Meet your meal: TURKEY

Turkeys are intelligent animals who enjoy having their feathers stroked and listening to music, with which they will often sing quite loudly. In nature, turkeys can fly 55 miles an hour, run 25 miles an hour, and live up to four years.

But the story’s very different for turkeys on factory farms: They will be killed when they are only 5 or 6 months old, and during their short lives, they will be denied even the simplest pleasures, like running, building nests, and raising their young.

Like chickens, the 300 million turkeys raised and killed for their flesh every year in the United States have no federal legal protection.4 Thousands of turkeys are crammed into filthy sheds after their beaks and toes are burned off with a hot blade. Many suffer heart failure or debilitating leg pain, often becoming crippled under the weight of their genetically manipulated and drugged bodies. When the time comes for slaughter, they are thrown into transport trucks, and when they arrive at the slaughterhouse, their throats are cut and their feathers burned off—often while they are still fully conscious.

To see the lives of turkeys on factory farms, watch this video http://www.petatv.com/tvpopup/Prefs.asp?video=cok_turkey

THINK ABOUT IT!

Meet your meal: PIGS

Many people who know pigs compare them to dogs because they are friendly, loyal, and intelligent. Pigs are naturally very clean and avoid, if at all possible, soiling their living areas. When given the chance to live away from factory farms, pigs will spend hours playing, lying in the sun, and exploring their surroundings with their powerful sense of smell. Considered smarter than 3-year-old human children, pigs are very clever animals.

As piglets, they are taken away from their mothers when they are less than 1 month old; their tails are cut off, some of their teeth are cut off, and the males have their testicles ripped out of their scrotum (castration), all without any pain relief. They spend their entire lives in overcrowded pens on a tiny slab of filthy concrete.
Breeding sows spend their entire miserable lives in tiny metal crates where they can't even turn around. Shortly after giving birth, they are once again forcibly impregnated. This cycle continues for years until their bodies finally give out and they are sent to be killed. When the time comes for slaughter, these smart and sensitive animals are forced onto transport trucks that travel for many miles through all weather extremes—many die of heat exhaustion in the summer and arrive frozen to the inside of the truck in the winter.
According to industry reports, more than 1 million pigs die in transport each year, and an additional 420,000 are crippled by the time they arrive at the slaughterhouse. Many are still fully conscious when they are immersed in scalding water for hair removal.

Learn more on how pigs are treated, Watch the video http://goveg.org/factoryFarming_pigs.asp

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Puppy Mills!!!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0KucYppXO0

If you go to this link you can see how horrible conditions the puppies and kittens live through. Watch it and you will see. It tells you everything about what they do to the puppies and kittens.
Would you want your puppy to go through things like this? STOP buying from the pet stores!!! You are supporting and helping them get more puppies and kittens in their mills by buying those dogs!

THINK ABOUT IT!

Meet your meal: FISH

Here's an animals I know you don't commonly think of as being abused. FISH!

Aqua farms squander resources—it can take 5 pounds of wild-caught fish to produce just 1 pound of farmed fish—and pollute the environment with tons of fish feces, antibiotic-laden fish feed, and diseased fish carcasses.

Fish on aqua farms spend their entire lives in cramped, filthy enclosures, and many suffer from parasitic infections, diseases, and debilitating injuries. Conditions on some farms are so horrendous that 40 percent of the fish may die before farmers can kill and package them for food. In short, fish farms bring suffering and ecological devastation everywhere they go.

To learn more and here stories about fish farms, you can go to http://www.fishinghurts.com/fishFarms.asp

"We don't take what Mother Nature throws at us. This is a factory for fish."
—Bill Evans, Vice President of Mariculture Systems, Inc., Salmon-farming company

THINK ABOUT IT!

Meet your meal: COWS

Just a little something that I thought you should think about the next time you go out to get a cheeseburger...

Did you know? That like all animals, cows form strong maternal bonds with their children, and on dairy farms and cattle ranches, mother cows can be heard crying out for their calves for days after they are separated.
In the U.S., more than 41 million of these sensitive animals suffer and die for the meat and dairy industries every year.1 When they are still very young, cows are burned with hot irons (branding), their testicles are ripped out of their scrotum (castration), and their horns are cut or burned off—all without painkillers. Once they have grown big enough, they are sent to massive, muddy feedlots to be fattened for slaughter or to dairy farms, where they will be repeatedly impregnated and separated from their calves until their bodies give out and they are sent to die.

Cattle raised for beef are usually born in one state, fattened in another, and slaughtered in yet another. They are transported hundreds of miles in all weather extremes to the slaughterhouse. Many cows die on the way to slaughter, and those who survive are shot in the head with a bolt gun, hung up by their legs, and taken onto the killing floor, where their throats are cut and they are skinned. Some cows remain fully conscious throughout the entire process—according to one slaughterhouse worker, in an interview with the Washington Post, “they die piece by piece.”

To learn more, please watch this video http://goveg.org/factoryFarming_cows.asp

THINK ABOUT IT!

Cute Puppies?! Not so much anymore!!

Would you want your cute pet dog to get brutally tortured for its fur and meat? What would you do for you own dog? Would you do anything at all? Why do so many people do this to cute little innocent dogs? We may never have hat answer!

Right now in China they are tearing the skin of dogs just for their fur and meat. While the dogs are still breathing and living there own skin is being teared off their bodies. The people don't shoot them or give them a quick death. They don't want to ruin the skin at all so they just do it while they are alive. They also step on them or bet them until they die. Do you want your puppy stuck in a cage for days at a time? Well in china they are stuffed and packed into small little cages so they can not move. They just sit or lay there waiting to get killed or tortured. They can feel every little thing that is happening to them! In China they don't have a law for stopping animal cruelty. So they can do whatever they want to these pour animals. We need to do something immediately!

Can you believe this? Do YOU think we can do something something about this? We can do something about this! We have to FIGHT and STOP this animal cruelty!!!!

You can go to this link to learn and see what they are doing to the animals:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQrAIPMHui0

THINK ABOUT IT!

Meet your meal: CHICKEN

Chickens are inquisitive, interesting animals who are as intelligent as mammals like cats, dogs, and even primates. Mother hens actually cluck to their unborn chicks, who chirp back to their mothers and to one another from within their shells! But the more than 9 billion chickens raised on factory farms each year in the U.S. never have the chance to even meet their parents, let alone be raised by them. They will never take dust baths, feel the sun on their backs, breathe fresh air, roost in trees, or build nests.

Chickens raised for their flesh, called “broilers” by the chicken industry, spend their entire lives in filthy sheds with tens of thousands of other birds, where intense crowding and confinement lead to outbreaks of disease. They are bred and drugged to grow so large so quickly that their legs and organs can’t keep up, making heart attacks, organ failure, and crippling leg deformities common. Many become crippled under their own weight and eventually die because they can’t reach the water nozzles. When they are only 6 or 7 weeks old, they are crammed into cages and trucked to slaughter.

Birds exploited for their eggs, called “laying hens” by the industry, are crammed together in wire cages where they don’t even have enough room to spread a single wing. The cages are stacked on top of each other, and the excrement from chickens in the higher cages constantly falls on those below. The birds have part of their sensitive beaks cut off so that they won’t peck each other as a result of the frustration created by the unnatural confinement. After their bodies are exhausted and their production drops, they are shipped to slaughter, generally to be turned into chicken soup or cat or dog food because their flesh is too bruised and battered to be used for much else.

To see and learn more about cruelty to chickens watch the video http://www.goveg.com/factoryFarming_chickens.asp

THINK ABOUT IT!

Why Should YOU Go Vegitarian?

Watch this video to learn why... http://goveg.com/feat/chewonthis/

Get your FREE vegetarian starter kit today! http://www.goveg.com/order.asp

STATISTICS!

1. Vegetarians are 50% LESS likely to develop heart disease.
   
2. Vegetarians have 40% cancer rate of meat eaters.
   
3. Meat eaters are 9 times more likely to be obese than vegans are.
   
4. Vegetarians and vegans are more likely to live 6 to 10 years longer than meat eaters.

REASONS!

1. In the U.S 500,000 animals are killed for meat every hour.
   
2. In one town in Iowa, 10,000 cows are killed a day...


3. A cow has to eat 7 pounds of protein from grain and soybeans to produce one pound of beef.


4. Avoiding meat is one of the best and simplest ways to cut down your fat consumption. Modern farm animals are deliberately fattened up to increase profits. Eating fatty meat increases your chances of having a heart attack or developing cancer.


5. Every minute of every working day, thousands of animals are killed in slaughter-houses. Pain and misery are common. In the US alone, 500,000 animals are killed for meat every hour.


6. Meat contains absolutely nothing - no proteins, vitamins or minerals - that the human body cannot obtain perfectly happily from a vegetarian diet.


7. 'Meat' can include the tail, head, feet, rectum and spinal cord of an animal.


8. Every day, tens of millions of one-day-old male chicks are killed because they will not be able to lay eggs. There are no rules about how this mass slaughter takes place. Some are crushed or suffocated to death. Many are used for fertiliser or fed to other animals.


9. It's must easier to become (and stay) slim if you are a vegetarian. (By 'slim', I do not mean 'abnormally slender' or 'underweight' but rather, an absence of excess weight!)


10. Animals which are a year old are often far more rational - and capable of logical thought - than six week old babies. Pigs and sheep are far more intelligent than small children. Eating dead animals is barbaric.
http://www.giveusahome.co.uk/articles/vegetarianism.htm

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What Happens Before it Gets to Your Plate?

Where does your food come from? Have you ever really thought about it? I am asking you to think as hard as you can and try to guess what animals go through just so you can eat them? What did you have for lunch today? Chances are you had meat on your plate. How did it get there? How did it die? What happens in its life before you eat it? The answers to these questions may surprise you, they surprised me.

THINK ABOUT IT!