Americans enslave, kill and eat more than 100 million pigs every year. In tiny gestation crates, female pigs are repeatedly and forcibly impregnated against their wills with long steel devices that shoot hog semen into their vaginas. They are the unwilling baby machines of the meat industry. As soon as their reproductive capacity is finished, they're sent to the slaughterhouse where they're chopped up into hundreds of pieces, along with millions of other pigs who have been genetically engineered to reach 225 to 300 pounds in six months.
Smithfield, the largest killer of pigs in the world, generates more than $13 billion every year by selling the murdered, dismembered bodies of 15 million pigs. And you won’t believe what Smithfield does with the shit that all these pigs excrete.
Shortly after birth, male piglets are mutilated in four horrific ways. First, they are held upside down as their tails are cut off without anesthetic because tail-biting is common in the overcrowded, unnatural conditions of today's farms. Then each baby has 2 to 8 teeth cut off right down to the gumline with a pair of wire cutter-like devices so when they fight and bite each other, they have no teeth to damage each other's flesh. Since female pigs are forced to produce twice as many piglets in captivity than in the wild, teeth-cutting is also a huge money maker for the meat industry. Cutting teeth on the babies allows the mothers to nurse even more piglets—who will eventually be killed for profit—because when babies suckle on their mothers without teeth, wear and tear on the mothers' nipples is kept to a minimum. Piglets also have portions of their ears ripped out to mark them. It's called ear-notching. Finally, in a sick attempt to pacify the industry-induced anger, testicles are ripped out without anesthetic.
Castration also gives the meat industry complete control over reproduction because natural reproduction is almost obsolete. Every aspect of raising animals for food is controlled, from artificial insemination and genetic engineering, to cloning and killing. The exploitation of reproductive organs is the exact reason why so many women empathize with the animal rights movement and practice veganism. Humanitarian Pattrice Jones explains, "Women and animals—along with land and children—have historically been seen as the property of male households. Both women and animals are seen as less rational and both suffer by being reduced to their bodies, or even worse their body parts." For a great book comparing the oppression of women to the oppression of animals, check out Sister Species: Women, Animals, and Social Justice by Lisa Kemmerer. To allow you to experience the horror that pigs endure, in September 2014 a friend of mine infiltrated a Taiwanese slaughterhouse that murders 1,200 daily, to bring the truth to you!
Worldwide, the meat industry also tortures and murders billions of rabbits, sheep and goats. In case you're still skeptical of the claim that I just made, watch the graphic evidence in the three videos just below.
This Is How Pigs, Sheep, and Goats Are Supposed to Live
