Ten billion animals abused each year

[AmyStrange]

A letter to editor I found online:
===================================
Ten billion animals abused each year

FROM: http://www.lasvegasmercury.com/2004/MERC-Sep-30-Thu-2004/24826332.html
The American media's preoccupation with our presidential candidates' Vietnam service and similar distractions has robbed our nation of the opportunity to debate and act upon more deserving national and global tragedies. These include genocide in the Sudan, global hunger and environmental crises, as well as homelessness, deteriorating public health and animal abuse in our own country.

Yes, animal abuse. While most Americans lovingly embrace cats and dogs, their food dollars pay for appalling abuse of other animals in factory farms and slaughterhouses. Each year, more than 10 billion cows, pigs, chickens and other sentient animals are caged, crowded, drugged, mutilated and manhandled in U.S. factory farms. Conditions are so extreme that nearly 10 percent die before slaughter. Baby cows are chained by the neck in filthy wooden crates. Breeding sows are immobilized in metal gestation stalls. Laying hens are crammed into tiny wire mesh cages. At the slaughterhouse, the animals are frequently skinned, dismembered, scalded or drowned while still conscious.

World Farm Animals Day on Oct. 2 has been alerting American consumers to these atrocities since 1983. According to the organizers' website (www.wfad.org), 400 communities in 50 states and 20 other countries are arranging vigils, exhibits, information tables and marches to expose the devastating impacts of animal agriculture.

The date marks the birthday of Mahatma Gandhi, who stated that "the greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated." We should remember that on our next visit to the supermarket.

<SNIP>

[nine30]

1. Holocaust

Its the silent holocaust that nobody likes to talk about, happening under our very noses while we are gleefully oblivious to it.

Have you every heard any these radical fundamentalist Christians..the Bin-Laden types who bomb abortion clinics, whose hearts bleed for a bunch of undifferentiated cells in a woman's womb..ever protest animal abuse ?

[AmyStrange]

2. Good point and welcome to the DU...

if you have a chance, check out the "officially unofficial" DU slang dictionary:

http://DUG.SeattleActivist.org/

d