‘Is Your Food A Product Of Rape?’ PETA’s New Feminist Web Feature Asks Women To Think Before They Eat

Group Highlights the Systemic Violation of Female Bodies in Production of Meat and Dairy Foods

For Immediate Release:
September 13, 2016

Contact:
Brooke Rossie 202-483-7382

Immobilized in “rape racks,” forcibly impregnated via syringe, and repeatedly separated from their babies—these are examples of the daily abuse endured by female farmed animals in the U.S., an outrage that has PETA asking women to reject all sexual exploitation and sexually violent acts against all females, regardless of species.

Since cows produce milk only to nourish their calves, dairy farmers keep them pregnant from the moment they become sexually mature by artificially inseminating them—while they’re restrained in a device that the industry itself calls a “rape rack.” Calves are torn from their loving mothers shortly after birth, causing both the mother—who cries for days—and the newborn extreme distress. Male calves are slaughtered for veal, and females are sentenced to the same reproductive exploitation as their mothers.

Pregnant sows are imprisoned in cages so tiny that they can’t even turn around or lie down comfortably. After giving birth, the mother and nursing piglets are confined to metal crates on concrete floors until the babies are taken to be slaughtered.

Turkeys can no longer mate on their own because they’ve been bred, drugged, and genetically manipulated to grow so large so quickly—an 18-week-old human baby growing at the same rate would weigh 1,500 pounds—that they are no longer physically able to have sex. Every turkey born in the meat industry today comes from a forcibly impregnated hen.

“Women who abhor rape and other such abuses should know that the violation of female bodies is at the very core of the meat and dairy industries,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “Going vegan is one of the most powerful ways to reject sexual violence and the systemic exploitation of female reproductive systems.”

In addition to standard industry practices, PETA has documented numerous cases in which farmworkers commit egregious acts of sexual abuse against animals, including one who shoved a rod into a pig’s vagina and another who stuffed a turkey’s legs and head into a shackle before “humping” her.

For more information, please visit PETA.org or click here.