Target: Thomas Vilsack, Secretary for U.S. Department of Agriculture
Goal: Ban cruel euthanasia methods that subject farm animals to agonizing deaths.
While agriculturalists call the methods used to cull and kill animals “euthanasia,” veterinary professionals have other names for them: “suffocation,” “drowning in fluids,” “death by heatstroke,” and “cooked alive,” to name a few. The United States is currently experiencing an avian flu outbreak, which has led to the deliberate killing of thousands of farm animals like chickens. Two of the most common culling techniques have already been banned in the European Union due to their inhumanity.
One of the methods, called ventilation shutdown, is a sanitized term for the horrors that actually take place. The condemned animals are packed into an enclosed space and exposed to viciously high levels of steam and heat. In essence, they are broiled alive. When this torture was used on millions of pigs during a different flu outbreak, secretly recorded footage picked up the screams of the animals as they died in a literal living hell. The second form of so-called euthanasia involves blanketing the livestock in firefighting foam. What is the effect of this seemingly harmless action? The targeted animals essentially suffocate and choke to death.
Sign the petition below to demand U.S. leadership follow Europe’s lead in ending this unsanctioned torture and legalized animal cruelty for good.
PETITION LETTER:
Dear Secretary Vilsack,
What kind of “medical remedy” could be so horrific that it compels ten percent of the professionals who perform it to consider suicide? What form of “euthanasia” has been deemed so inhumane that the European Union and the World Organisation for Animal Health condemn it? If you wonder about the answer to these questions, look no further than America’s farms, where not one but two of these lambasted practices occur routinely.
Firefighting foam and ventilation shutdown have been used—and are currently being used—to end the lives of millions of livestock afflicted with illness. The terms may sound harmless, and perhaps even humane. They are anything but–the former method results in the slow, painful suffocation of the victims as they drown in their own fluids. As to the latter…some of the physical effects of ventilation shutdown include heatstroke, severe burns, vomiting blood, and bloody mucus emitting from body openings. Or, if you want a clearer concept of what fate befalls the animals “euthanized” by extreme heat and stream, listen to the recording of a barnful of dying pigs screaming in pain.
This inhumanity, this barbarity, and this cruelty have no place in a nation that claims it values life. Please advocate for a ban on these modern-day forms of torture at once.
Sincerely,
[Your Name Here]
Photo Credit: Artem Beliaikin
We have a LONG LONG way to go to become a civilized society!
This is abhorrent and totally unacceptable!
Well said.
Afreeed!
First, this is sadistic and unnecessary cruelty for no reason except the livestock firm is allowed to get away with this because the USDA is not actually concerned with animal welfare – that needs to change. The second thing is this: livestock ranchers of all kinds are overproducing animals to the point where overcrowding, poorly made habitat and total indifference to animal welfare has become the norm and this type of outcome is becoming the norm – that needs to change too. Whenever I find myself in the meat department of any grocery store what I see is more and more waste, more meat marked down and garbage bins overflowing with meat of all kinds in the dumpsters. We need to cut back animal production to a more healthy and sustainable level and then. situations like this will not be so frequent.
I am shocked to hear that our country supports the cruel evil practices against animals that it does. Please USDA wake up and put a stop to these horrid practices. These are LIVES you are ending – please use your heart.
OUR DISGUSTING COUNTRY IS NO DAM BETTER THAN A 3RD WORLD COUNTRY. WE JUST PRETEND THAT WE ARE. H E L L N O. IT IS NO WONDER WHY ANIMAL LOVERS AND ADVOCATES FOR THEM LOVE ALL OUR DEAR ANIMALS MORE THAN MOST F-ING PEOPLE. ANIMALS AE THE HUMANE NOT OUR BASTRD CITIZENS!! MAY THEY BURN IN HELL FOR THEIR HORIFFIC AND SICK BEHAVIOR AND IT COULD NEVER BE TOO SOON.
Oh my Lord. I can not believe humans can be so cruel. My heart is breaking for the poor innocent animals. No animal deserve this. Disgusting
Well said, sadly it’s acceptable to treat animals like garbage in this country, I hate people
Son unos bastardos asesinos,se merecen el peor de los castigos 😡…
This is egregiously inhumane and barbaric, and MUST END NOW. These poor animals have no lives in those factory farms as it is. To then subject them to these most horrific and painful slow deaths is a CRIME AGAINST NATURE.
Stop the terrorism on 🇺🇦 Ukraine.
Ban all cat meat trade !!!!!
How about ALL animal meat?
They ALL suffer.
The United States is currently experiencing an avian flu outbreak….I AM NOT SURPRISED GIVEN THE WAY MOST FARM ANIMALS ARE TREATED. MAN DESERVES EVERYTHING HE HAS BEEN GETTING AND MORE!!
I HOPE ANYONE THAT THINKS THESE BARBARIC TORTUROUS METHODS OF KILLING ANIMALS IS ACCEPTABLE…THEN I HOPE THE SAME TORTURE COMES BACK TO YOU ALL!!
WHAT IS THE ANIMAL CRUELTY AND HEALTH ORGANIZATION DOING ABOUT THIS? ARE THE INSPECTORS FOLLOWING THROUGH ON CHARGING AND SHUTTING DOWN ALL THESE HORRIC PLACES!! UNTIL WE START SEEING COMPASSION AS THE NORM, THE WORLD WILL DOWNWARD SPIRAL!!!!!!!!!!! AND SO DESERVED!!
DON’T EAT ANY MEAT!!!!
When I read this account of what happens to “euthanize” chickens and pigs I feel utter gut wrenching despair. It is an unspeakable atrocity to treat sentient, intelligent living beings this way. It is shameful in the utmost that human beings can behave so heartlessly. I cannot wait for the time when such acts of depravity are relegated to the dustbin of human stupidity and cruelty, and are looked upon with appropriate horror.
And never ever repeated again.
The U.S is in many respects a 3rd world country. Most of its citizens, however, think they are the greatest. And that is, of course, BS!
So interesting you see that. Propaganda nationalism to the masses.
Divide and conquer.
Stop all of that animal torture. Those are not humane types of euthanasia
Firefighting foam and ventilation shutdown seem like harmless terms for what is actually barbaric, inhumane, and viciously cruel methods of killing livestock. What kind of evil person in charge of overseeing these barbaric practices would allow such cruelty. Just that. Evil. Pure evil.
Makes me cry when I look at the eggs underneath them. They do so much for man and they are viciously treated…that no words care every really relay all the agonies they endure!!!
can**
The Biden administration gave 25 million to pig farmers to deliberately roast thousands of millions of pigs alive during the pandemic
A man filmed what they were doing as was tried for espionage
Thus is worse than gasing sick Nazi thing to do to animals
Evil. Now they are doing it to chickens? Pure evil murder
This is totally unacceptable! What is wrong with us as a human race, we have no feelings? Theses are God creatures & this treatment of them is disgusting & so wrong!!
We, as human beings, have duty of care. To each other, ALL animals, and the planet. If we fail in this duty, we fail our humanity.
WHY I eat 80% less animal products. Still have a ways to go.
The factory farm community calls it euthanasia? It’s murder, plain and simple. They raise too many animals, then they kill them all. Are they lunatics or what? It clearly shows they have no compassion, no ethics and no morals. Do we really want to support an industry like this? Don’t eat meat.
That’s humanity, the peak of creation, the cock of the walk, the biggest brain EVER! All made in God’s image, complete with “dominion” over all the world and the creatures on it. That’s us, clever monkeys. Soon to be extinct – hallelujah!!!