Stop HSUS and ASPCA Factory Farm Support

PETA Exposes Hideous Abuse on ‘Certified’ Farms

Suppose you’re not yet vegan but you never want to be cruel to animals, so you go out of your way to buy “high animal welfare standard” meat, eggs, and dairy. But what if you’re being sold a lie and animals are suffering mightily as a result? What if you now pay for some of the worst forms of cruelty on factory farms – the opposite of what you set out to do?

No pig who’s born into the filth, noise, and discomfort of a factory farm, where the animals live on concrete and parts of their ears are punched out and their testicles are cut out without painkillers, who’s then crammed onto a truck in any weather and hung upside down to be slaughtered for their flesh, is “happy” – so any label insinuating that they are is a lie.

Even if it says, “farm fresh” or “naturally raised,” every single carton of milk from a factory farm means a loving mother endured immense grief when her newborn calf was pulled away from her forever, only so she could be impregnated again for another cycle of mourning and misery. The smell alone from a “cagefree” egg factory, where the reality defies the pretty packaging, would make you gag. We have the evidence, the videos, the eyewitness accounts – everything that exposes the disgusting practices in these places and “humane” groups’ disgusting practice of adding their stamp of approval to the “products” from such houses of horror.

Let’s stop this cruel nonsense! PETA is urging the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), and Compassion in World Farming to leave the board of directors of the Global Animal Partnership, a humane-washing scheme started by Whole Foods that enables animal-exploiting companies to profit from sentient beings’ misery and slaughter. “Animal welfare certified” labels are slapped onto the flesh, eggs, and milk these companies sell – even though PETA investigators documented systemic cruelty and suffering at all 12 “certified” facilities they investigated. We have no doubt that we could’ve kept going well beyond those 12.

We Documented Sexual and Physical Abuse

At Global Animal Partnership–approved Plainville Farms, PETA’s investigator filmed crews of workers catching thousands of turkeys in dusty, crowded sheds and slamming them into metal coops on trucks to be hauled to slaughter. We documented workers kicking and stomping on turkeys, breaking their necks, and hitting them with an iron bar. One worker held a turkey by her injured neck, mimicked masturbation, dropped her onto the floor, kicked her, and left her to die. This wasn’t the first time we witnessed sexual assault on a factory farm. Such acts of abuse took place night after night at Plainville Farms – but would never have been observed during one of Global Animal Partnership’s announced inspections that took place once every 15 months.

As a result of PETA’s investigation, former Plainville Farms workers were charged with a total of 141 counts of cruelty to animals – including six felonies – the largest number in any factory-farmed animal case in US history. Ten workers have been convicted.

At another certified facility, Sweet Stem Farm, PETA found pigs crammed into severely crowded sheds on concrete floors, some with painful, bloody rectal prolapses as large as an orange that were left untreated. Imagine what that must have felt like! One pig ran a fever intermittently for up to a month before finally being shot in the head. More than 20 others were tightly packed into a metal trailer without water on a burning-hot day and left there for more than 24 hours before being hauled to slaughter for Whole Foods’ freezer cases.

Certifying Cruelty

Welfare group leaders may have originally and honestly hoped that being on the Global Animal Partnership board would provide an opportunity to improve conditions, but the initiative has been a complete failure. Farm Forward resigned from the board when it saw that the humane groups’ presence was helping to promote, not prevent, cruelty by winning the public’s trust for appalling practices.

Buyer Beware!

If you are addicted to meat, eggs, or dairy but care about animals, you must face the fact that there’s only one way to make sure you’re not actively paying someone to do to animals what you would never do yourself: by going vegan. It’s not hard, and it will help put these places out of business and close a shameful chapter in human history.