The cruelty is shocking. Unspeakable. So brutal that it has sparked outrage, anger, and action worldwide.
Last week Mercy For Animals released heartbreaking footage of malicious and sadistic abuse to cows and calves at a Central Ohio dairy farm. Workers were captured on film violently stabbing cows with pitchforks, mercilessly beating them in the face with crowbars, and punching, kicking, and body-slamming baby calves.
The agriculture industry wants you to believe this is an isolated incident. But it's not.
On factory farms, animals regularly live out their short lives in confinement so extreme that they can't stand up, turn around, stretch their limbs, or lie down comfortably. It's an industry where abuse has become normal.
And Ohio is among the worst. Only four states in this country have weaker animal protection laws than Ohio.
You don't have to be an animal advocate, much less a vegetarian, to want to reform the way we raise our farm animals in Ohio. All it takes is a modicum of compassion and the acknowledgment that animals should not endure unnecessary trauma or abuse while in our care.
Take action now
Here's what you can do:
Sign the petition and join the more than 30,000 Change.org members who have already taken action to demand that those involved in the Conklin Dairy abuse case are brought to justice.
Donate to Ohioans for Humane Farms: your donation will help get the signatures needed for the ballot initiative
Volunteer to gather signatures or donate or both!
We need your help to get an issue on the November ballot to set minimum standards for livestock care and food safety. Ohioans for Humane Farms needs your donation and help to gather the 600,000 signatures to put this initiative on the ballot.
Deadline is June 30, 2010 to get all the petition signatures to the Secretary of State. The group is about halfway to their goal of more than 600,000 signatures.
The ballot measure is backed by The Humane Society of the United States, Farm Sanctuary, the Consumer Federation of America, the Center for Science in the Public Interest, the Ohio SPCA, the Toledo Area Humane Society, the Geauga Humane Society, Humane Society of Greater Dayton, Medina County SPCA, and a growing list of organizations. Ohio's big-agriculture interests have vowed to fight the measure.
The initiative would set rules for how animals are euthanized, prohibit use of "downer" (sick or injured) animals as food and ban extreme confinement of animals in cages.
Extreme confinement in tiny cages for months on end: Tens of thousands of veal calves, 170,000 breeding pigs, and approximately 27 million egg-laying hens in Ohio are confined in cages and crates so restrictive the animals can barely move an inch for virtually their whole lives. Many don’t even have enough room to stretch their limbs or turn around. Believe it or not, requiring animals to be raised in conditions that allow them to lie down, turn around and spread their limbs is opposed by Ohio's ag industry. Aside from the brutality, confinement practices create health safety issues --- "a study by the American Journal of Epidemiology that concluded people who eat eggs produced by chickens in cages [like the vast majority of those in Ohio] are twice as likely to get salmonella poisoning."
Allowing “downer cows” to enter the human food chain: Allowing sick and injured animals into the food supply threatens public health and food safety. Cows too sick or injured to stand or walk on their own to slaughter should be humanely euthanized, not inhumanely dragged or pushed while being shocked and beaten onto the kill floor to be used for human consumption.
Inhumane methods of euthanasia for sick and injured animals: In Ohio, a factory farmer was videotaped killing sick pigs by hanging them execution-style from a tractor, leaving them to writhe in the air for minutes on end. He was acquitted of cruelty for the hangings, a verdict Ohio’s agribusiness community hailed as a “huge victory,” because Ohio has no law specifically requiring humane farm animal euthanasia method.
For more information on how this measure will protect food safety and help the environment please visit this link and see the papers at the top of the page.
We want to phase out some of the most egregious methods of animal cruelty and need everyone's help! If you want to get involved please sign up at www.ohiohumane.com and be sure to include your full address so they can send you a packet out asap!