Nicky It seems you need to do some reserch before you proceed with your campains, don't take the word of others. Meat bird chickens are just that, they will not survive outside outside a cluster situation. They get water and food on demand, heating and cooling under controlled conditions . There's a lot of people that would give their buck teeth to be in that situation.
Pigs are like sheep, they like to be in close company. When you see a picture of a pig in restraint it is for medical, breeding, or as a protection for offspring. Pigs have a canableistic tendancy towards their own litter. If it was not for this situation AU would have been overrun with wild pigs years ago.
Sheep being electrically stunned to me this is useless, it was set up to satisfy people who think a sheep needed anesthetic. All it does is cause tension in the muscles of the animal. Each animal is dispenced through a [ knocking box] where the animal is electrocuted behind the head, and then it falls on to a bollard where it's throat is cut. I believe the operation should take place without the electrocution.
Cattle are shot with a bolt gun with varying degrees of success, this also causes muscle tension. Those with to thick a skull are cut across the back of the ears which severs the spinal cord. Cattle are better off being nicked on the side of the neck, and the animal dies without as many operations.

Jason60, those comments could only have come from an intensive farmer. The meat chickens I have seen were so grossly deformed that they could not reach any food or water that was available. Battery hens endure the worst living conditions that could be inflicted upon any creature - having seen the inside of these places.

Nor are pigs naturally cannabalistic. These sensitive, clean, intelligent animals are driven insane by the severity of their confinement, and there can never be any excuse for that. They are deprived of all their natural behaviours, and I have seen the swaying, and bar biting and heard the screaming. "Close company"? Who do you think that fools? They are in concrete and steel cages, with only enough room (the "lucky" ones) to move a step back or a step forward.

Do you keep your dog and cat like that? Why not? What is the difference?

If it is so good for their "welfare", why do they all have to be fed massive doses of antibiotics just to keep them alive in their filthy conditions (long enough to be dragged off to slaughter, at least)?

Read up on the "Five Freedoms"; it's not rocket science. If you must farm these animals, at the very - very - least, you owe them some form of compassion in their short lives and a humane death. Leaving animals in pain and choking to death on their own blood for whatever time it takes is not humane. If I were to chop off your leg, would you want an anaesthetic?

Nicky

This is a quote that Dickie posted on another thread:

"Matthew Scully, was a former executive assistant and chief speechwriter for Bush during his first term. A former literary editor of National Review, he is the author of Dominion: The Power of Man, The Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy (St. Martin's Press), named by The Atlantic Monthly as one of the ten best non-fictions of 2002: He advises:

'In all cases, the law should apply to corporate farmers - a few simple rules that better men would have been observing all along:

'We cannot just take from these creatures, we must give them something in return. We owe them a merciful death, and we owe them a merciful life. And when human beings cannot do something humanely, without degrading both the creatures and ourselves, then we should not do it at all'".

Says it all really, doesn't it?

Nicky

Thank you Katrina Sharman for an elightening article.

Last year, concerned citizens in Victoria, infiltrating a battery hen farm advised that:

"they saw illegal overcrowding, filthy conditions, birds eating dead birds and others stuck in manure pits.

``The birds were screaming, bodies were rotting in cages, bins of dead bodies are left in the sheds and sick and exhausted birds are left to fend for themselves in tiny cages,''

This is an industry which operates under obfuscation when one is assured that:

"Our big aim at the moment is to try and educate people generally and let them know that chickens are not fed hormones and haven't been fed hormones in Australia since about the early 1960s," ACMF spokesman Jeff Fairbother said.

Research commissioned by the Australian Egg Corporation Ltd revealed:

"Some 20 pesticides and veterinary drugs were identified as being of importance to the Australian egg industry. The chemicals used included the insecticides azamethiphos, carbaryl, maldison, permethrin and pyrethrum, the antibiotics bacitracin, chlortetracycline, flavophospholipol, lincomycin and tiamulin, the coccidiostats amprolium, lasalocid, monensin, nicarbazin, salinomycin, spectinomycin and dewormers such as levamisole and piperazine.

"Also identified were amoxycillin, sulfadiazine, sulfadimidine, sulfaquinoxoline, toltrazuril and trimethoprim, which are all currently the subject of minor-use consideration by the APVMA.

"There were also 21 pesticides that, on the basis of detection in the NRS grains program and/or their lipophilic nature were identified as chemicals that had the potential to carry over into eggs through the diet.

"There were no chemicals identified where the level of residue detected in monitoring programs was above the Maximum Residue Level (MRL.)

However, several of the chemicals identified as being of importance to the egg industry did not have MRLs established for eggs (amoxycillin/monensin, nicarbazin, piperazine, sulfadiazine, sulfadimidine, sulfaquinoxaline, tiamulin, toltrazuril and trimethoprim).

"Furthermore, in a number of instances (amprolium, piperazine and tiamulin), no Acceptable Daily Level (ADL) had been set."

So those who couldn't care less about the heinous cruelty inflicted on our feathered friends, may consider the health impacts to their own well-being when they purchase these products which are ethically, morally and medically unfit for human consumption.

There are howls of protest from the poultry and the pork industries as community campaigns seeking to eliminate what is possibly the most egregious cruelty to "farmed" animals in Australia, particularly battery hens, gain momentum.

It is reported that the industry has written to every Councillor in Australia as numerous Councils implement bans on the use of battery cage eggs from their catering - it's small but it's a start. We CAN destroy the markets for these cruelly derived "products" from all intensive farming operations.

The egg industry informs us that beaks are mutilated to prevent "cannibalism" - "cannibalism" that certainly does not manifest itself amongst my free-range, formerly 'concentration camp' hens.

Dickie's information about the chemicals is also very enlightening. Those of you who eat these products should be giving some thought to what you are consuming - if not for the sake of the wretched animals.

Nicky