What kind of country does this?

[Torvald Von Mansee]

I was watching The Dog Whisperer, and Cesar had some dogs rescued from a Mexican animal shelter. Guess what? It was revealed that some animal shelters in Mexico euthanize animals via ELECTROCUTION.

Seriously wtf!?!?!? Just because it's CHEAP?!?!?!?

And **** off in advance to a certain Finn who will come in here and say: "Well, the U.S. does a, b. c.." Two wrongs don't make a right.

[frau kaleun]

I worked for a while in a vet clinic and of course sometimes we had to euthanize animals. We did it in as humane a fashion as possible and even that was difficult enough to take at times.

Electrocution - I can't even imagine. Do they even drug them unconscious first? I guess not, if they had the drugs for that then surely they'd just use a little more to finish the job.

[Torvald Von Mansee]

Originally Posted by frau kaleun

I worked for a while in a vet clinic and of course sometimes we had to euthanize animals. We did it in as humane a fashion as possible and even that was difficult enough to take at times.

Electrocution - I can't even imagine.

When I was about three or so, I was electrocuted by accident for a few mins before I got rescued. I can imagine it very easily. It's absolutely cruel. And they do it because it's CHEAP. It makes me wish there was Hell/Purgatory or karma.

[TLAM Strike]

Originally Posted by Torvald Von Mansee

When I was about three or so, I was electrocuted by accident for a few mins before I got rescued. I can imagine it very easily.

For a few minutes?! Damn... I got zapped by a fuse box breaker once for a few seconds and it left my hand tingling for an hour but that must have been horrible. You must have been lucky to survive?

[frau kaleun]

Originally Posted by Torvald Von Mansee

When I was about three or so, I was electrocuted by accident for a few mins before I got rescued. I can imagine it very easily. It's absolutely cruel. And they do it because it's CHEAP. It makes me wish there was Hell/Purgatory or karma.

I was electrocuted too, when I was around 8 or 9. We had an old refrigerator that was plugged in down in our basement, somehow I think some old metal window fan fell down behind it and damaged the electrical cord, or else we'd gotten water seeping in around the back of it that we couldn't see - anyway I don't know what actually caused it but I went down one day to get something out of there and grabbed the metal handle to open the door and ZAP. Threw me backwards pretty hard, which I guess was lucky because the force of it was enough to pull my hand away once the door swung all the way open and I wasn't heavy enough to tip the thing over when I went down.

What really pissed me off was that I'd been telling my mother for days that I thought I was getting a bit of a shock, like a static electricity thing you get in the winter, whenever I touched the handle - but she didn't believe me.

I had nightmares for years after that about being struck by lightning. And I opened the door of that damn thing with a wooden broom handle until we got rid of it, even though I was assured the problem had long since been taken care of.

I know how it feels, I just can't imagine doing that to some poor animal as a means of euthanization. I know the sad reality is that unwanted domestic critters end up being put down but geez.

I got thrown for a ride when I tryed to remove a stuck prong from the electric socket, with metal plyers/pliers. Whew! Electricity is rough stuff. Nothing humane about that.

[UnderseaLcpl]

Sadly enough, this kind of thing happens all around the world all the time, and even here in the US. My experience is mostly with horses, rather than dogs, but this kind of inhumane treatment of animals is disturbingly common.

I once assisted a horse rescue in the retrieval of some abused and neglected horses from a "ranch" that, in addition to beating horses to saddle-break them, cut the throats of lame or diseased horses and dumped the bodies in a dry stock tank.

As perturbatory as that is, what's even wierder is that it makes no sense to do such a thing. Most souless a-holes who want to slaughter ailing horses or severe problem horses at least send them to be made into glue, dogfood, horsehair goods, and various other things. Slitting their throats and dumping them in a ditch is not only evil and wasteful, it's also stupid because it helps to spread disease to the healthy horses in the area. I only wish I'd had a chance to confront the (insert 45-letter combi-cussword here) who owned the place so I could have horse-whipped him to death, or at least punched him.

I don't often agree with everyone's favorite crazy animal rights group to bash, PETA, but things like that make me see things from their perspective a little more.

[Buddahaid]

Originally Posted by Torvald Von Mansee

When I was about three or so, I was electrocuted by accident for a few mins before I got rescued. I can imagine it very easily. It's absolutely cruel. And they do it because it's CHEAP. It makes me wish there was Hell/Purgatory or karma.

How come your still alive? A zombie? Electrocution means your dead by electric shock! Glad you survived.

[Torvald Von Mansee]

Originally Posted by TLAM Strike

For a few minutes?! Damn... I got zapped by a fuse box breaker once for a few seconds and it left my hand tingling for an hour but that must have been horrible. You must have been lucky to survive?

Well, yes. It certainly seemed like several minutes, and I'm told it probably was. My hand was clenched around a faucet, and the current was coming from somewhere else in the house via the pipes. I couldn't unclench my hand!!!

[Skybird]

Pigs in meat factories get slaughtered by electrocuting them first to make them unconscious, before they get hooked up and spilled with boiling water (to help removing the bristles). It is estimated that this works only in 99% of the cases. That means one in hundred may be brewed while being all conscious.

Also, chickenget hooked up on the line with their legs, and their heads then gets dunked into a liquid that is meant to kill them or to deaden them. Again, some of them struggle so hard that while the line moves through the space with the tub they manage to keep their heads out of it. This has as a consequences that they move fully conscious into the next section. Go figure.

Etc.

Staff in such fsactories tends to have become insensitive, too, working under time pressure. I hgave occasionalyl seen horrifying pictures of humans treating animals like any dead matter. Lifting cattle with cranes and the limb being ripped out of the joints, or using cattles tick at their gebtials to make the animals crawl off the lorry on four broken legs, on its ankles. It'S ashaming, and horrifying.

People eat that plenty of meat only becasue they are not aware of what is haüpüening inside these factories. If they would be, you would have an exploding number of vegetarians, I'm sure.

Considering how resource-intensive it is to produce one kilogram of meat, there is even less excuse for the mass-production of meat in indutrial ways.

I havew been vegetarian for over ten years, then eased it a bit. I eat meat only rarely, and when so, I buy from a local farmer where the slaughtering is done in a small farmer's collective, not in one of these industrial animal KZs. Saves the poor creature the stressful transports and the horror of experiencing hell and pain.

I am most radical in my willingness of what to do with these factories.

[Aramike]

And **** off in advance to a certain Finn who will come in here and say: "Well, the U.S. does a, b. c.." Two wrongs don't make a right.

Okay, I rarely agree with your politics, but...

[Aramike]

Skybird:

While your accounts of animal treatment are most disturbing, and while I don't deny that such barbarism exists, I have to say: to paint the entire industry with such a broad brush is disingenuous.

I love animals. While I'm an avid shooter, I have never been able to bring myself to hunt. I have to turn the channel whenever I see commercials displaying animal cruelty in an attempt to solicit donations (although I do donate to organizations such as the ASPCA).

I also acknowledge the fact that human beings are, by nature, omnivorous. Indeed, I enjoy most meats greatly. Furthermore, mankind is a NATURALLY EVOLVED tool-maker, so I don't fault companies for finding efficient means of slaughter...

...so long as they aren't inhumane in doing so. And, quite reasonably, most companies (at least in the US) go to great lengths in creating the most humane processes possible for animal harvesting.

My point is that there are both extremely inhumane and humane ways of providing the meat that the human body naturally hungers for. To color the entire industry (and suggest that one's own vegetarianism is an appropriate response) as one of dispicable corruption doesn't quite give the complete picture.

Nature is a harsh, unforgiving state. In our evolution, humans must not forget that we are part of that nature, and while we can work to minimize its mercilous ways, to attempt to eliminate them is pointless.

[Skybird]

1. If staff works under time pressure, they make mistakes. You cannot avid it. A recent docu snippet on , just days ago, mentioned that 1% amongst pigs. And that is not referring to any special factory, Aramike. You cannot avoid it.

2. If you are exposed 6 hours a day to such things, you get desensitized, too. Everybody would. This is also a thing you cannot avoid.

3. There are alternatives to a diat heavy with meat. Healthy alternatives. It simply is not true that you cannot eat healthy without heaving your daily dose of "fresh bloody meat". I am not on a crusade, Aramike, I eased my earlier vegetarian lifestyle like I described - but I avoid buying factory meat in the supermarket or at regular slaughterers, but buy almost directly sat the source. Also, I eat meat rarely only. Admitted, that way it is not cheap. But there is a reason why supermarkets offer meat so cheap. That reason is careless industrial mass production - and that kind of production has no room for wasting time with too caring sensibilities regarding animals. And we know today that that kind of meat production also has drastic envrionmental costs (and I am not talking about methane, but ressources consummed, water for example). Whereever you have slaughtering factories, you must assume that regular horrifying events like described above, take place, and never will be avoided. Becasue the number of animals moving through these hells per day, range in the many hundreds and thousands.

4. The human body does not hunger for meat explicitly, we are no canrivores, but omnivores. If vegetarian food in sufficient diversity is available, we can löive by that all alone excluisvely, and healthy. But it is time and cost-intensive to do so and needs a lot of knowledge. Better is vegetarian diat coupled with accepting anmila produced products like milk, cheese, eggs. Note that industrial mass prodcution of eggs with chicken in huge factory cages currently gets banned in europe, it is already forbidden in Germany, I think. And that is good. the interest of the suffering and tortured creature weighs heavier than the profit interest of the producer - in this context I would say that is an ethical imperative.

5. Also note that I said I buy at a local farmer show becasue the slaughtering there is done outside industrial meat factories. The cattle neither suffers a long, stressful transportation, nor does it enter one of these hell factories.

No such factories. Meat production getting reduced massively. Cattle beign slaughtered at location and for local demand only. That'S what I argue for. I am no ideologic crusader wanting to ban eating of meat alltogether, but after having been on both sides of the fence I made a reasonable compromise with a very much redcued coinsummation level of meat, and taking care of where I get it from. I encourage everybody to do like me. It works well for me.

Eating plenty of meat, reguarly, is no issue of physical need, not at all. But a question of taste, and habit. Both can be changed.

People hate changing themselves. Not doing so for many is a matter of principle. Usually only pain and medical problems make them rethink former habits.

In the end, it again comes down to my former statement: if people would know by having seen it with their own eyes what is happening inside these factories, many would skip meat from their dining card alltogether immediately. That'S why I would make it mandatory that every school class of 16 year old an above once during school career must move through one of these factories. It also would be a very substantial measure of pro-environmental-protection education, and it does not need many lessons! Needless to say that there is a very huge and powerful meat lobby. there is a reason why all slaughtering factories and chicken mass cages don'T know the English word) get so totally and systemtically shielded and hidden from the public. They do not want people to see. It's better they only see the clinically clean 250 gr package of rosy bloodless meat covered by cellophane. It's so nice and tidy and harmless-looking.

All this in other words: if you cannot will to kill and do the bloody work with your very own hands, then you should not eat meat. Many people only eat meat just becasue they are spared fromt he dirty stuff taking place before the steak lands on their table, in that nice and good-looking arrangement with potatoes, vegetables and maybe a tasty sauce.

Originally Posted by Skybird

Pigs in meat factories get slaughtered by electrocuting them first to make them unconscious, before they get hooked up and spilled with boiling water (to help removing the bristles). It is estimated that this works only in 99% of the cases. That means one in hundred may be brewed while being all conscious.

Once when I was a kid we had a couple pigs here, at some point they were to be butchered.. the guy came in and shot one... It didn't die fast or quietly...

That seriously traumatized my young mind... and to this day I don't eat pig meat, and its only recently I've been able to force myself to be around people eating pig meat without getting utterly pissed off and storming out of the area.

[Jimbuna]

I was once zapped by a Taser electrode because I wasn't quick enough letting go of an idiot when the 'breakaway' command was give

We both become quite attached to each other for a couple of seconds