaughtered on arrival. Once they are slaughtered the meat is labelled as Italian.

These animals are transported in overcrowded trucks unsuitable for the purpose. They are driven for thousands of miles on journeys lasting for many days in all weather conditions. They usually don’t get any food and not much water, since unsaturated meat is considered superior drivers are told not to water the horses. They don’t get the rest periods, since that would mean paying the drivers twice as much. They fall over, they trample each other, and they get caught in the metal sidebars. Many die on the way.

The swaying trucks make it difficult for the horses to remain upright and they often lose their balance and fall. Once down they are trampled and wounded by the others, if unable to rise again they will be trampled to death. This is not uncommon. These transports are extremely exhausting and some animals are already dead half way.

When they arrive at the slaughterhouse many are too exhausted and traumatised to walk out of the truck. Fallen horses are beaten and an electric prod is inserted into their rectum to induce them to stand, on broken limbs. Those who, in spite of this torment, are unable to get up are dragged off in chains.

The only action needed to end this suffering is to slaughter the animals where they are bred, and export the meat frozen. But that would be unacceptable to us, because we want our meat to be fresh (even if we can’t tell the difference) and we want it to be labelled Italian (even if it’s Polish). These animals are tormented for a week to satisfy our need for imaginary luxury.

The European authorities, including veterinarians, close their eyes to this. For nothing must stand in the way of making money, regardless of the cost. It would be cheaper to transport frozen meat; these transports exist because we are prepared to pay extra for meat from tortured animals.

Wallow in your hate. Read Viva's report on live export of equines from Poland.

Learn to hate pig breeding factory farms.

The conditions for breeding pigs in the UK filmed by Viva. Britain has some of the highest animal welfare standards in the world, pig breeding factory farms don’t get much better than this, so enjoy this film.

Mother pigs, or sows, live most of their lives in metal crates so small that they can’t move around. They never see daylight and they lie on faeces-covered concrete floors. They are in constant pain and they are under severe mental stress by these conditions.

Since the sows can’t move their muscles atrophy,they wouldn't be able to move much even if allowed. The only thing they can do is stare at the metal bars, or chew on the metal bars. This is their life for about six years, with the aid of extreme amounts of antibiotics to survive. Yes, they do go insane.

The sows are impregnated by insemination. During pregnancy they live in a gestation crate, this is a crate so small that the sow cannot turn or take a step. When it’s time for her to give birth she is moved to a farrowing crate, this is a crate that will hold her in place lying down so that the piglets kept in an adjacent crate can nurse. After one month the piglets are taken away, the sow is inseminated again and moved back to a gestation crate.


This is what your skin looks like if you lie down for a month,
it is called bedsores.

The vile conditions these animals live in turn them into injured, diseased and insane creatures. Here’s a HSUS Report on Gestation Crates for Pregnant Sows.

This is the way we produce piglets, we do it like this because it’s cheap. We do it like this because caring about the sows would be more expensive, and we don’t want to pay for their well being. We want to do something fun with our money instead.

Spread your hate. Visit Piggles and sign his petition. Save Babe is the Australian movement for those of you down under. Check out The Humane Society International for other locations.

Learn to hate foie gras.

Stop Gavage exposes the foie gras industry.

Fois gras is made by force-feeding geese and male ducks, the livers of female ducks have more veins so the girls are thrown in a macerator when they hatch. The birds are force-fed enormous amounts of food, with a pneumatic pump, to make them develop a painful decease which causes the liver to become ten times larger than normal size. This deceased liver is the luxury item we desire to eat.

To make the force-feeding effective the birds are held in place by a small wire cage, with their heads protruding through a hole in the front. This makes it is easy to pull their neck straight and push a metal feeding tube down to their stomach and releasing a kilo of food in just a couple of seconds. This extreme feeding means that the birds are in severe pain and have a permanent diarrhoea. It would of course be ineffective to let the birds out, so they actually live in these cages.

A kilo is about 20 percent of the birds' normal body weight. That means it would be equivalent to shoving 15 kilos of food down the throat of an average human in just 3 seconds. It causes enormous internal pressure, and pain, and some birds literally burst. Getting a metal feeding pipe thrusted down the throat two or three times a day causes severe throat problems. Some birds' esophagus is actually punctured, leaving the bird drowning in the blood that fills its' lungs.

Choking on their own vomit is also a common cause of premature death. And some become so weak that they are unable to fend off rats from eating them alive.

Use your hate. Read the manifesto of Stop Gavage and sign it here. Stop Gavage is a French organisation working to ban foie gras in Europe.

Learn to hate the egg industry.

PETA tv exposes the egg industry. Download the video here.

Birds raised for their eggs, called “laying hens” by the industry, live together in wire cages which measure about 45 by 50 cm. Each cage holds five to eleven hens, so in the best scenario there's five hens living in a space about the size of my file drawer. The birds have part of their sensitive beaks cut off so that they won’t peck each other as a result of the frustration created by the unnatural confinement.

The cages are stacked on top of each other, and the excrement from chickens in the higher cages constantly falls on those below. This of course is a breeding ground for many diseases and, for example, severe eye infections are common.

Periodically the hens are forced into a molt, this is done by depriving them of food for about two weeks, which induces an extra laying cycle. After two years in these conditions, the hens’ bodies are exhausted, and their egg production drops, the natural lifespan of a chicken is 15-20 years.

By the time they are sent to slaughter, almost a third of the hens are suffering from broken bones resulting from neglect and rough treatment. They will break many more during the transport, 90 percent of all chickens arriving to slaughter have broken bones. The bodies of laying hens are so damaged that their flesh can generally be used only for chicken soup or animal food.

Because the male chicks of egg-laying breeder hens are unable to lay eggs, and are not bred to produce excessive flesh, they are worthless to both the egg industry and the meat industry. So male chicks are suffocated, or are thrown into high-speed grinders called macerators, or simply just left to die on their own in a dumpster.

Hate it some more. View the film Silent Suffer made by MFA during their investigation of the egg industry.