Critter News

MARCH 7, 2012

Stanwood is right near where we live in Seattle and, sadly, home to Pigs Peace Animal Sanctuary which rescues all kinds of animals. horses destined to die and be butchered in one of Canada’s equine slaughterhouses for human consumption abroad.” pigs peace animal sancturay State of Washington horses horse slaughter agriculture meatpackingI can only imagine how they feel. From the Sky Valley Chronicle. A new report in the Staug News of St.

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Horse Slaughter Washington Horses Slaughter 116

Animal Person

MAY 24, 2009

I received an e-mail from the well-meaning Wendy at Compassion in World Farming (which I find an odd combination of words) regarding Egypt's pig cull and asking me to send my protest to the Egyptian Government. The pigs are being buried alive, dumped in mass graves and "covered in what appears to be quicklime where, they endure a slow and agonising death." But though the pigs weren't originally destined for a mass grave, weren't they destined for slaughter nonetheless?

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Egypt Culling Pigs CIWF 100

Creature Talk

APRIL 30, 2009

The pig you see here being dangled by the leg is still just a baby, and by now he is already dead and thrown away for absolutely no reason, as are the rest of the 300,000 pigs in Egypt. According to the New York Times, “Egypt ordered the pig slaughter even though there hasn’t been a single case of swine flu there and no evidence that pigs have spread the disease.&# Source: NY Times online.

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Egypt Pigs Swine Flu Killing 52

Animal Ethics

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

The film Partitions (running time: 14 min) by Audrey Kali gives an intimate glimpse of the ethical struggles that five small-scale meat farmers face when their animals are slaughtered. In this film, we see farmers interacting with the animals they will eventually transform into food (chickens, pigs and cattle). This is as humane as "humane farming" gets. One of the farmers interviewed says: "We give our pigs and our chickens many weeks of relatively happy life."

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Farming Humane 2010 Pigs 75

Animal Person

APRIL 7, 2009

In other words, horses, like pigs and cows and chickens, are commodities whose worth has a dollar value to people, and we should be doing what we can do maximize that dollar value. Not approving the institutionalized slaughter of the horses we claim to hold so dear lowers that value. And it’s much more humane than leaving them there to starve to death.”. There are entire countries filled with starving people--do we think killing them is a "humane" idea?

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Horse Slaughter Slaughter Slaughtered Horses 100

Creature Talk

JUNE 1, 2010

They exist to be pigs and cows and chickens and zebras and elephants. I asked them why lions exist, since we don’t eat them (okay, maybe some humans eat lions, but I don’t think many). “So why do humans exist?&#. So, friends, why do we humans exist anyway?

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Zebras 2010 Lions Animal 60

Creature Talk

SEPTEMBER 17, 2009

It is a haunting, disturbing, thrilling, and often heartbreaking film about the dolphin trade and consequent slaughter in Japan. Are dogs any more special than pigs, cows, turkeys? Most are abandoned or euthanized, or sometimes sold into slaughter.

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Congo Turkey Japan Slaughter 52

Animal Person

JUNE 26, 2009

People in South Florida are still in an uproar over the mutilation and slaughter of 19 house cats (allegedly) by 18-year old Tyler Weinman, who was declared mentally competent and not a danger to himself or others (!). We humans have decided that, for a combination of reasons that are important to us, cats are worthy of our respect. We don't say we hate pigs and want to see them writhing in pain and slaughtered.

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Dissection Cougars Cats Ducks 123

Animal Person

AUGUST 5, 2009

The problem with that statement is it's not as if farmers are searching "the wild" for cows, pigs, chicken and fish, plucking them from their homes, and plopping them on a farm to live out their (shortened) lives prior to slaughter. The animals on farms are created for the sole purpose of human consumption. They are created to be slaughtered. And their lives of exploitation, torment, torture and slaughter cannot be compared to an animal's life in the wild.

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Gazelles Deer Hunters Lions 100

Animal Person

JANUARY 27, 2010

It's just another excuse people have concocted because they like the taste of cow/pig/chicken/fish flesh. Why choose enslavement, rape, domination and slaughter? Here's an interesting combination of great sentiment and horrible sentiment that involves two responses from the above list: "Online critics said it was hypocritical to protect only dogs and cats, and that the government should focus on human welfare before protecting animals."

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China 2010 Speciesism Chickens 100

Animal Person

JUNE 22, 2009

Their claim is that what has become the customary way to take sentient nonhumans from babyhood to untimely death is not humane. Yes, I do think it's better to have lived a comfortable life and then be slaughtered than to have been tortured the entire time and then be slaughtered. No one needs to eat sentient beings, so it's not as if these "farmers" are providing a valuable service to humanity.

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Factory Farm Factory Farming Sheep Slaughter 107

Animal Person

AUGUST 19, 2009

The site says food production factories are included , but I doubt that means those involving the slaughter of animals.). If you're going to call something an anthropological adventure, it would make sense to teach the kids about the other animals humans eat and give the kids the opportunity to prepare and eat dog, cat and monkey, no? Perhaps they are taught that other cultures eat animals other than cows, chickens, fish and pigs, I don't know.

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Cooking Chickens Alligators Agenda 100

Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 30, 2009

last year—28 million pounds—went to pigs, chickens, and cows, which in turn creates a perfect breeding ground for antibiotic-resistant super germs. Slaughter’s bill banning the routine use of antibiotics in animal feed.

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Meat Meat Industry Chickens Cows 75

Animal Ethics

MARCH 11, 2007

The fact that horsemeat has at times been part of humanity’s diet is not in dispute. Horses slaughtered in America today go not to feed the poor and the hungry but to satisfy the esoteric palates of wealthy diners in Europe and Japan. The issue is not whether slaughtering horses is un-American, but that it is inhumane and wholly unnecessary. But horses are not cows, pigs or chickens. Horse slaughter for meat export is just plain wrong.

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New York Times 2007 Horse Slaughter New York 40

Animal Ethics

APRIL 2, 2007

To the Editor: Re “ Mr. Puck’s Good Idea ” (editorial, March 26): Thank you for writing about the restaurateur Wolfgang Puck and his desire to buy meat raised humanely. March 27, 2007 To the Editor: Livestock producers raise their animals under humane standards and under the care of a veterinarian. According to the American Veterinary Medical Association, management and husbandry are more important than the type of production system for ensuring the health and well-being of pigs.

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New York Times 2007 New York San Diego 40

Animal Ethics

NOVEMBER 12, 2008

Wild animals and native plants have a particular place in nature, according to the land ethic, which domestic animals (because they are products of human art and represent an extended presence of human beings in the natural world) do not have. The land ethic, in sum, is as much opposed, though on different grounds, to commercial traffic in wildlife, zoos, the slaughter of whales and other marine mammals, etc., as is the humane ethic.

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Ethics 2008 Mammals Animal Liberation 40

Animal Ethics

NOVEMBER 16, 2008

Feeding grain to chickens, pigs and cows is even more inefficient, with 70 percent of grain grown in the United States going to animals raised for food. Besides depleting the ocean’s supply of fish for those animals normally feeding on them, the factory farming of cattle, pigs and chickens uses excessive water and pollutes our land. It is certainly true that the world’s marine stocks—large fish even more than small ones—are being depleted by human demand at a catastrophic rate.

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New York Times New York Factory Farm Factory Farming 40

Animal Ethics

JULY 15, 2008

A society founded on the principle of satisfying appetites is "a city of pigs" (Plato). He also said that "It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied." More common in Western thought than theriophilia has been theriophobia, the fear and hatred of beasts as wholly or predominantly irrational, physical, insatiable, violent, or vicious beings whom man strangely resembles when he is being wicked. Thus in a state of nature "man is a wolf to man" (Hobbes).

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2008 Dolphins Pigs Species 40

Animal Ethics

APRIL 27, 2008

April 21, 2008 To the Editor: Re “ Million-Dollar Meat ” (editorial, April 23): In vitro meat might not appeal to everyone, but I am guessing that the day PETA awards its prize money will be a happy day for the billions of land animals bound for slaughter. We encourage kids to gently pet baby lambs, cows, chickens and pigs, but we deny them this loving connection when we serve animals for dinner by surreptitiously calling them chops, hamburger, nuggets and bacon.

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New York Times New York Meat Sheep 40

Animal Ethics

FEBRUARY 6, 2007

Consider some of the victories: On November 5th, 2002, more than two and a half million Floridians voted "Yes" on Amendment 10 to amend the state constitution and prohibit the use of gestation crates , narrow metal cages where breeding pigs are kept for most of their lives. On November 7, 2006, Arizonans voted overwhelmingly, by 62 percent, in favor of Proposition 204, to ban the cruel and intensive confinement of veal calves and pregnant pigs on industrialized factory farms.

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2007 Gestation Crates Veal Crate Factory 40

Animal Ethics

AUGUST 2, 2008

The fact that geese mate for life, and that the mate of the poor goose that was slaughtered would step forward, was enough to make me swear off meat forever, if I hadn’t already. We pay lip service to more humane treatment of the animals that we eat, but how many of us look beyond the label on the package of chicken cutlets? Mr. Kristof is attuned to issues of human suffering and injustice. To the Editor: Re “ A Farm Boy Reflects ” (column, July 31): Hats off to Nicholas D.

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New York Times New York Geese Factory Farm 40

Animal Ethics

FEBRUARY 25, 2008

21, 2008 To the Editor: The correct response to “The Biggest Beef Recall Ever” is to not just be appalled and sickened at the horrifying treatment of living beings at the Westland/Hallmark Meat Company plant, but to realize that this is almost certainly just the tip of the iceberg, that not just cows are being tortured, but pigs, turkeys, chickens, calves and sheep. So why would they not insist that the cow that became their steak was treated humanely? To the Editor: Your Feb.

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New York Times New York 2008 Geese 40