Practical Issues
> Factory Farming - Index >
Slaughter - Index
Copied from http://www.AnimalFreedom.org.
Video clips on (abuse in) factory farming, animal
transports, and bullfights.The clips sometimes show extreme abuses, but
first and foremost they show how roughly and indifferently
animals are treated. They will also give you an impression
of an animal's life in factory farming: endless boredom,
overcrowded stables, sties and cages without any opportunity
for natural behavior.

The video clips below are exe-files. You click on the clip(s) you want to see; answer 2
security questions if necessary, and then save them (when
using Netscape) or play them on the spot (when using Internet
Explorer). The files are virus-free;
you don't need any additional software, but there is no
authenticode signature. If you have a slow connection, it
may take a while (about 10 minutes) before your PC has
downloaded the video fragment, but it will usually take you
only a few minutes. The video clips take up about half a
megabyte and last between 10 and 15 seconds. Their quality
varies from moderate to reasonable. Some of them will
automatically restart once they are finished. You can pause
and play the clips by clicking the space bar. Pressing
[Escape] can end endless loops. The videos are displayed at
12x15 cm or larger.
In an RVU broadcast as part of a series on different kinds
of jobs ("Werken aan Werk"), the nocturnal job of the Dutch
chicken catcher is shown. The clips show, for instance,
how a box filled with a new
load of consumption chicks is emptied. Tens of thousands of chicks meant for consumption
are here chucked out of the crates and thrown into the shed.
Every now and then a new crate of chicks is emptied in the
foreground. In the background two other people are also
unloading crates.

The relative space for movement every consumption chick
has decreases continually because the chicks grow very fast. In the
end the surface looks like a huge pan of chicken soup, out of which
the occasional chicken comes bubbling up. After six weeks, the
chicken catchers turn up around dawn. They grab
a number of chicks in each hand and then throw
and cram them into crates. Some of the animals get their
bones or wings broken in the process. The animals are
shoved
into the crates and shaken to and
fro. As the crate is closed one
chick
gets caught between the crate and its lid.
The pile of crates is driven towards the van. Finally
they are unloaded in the slaughterhouse, onto a conveyor belt to the
place where they are hung
upside down on hooks by their paws. One chick desperately tries
to escape its fate, but ends up being
swept
along in the stream. They then proceed to
the
machine that will try to behead them. A few seconds later their throat is cut
manually.
In July 1998, TV Noord (a Dutch local television broadcasting
station) filmed an open day at a laying battery in Sellingen
(province of Groningen, The Netherlands). These chickens had been
in the laying
battery for one year and were butchered some days after. The
chickens fly up in panic because they are scared by the lights used for filming. This is followed by a
close-up of some chickens with cut
beaks in their small living space.
In 'Noorderlicht' (a Dutch scientific program) one broadcast paid
attention to the use of antibiotics in factory farming. The clip
shows a space filled with tens of
thousands of free-range chickens.
The only way to keep such a number of chickens crammed together
"healthy" is by mixing antibiotics into their food.
The RVU broadcast an Austrian documentary entitled "Meat of
fear-fear of meat". With this title the makers want to indicate
that the animal's fear when brought to the slaughter (under
stressful circumstances) has a negative effect on the quality of the
meat. Some clips from this documentary show the international
transport of cattle. Before arriving at the abattoir, cattle have
been transported over hundreds of kilometres. During their
transport, they are often not taken proper care of, and they
sometimes end up being so weakened they can't stand on their legs
anymore.
The video (made by Manfred Karreman) shows the
unloading
of a cow from such a truck. The animal is pulled out of the truck
by ropes that have been tied around its legs. The subtitle goes as follows: "One may conclude
that animals meant for slaughter are treated in an alarmingly cruel
way. The motto: they will soon be slaughtered anyway. These animals
had only been transported for a few hundred kilometres."
Another video shows the
last minutes of calves that are brought to a slaughterhouse in a foreign country as part of the
so-called Herodes regulation. In spite of the requirement that
the calves have to be in good shape when they arrive, it is clear
that not every calf is able and willing to walk its last few metres.
That is no wonder if you see how cruel
calves sometimes are treated (CIWF).
A team of the German organisation Animals Angels trailed horses
from Lituania, from where they are driven to Italy. Horses
themselves are badly build for transport that last sometimes for
days. After a while they can't stand on their feet no more and they
fall and hurt themselves. This horse was put down by a vet, while hanging
upside down with one leg in a barred window (the trucks
ventilation system).
Each year millions of sheep, pigs and cattle are transported across Europe, often on extremely long
journeys. During 1999 Compassion In World Farming investigators have
been busy trailing the livestock trucks. The shocking pictures they
took are presented in the new CIWF-film 'Some Lie Dying'. CIWF
investigators managed to film in three Greek slaughterhouses. Two
made no attempt at all to stun the animals into unconsciousness
before slaughter. Their throats were cut while they were fully
conscious and they were left to bleed dead. One slaughterhouse
uses electrical
stunning with a bold, but the animals
don't appear completely stunned.
Bloody and cruel is a bull's entirely purposeless suffering in the
last
seconds of a bull fight, as can be seen in a clip by Manfred
Karreman.
With hidden camera's GAIA (Belgium organization for animal rights) filmed how animals on cattle markets
are hit
with sticks, sometimes with
barbs. Even children imitate the animal abuse of adults. On this
video a child repeatedly hitting
a calve.
'Het Klokhuis' (a Dutch educational youth program) shows
the
stereotypical behaviour of sows tied up between two bars. Out
of sheer boredom, the pigs start chewing on the chains, and this
selfsame chewing movement is repeated for hours in a row.
In a broadcast by '2-Vandaag' (a Dutch current affairs programme)
from December '99, one can see a farmer walking past the small
sections of the sty in which the sows
'live' with some ten piglets each. One can clearly see how little room a sow
has, between two bars and with no possibility to turn.
Two
video fragments of a Dutch mink farm (taken from "De achtste Dag", Humanistisch Verbond). Mink
are held in iron
frame
cages. They are allowed to go to the adjacent cage, but that is all the freedom for movement
they get.
More
information about the background of factory farming. More
video's on factory
farming (filetype AVI, will take longer to download).
For more video's about cruel international transports,
see the CIWF
film 'some lie dying'.
More video's (with sound, but RealPlayer needed) on
PETA "Resources
for activists" and Factory
Farming.
|