Aaaand 5,000 counts of Animal Cruelty, 5,000 for Animal Endangerment...

A couple days ago I was reading through our school newspaper. In addition to news and opinion pieces, they have a summary of local news, and one blurb struck me, figuratively, across the face.

Apparently a woman in Inglewood left her dog in a car, with the windows closed, for hours.  The dog died from heat stroke. The woman is going to be tried for one count of animal cruelty and one count of animal endangerment resulting in great bodily injury.  It goes on to say that if the woman is convicted she will face up to three years in state prison.

Obviously this is a straight forward case of animal abuse – woman leaves pet in car, pet dies, woman is charged with crime and will likely go to jail and pay a fine.

How about this though?  Man leaves pets in confined space, pets are malnourished, do not have enough room to move around, and live in their own fecal matter.  As such, ALL of the pets are given low-doses of antibiotics to keep them from getting sick.  Some of this man’s pets are so sick they cannot stand up, but the man does nothing for them.  Eventually the man’s pets get old and he slaughters them, then he sells their remains for people to eat, even his sick pet’s remains.  However, he doesn’t tell the people eating his pet’s remains that the pets were sick.

His poor pets! The man should be taking better care of them! They should at least be kept clean, and fed food that is good for them! The man should give them more space, and even if he kills them for their own good, he should at least tell the people who are buying his pets meat that the pet was sick.

Reasonable demands, no?

Well I guess not. And as you probably guessed, the above is a typical situation in factory farming.  In 2009, a Federal judge temporarily blocked a California Law stating that Meat Producers were banned from using sick or “downed” cows in the slaughter supply in response to a lawsuit from the Meat Association and the American Meat Institute

According to the Animal Legal Defense Fund, the lifting of the ban was neutralized, and the law was actually strengthened, by an intervening motion filed by the ALDF, the Humane Society of the United States, Farm Sanctuary, and the Humane Farming Association, that exposed the torture and abuse of downed cows in a Southern California Slaughterhouse.  Something even more disturbing: the plant is the nation’s #2 producer of ground beef for the National School Lunch Program.

If a woman leaving her dog in a car to die of heat-stroke can face up to 3 years in state prison for animal cruelty, it seems almost ironic that the heads of big agriculture and factory-farming businesses can go unscathed. It seems obvious that putting the profits of selling sick and horribly abused cow meat (that often harbors salmonella and mad-cow diseases) over the health and well being of school children. 

But this also serves as a wake up call. If you think eating meat is morally upstanding, by all means go for it.  But consider this; that the meat industry is not a bunch of happy cows, and that in consuming, you are risking your health.  It is clear from the last couple meat scandals that safety is not the number one priority here, nor is animal welfare.

Food for thought.