Americans kill and eat around 37 million cows every year. At first the cows are allowed to graze in large fields, until they wind up on dirt-covered feedlots for the last 10 months of their lives. After their horns are cut off with a pair of bolt-cutters ("de-horning"), cows are fed soy, corn and protein supplements to fatten them up. Many disgusting by-products are mixed into the feed as well, including pig and chicken manure, animal blood and the ground-up bodies of animals downed due to disease. This is why Mad Cow Disease (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy) should concern every meat-eater. It is perfectly legal and standard operating procedure to feed the ground-up, diseased bodies of horses, pigs, chickens and turkeys back to the cows, sheep and goats, and vice versa. Only ruminant-to-ruminant feeding is outlawed.
Feeding ground-up animals to other animals is also the reason Alzheimer's Disease exists and affects around 4.5 million people in America and 15 million worldwide. Before 1900, old age used to be associated with wisdom, not memory loss. Doctors recently discovered that the agent that causes Alzheimer's, the prion or folding protein, also causes Mad Cow Disease, Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD) and a host of other neuro-degenerative disorders. Dr. Murray Waldman, head coroner of Toronto, provides proof of the link between Alzheimer's and CJD in his book Dying For a Hamburger. Many other doctors now believe Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia are misdiagnosed cases of CJD caused by the consumption of animal products.
But since cows are exploited for their milk as well as their flesh and their hides, we've only scratched the surface of the horrific abuse that cows—and their calves—are made to endure on factory farms. Be sure to read the following essay on dairy production for more information.
Scamming Customers with “Grass-Fed,” “Antibiotic-Free,” “Hormone-Free” Nonsense
Lately and quite laughably, authors Michael Pollan, Eric Schlosser, Derrick Jensen, Lierre Keith and Mark Bittman have been making outrageous claims that free-range/freedom/organic/cage-free/antibiotic-free/hormone-free/grass-fed/local animal products are healthy. But don't be fooled by these well-spoken liberal hypocrites who are nothing but simple-minded, unenlightened meat, dairy and egg-eating addicts. Whether animals reside in spacious meadows eating pesticide-free grass or overcrowded warehouses swallowing genetically-engineered corn and soy feed, your risk for osteoporosis, heart disease, kidney ailments, diabetes, cancer, asthma and other illnesses remains the same. There's no such thing as healthy meat, dairy and eggs, just as there's no such thing as healthy cigarettes, cigars and chewing tobacco!
With regard to ethics, eating free-range/freedom/organic/cage-free/antibiotic-free/hormone-free/grass-fed/local animals—or those killed via religious-based kosher and halal-style throat-slicings—illuminates the hypocrisy and deceit of the meat, dairy and egg-addicted animal "welfare" movement. Its REAL goal is to ensure that the enslavement and killing of billions of animals goes on forever, unabated. By definition alone, slaughter and slavery are radically cruel and can never be humane even if animals live on free-range/freedom/organic/cage-free/antibiotic-free/hormone-free/grass-fed/local farms, or are murdered with a 'knife and a prayer' in accordance with ancient religious blood-draining customs. If animals go into slaughterhouses alive and come out chopped up into hundreds of pieces, how could anyone claim that they aren't being mistreated, abused, tortured and terrorized? How in the world could SLAUGHTERING BILLIONS of INNOCENT beings be done with love, humanity and concern?
Were you also aware that animals in the meat, dairy and egg industries receive no legal protection whatsoever? After all, slavery and slaughterhouses cannot co-exist with freedom and protection. Here's an excerpt from section two of the Animal Welfare Act (AWA), the federal law that oversees animal-use in America: "When used in this act, the term "animal" ... excludes farm animals, such as, but not limited to, livestock and poultry used or intended for use as food ..." That's pretty cute, isn't it? The animals who are enslaved or eaten aren't even recognized as animals under the law. Does this remind you of another piece of legislation that ignored the victims and existed to shield victimizers from prosecution? When the Constitution was first enacted, only land-owning, slave-owning, white men of European descent were protected. Blacks, Natives, women and many others were conveniently excluded.
The Animal Welfare Act, kosher and halal-style killings—and the free-range/freedom/organic/cage-free/antibiotic-free/hormone-free/grass-fed/buying-local marketing terms—are used to manipulate people into thinking that meat, dairy and egg production can be done happily and humanely. But there is no such thing as happy and humane slaughter just as there is no such thing as happy and human rape, happy and humane slavery, or happy and humane child molestation. From the animals' point of view, anyone who commodifies their bodies is equally vicious. Most people are unaware that Himmler, the Gestapo Commander who created the Jewish Holocaust's gas chamber system, almost fainted when he watched 100 Jews being shot to death in his honor. The Jewish Virtual Library states: "Subsequent to this experience, he ordered as a more humane means of execution the use of poison gas in specially constructed chambers disguised as shower rooms." If Himmler were still alive, I am sure he'd love to have a meal with the "humane" meat, dairy and egg-eating assholes who perpetuate his insane beliefs. And if for some reason my aforesaid words aren't proof enough of the terrorism claims I'm lodging against the meat, dairy and egg establishments—and the people who consume these products—maybe the billions of dead, dismembered animal bodies consumed annually could count as proof.
This Is How Cows, Bulls, and Oxen Are Supposed to Live
(The linked thumbnail image showing a cow being subjected to captive bolt-stunning just prior to her execution is courtesy of Humane Facts: Labels & Loopholes.)