Stop The Cruel Experiments on Farm Animals at the US Meat Animal Research Center
The Issue
Whether we know it or not, we Americans pay for the re-engineering of farm animals into “meat animals.” We have been doing so for a long time. We want more meat from our livestock for our growing population, and we want it cheap. Big Ag wants to supply us with that meat, but it needs to make a profit. Along with the US government, in particular the Department of Agriculture, we mostly look the other way as under-trained scientists use surgery and breeding to try to develop the perfect meat animal from the imperfect farm animal. You could describe our approach as “less costly meat at any cost.” This approach has inspired the appalling work being done at the US Meat Animal Research Center outside Omaha, Nebraska. Thanks to the New York Times’ recent investigation of this center, we can now reflect on more than 50 years of heartless experimentation in the heart of our country. And we can chose to stop it.
Turning animals into more efficient and profitable meat products turns out to be a slow and (for the animals, at least) excruciatingly painful process. But we keep trying. We have tried to breed pigs that birth twice as many offspring as nature intended, but large numbers of piglets emerge too weak to avoid being crushed when their artificially fattened mothers roll over. We have funded tests to induce cows to produce not just one calf at a time but twins and even triplets, but many of them are born frail and deformed. We have tried to develop “easy care” sheep, which could survive in harsh conditions without expensive shelters or shepherds, except many of them died of starvation, exposure, or predation. We have operated on the animals’ brains, ovaries, lungs, and uteruses. We have injected them with so many hormones their male offspring sprout female genitalia...
For decades, countless farm animals have been created, suffered, and died trying to give birth to a new generation of meat animals for our seemingly insatiable consumption. The ones who didn't make it, we left to the coyotes or tossed into a mass grave called “the dead pit.”
Many of us had no idea the US Meat Animal Research Center existed until the New York Times opened our eyes. Now that we know, let’s not shut our eyes again. Instead, let’s open our hearts... and shut this godforsaken place down!
If we’re not against hurting animals like this, it will continue to happen. And as taxpayers, we will continue to pay for it to happen. We need to stop. We need to shut the US Meat Animal Research Center down. Shut it down. Stop it.
If you want to contact the center directly and demand they stop hurting animals, you can reach them here:
Phone: 402-762-4109
Phone: 301-504-1663
Email: e.john.pollack@ars.usda.gov
Address: 844 Road 313, Clay Center, NE 68933
Phone: (402) 762-4113
AND Call USDA Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack
Phone:202-720-3631
PLEASE ALSO SIGN THE PETA PETITION http://bit.ly/1EIDqPA
The Issue
Whether we know it or not, we Americans pay for the re-engineering of farm animals into “meat animals.” We have been doing so for a long time. We want more meat from our livestock for our growing population, and we want it cheap. Big Ag wants to supply us with that meat, but it needs to make a profit. Along with the US government, in particular the Department of Agriculture, we mostly look the other way as under-trained scientists use surgery and breeding to try to develop the perfect meat animal from the imperfect farm animal. You could describe our approach as “less costly meat at any cost.” This approach has inspired the appalling work being done at the US Meat Animal Research Center outside Omaha, Nebraska. Thanks to the New York Times’ recent investigation of this center, we can now reflect on more than 50 years of heartless experimentation in the heart of our country. And we can chose to stop it.
Turning animals into more efficient and profitable meat products turns out to be a slow and (for the animals, at least) excruciatingly painful process. But we keep trying. We have tried to breed pigs that birth twice as many offspring as nature intended, but large numbers of piglets emerge too weak to avoid being crushed when their artificially fattened mothers roll over. We have funded tests to induce cows to produce not just one calf at a time but twins and even triplets, but many of them are born frail and deformed. We have tried to develop “easy care” sheep, which could survive in harsh conditions without expensive shelters or shepherds, except many of them died of starvation, exposure, or predation. We have operated on the animals’ brains, ovaries, lungs, and uteruses. We have injected them with so many hormones their male offspring sprout female genitalia...
For decades, countless farm animals have been created, suffered, and died trying to give birth to a new generation of meat animals for our seemingly insatiable consumption. The ones who didn't make it, we left to the coyotes or tossed into a mass grave called “the dead pit.”
Many of us had no idea the US Meat Animal Research Center existed until the New York Times opened our eyes. Now that we know, let’s not shut our eyes again. Instead, let’s open our hearts... and shut this godforsaken place down!
If we’re not against hurting animals like this, it will continue to happen. And as taxpayers, we will continue to pay for it to happen. We need to stop. We need to shut the US Meat Animal Research Center down. Shut it down. Stop it.
If you want to contact the center directly and demand they stop hurting animals, you can reach them here:
Phone: 402-762-4109
Phone: 301-504-1663
Email: e.john.pollack@ars.usda.gov
Address: 844 Road 313, Clay Center, NE 68933
Phone: (402) 762-4113
AND Call USDA Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack
Phone:202-720-3631
PLEASE ALSO SIGN THE PETA PETITION http://bit.ly/1EIDqPA
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Petition created on January 21, 2015