The Ugly Reality of Mutilation

THE UGLY REALITY OF MUTILATION
The word “mutilation," whose root means "to cut up; to cut off," is a disturbing one, but I’m not using it merely to disturb. I’m using it because it aptly describes what we systematically do to billions of live animals on a regular basis - because we can. To my mind, to mutilate someone physically, to harm them physically is the ultimate violation of their rights as an individual, but as we know, animals don't have rights - even over their own bodies. If it’s too painful for us to contemplate having the animals we love terrorized and cut up, I think we have to ask ourselves “what’s the difference for those animals for whom nobody is grieving?” It’s the same for them. It's not about us. It's about their suffering. It’s about them.

HENS
The most commonly known type of mutilation is "debeaking": the act of searing off a segment of a hen’s beak – while she is a chick. I say “she” because you should know by now that male chicks aren’t raised – they’re discarded, ground up, thrown out – cause well, they’re males. And males don’t lay eggs.

To prevent economic losses from the frustrated birds pecking at one another and creating injury and death, it is perfectly legal and perfectly acceptable and perfectly widespread to cut off the beaks of the animals. This doesn’t stop the animals from pecking, of course – but it lessens the injury and thus lessens the economic losses.

This procedure is often called "debeaking," which is a bit of a misnomer, because their entire beak isn’t removed. Some call it “beak trimming,” which I don’t like because it sounds as if the chick is going to the hair dresser. Whatever you call it, it is a painful procedure which involves cutting through bone, cartilage, and soft tissue with a searing hot blade. As the bird grows, their beaks are often so mutilated and still sensitive that it makes it difficult for them to eat and of course preen themselves. And sometimes, the birds’ beaks are seared a second time because the beaks can grow back – the first time is in their first week of life and if there’s a second time, it’s when they’re between 12 and 20 weeks of age.

Visit http://www.eggindustry.com/ for more information.

TURKEYS
Turkeys are also raised in confinement in large sheds that are as large as football fields. As with the closely confined battery cage hens, the birds will become frustrated and exhibit stress-induced aggression. To minimize damage to the flesh and to the pocketbooks of the operators, baby turkeys (called poults) also undergo the painful procedure of having not only a portion of their beaks removed but also their toes. The babies are hung upside down, while the tips of their front three toes are exposed to microwave radiation, which kills the tissue. Often their toes are just cut off with scissors, and their snoods – the little piece of skin on the top of a turkey’s head – is pulled off (they say they do this to prevent damage from frostbite or fighting). Sometimes their rear toes are also cut off with scissors – of course all of this without anesthesia.

Visit www.upc-online.org

PIGS
When piglets are only a couple weeks old, they’re mutilated in many ways. First comes the castration. The piglet’s scrotum is cut open by a worker, who pulls out his testicles while the piglet screams and writhes in pain. Just imagine for one second if this were a puppy or a kitten. It’s unfathomable. Next, their ears are notched. This is actually very common practice across the species. With scissors, a portion of each piglet’s ears are sliced off – just to make identification patterns. In addition, workers cut off piglets’ incisors with pliers that are similar to wire cutters, without the use of painkillers, in order to prevent them from biting each other – or chewing on themselves – out of boredom and frustration. Finally, their tails are cut off to reduce tail biting, another habit that arises from boredom and frustration in stressful conditions. The pain is severe and continues for many days.

Visit www.pigspeace.org

CATTLE – BRANDING, DE-HORNING, EAR-NOTCHINGI think the most obvious way that cattle are mutilated – something you’re all familiar with, and that’s branding. Branding – often done twice a year – is done by a rancher to register and identify his animals. All ranchers brand cattle, and most ranchers brand their horses too. The red hot steel tool, heated with a propane torch, is pressed into the side of the animal. Another method used is something called “freeze branding” which causes the hair to grow back white when it does grow back. This is no less painful than branding with a hot iron. This is done to “beef cattle.” It’s not done with dairy cows because they are always kept close by so they can be milked several times a day.

While the animal is restrained for the branding, this is also when they castrate the calves, cut off parts of their ears, and cut a slice of skin off their wattle, the fatty portion of the animal’s neck. I’ll say once again: all this is all done without anesthesia.

In what is called “ear marking,” portions of the ear are removed or cut, and they also cut the wattle so that when their skin heals, it hangs down in a certain identifiable position. All of this is done for identification purposes. Some ranchers use plastic tags secured to the cow's ear instead of the knife cut. I’ve helped removed these tags that are inserted without anesthesia or antiseptic, and the remaining hole is often bloody and crusty and raw.

Something else that’s done to cattle when they’re enduring all of this – when they’re just calves – is dehorning and disbudding. Neither of these practices are regulated, and neither is done with anesthesia. Disbudding is the removal of the very early growth of what will become the horn if left to grow. The most common and most painful method is to use a hot iron. Dehorning is the removal of the horns after they have formed from the bud. Methods of dehorning include the use of wire, guillotine shears, or dehorning knives, or saws. Dehorning adult cattle is not advised – because their horns are connected to their sinus cavities, serious damage can occur, but it is done nonetheless.

They remove the horns of cattle (females can have horns, too) for the same reason they cut off the beaks and toes of birds: to reduce the damage to the “flesh” caused by the cattle fighting or coming in contact to one another. The industry says “Horns are the single major cause of carcass wastage due to bruising, and trim associated with bruising for carcasses from horned cattle is approximately twice that for carcasses from hornless cattle.” In other words, the more the animals have “bruising” on their flesh, the less money for the people in the industry.

DAIRY COWS
Though dairy cows aren’t branded, it doesn’t mean they don’t have pieces for their bodies removed. To increase the comfort of the workers who milk the cows – who attach the milking machines to their udders – a large portion of the cows’ tails are cut off. So the workers aren’t annoyed or inconvenienced. It’s called Tail Docking.

If you’ve EVER spent one moment watching cattle, you’d know that they are constantly bothered by flies. Their tails are used to swat away flies and is the only way they are able to do this. The defenders of tail docking say that the risk of workers contracting Leptospirosis, which can be spread through the urine and can penetrate broken skin, is increased when the potentially urine-soaked tails hit the workers. But recent reviews of the science conclude that the available data do not support claims that tail docking reduces the risk of Leptospirosis - OR improves the dairy worker's comfort or safety. Experts discourage tail docking, and even the American Veterinary Medical Association criticizes this practice, and they don’t usually go against practices in the meat, dairy, and egg industries.

By the way, the procedure is typically performed without anesthetic and is accomplished by the application of a tight, rubber ring that restricts blood flow to the bottom 2/3 of the tail, which atrophies and detaches or it’s removed with a sharp instrument.

There’s another reeeeally disturbing practice that I couldn’t believe when I first heard about it. In fact, I wouldn’t have believed it if I didn’t see it with my own eyes. Have you heard of a fistulated cow? A fistulated cow is a cow who has had a hole cut into her side for scientific research. Then a plastic device – essentially a window – is inserted so that her digestive system can be observed. Fistulated cows are pretty common in animal ag/large animal vet programs/ag schools, and students are encouraged to stick their arms in and feel the stomach, etc. At agriculture fairs, this is essentially an attraction for visitors. But industry defends this as essential for understanding the health of the species. A cow with a window into her digestive system. Anyway, thought you might be interested in that.

GOATS AND SHEEP
I mentioned before that pigs and cattle have pieces of their ears removed and are also ear-tagged. The same goes for goats and sheep. Goats also often have their horns and buds removed, an incredibly painful procedure. The reasoning behind this is similar to that used in the cattle industry – to reduce damage to the flesh but also to adapt the goat's head to fit into a milk stanchion. They cut off their horns – which serve many practical purposes for the goats – to make it easier to get them through the milking line. Goats and sheep are also castrated without anesthesia, and goats also have their wattles cut.

Sheep raised for their fur – which humans turn into what they call wool – endure something else entirely. You may have heard of something called mulesing. This is the name for the removal of pieces of skin from around the tail of a sheep. It’s common practice in Australia, where most sheep are raised for their fur. Defenders say it is a way to prevent flystrike (which is the incidence of maggots eating at their skin, and you can learn more about that on by doing some research on the lack of necessity of this cruel practice. Performed with large metal shears, no anesthetic is used.

Visit http://www.peta.org/ for more on the campaign against mulesing. After striking a deal with the Australian wool industry, it’s supposed to be phased out by 2010. We’ll see.

DOGS
Dogs kept as research tools in laboratories have their vocal cords severed (and I’ve even heard of people doing this to their own dogs). This is merely so that the researchers don’t have to listen to the dogs barking – ya know – communicating – all the time. Other ways we mutilate the animals we are supposed to love is by cropping the ears and tails of certain breeds of dogs – a cosmetic surgery – this is major surgery - that has no medical or practical purpose other than to continue this tradition and to meet the standards for certain breeds set forth by the American Kennel Club.

CATS
A hideous procedure that has gotten a lot of attention lately, thanks to activists and politicians who are banning this practice in many cities and states, is the declawing of domestic cats. Declawing is not a painless procedure, and it’s also not done for medical reasons. The cat's claw is not a toenail at the end of the toe as in other animals. It is movable digit attached to muscle as a finger might be. To declaw a cat is to cut off half of their toes. This is just another way that we just remove body parts for our own convenience.

WILD ANIMALS KEPT AS PETS
Finally and related to this is the barbaric act of keeping wild animals as pets. Aside from all of the ethical problems with this, people who do keep wild animals often have their claws and sharp teeth removed. The injustice of that is so striking to me – these dignified animals with their strength and dignity just cut off. It’s like the bear baiting of many years ago – when a declawed and detoothed bear was chained up and essentially mauled by a dog – for entertainment purposes. Also, if you don’t know about the bears in China confined in small cages practically no bigger than their own bodies just to extract the bile from their gallbladder – well their claws are removed. In addition, the bears are subjected to painful methods of bile extraction whereby a steel catheter is inserted into the abdomen. This is known as the "free-dripping" technique.

For more on the farming of bears for their bile, please visit http://www.animalsasia.org/. It’s’ a fantastic organization that has been so incredibly effective at rescuing these bears and trying to ban this practice.

Unfortunately, I think I’m probably leaving out some examples, but there you have it. The choices we make about animals' bodies comes down to human greed, gluttony, convenience, and vanity – not necessity.

Hypothetical Hype

Those of you familiar with my regular essays and podcasts know that one of my favorite pastimes is to respond to the myths about animals rights and vegetarianism. We create so many justifications to continue eating animals that we don't even notice that most of them don't even reflect reality; they're just hypothetical scenarios that enable us to hold fast to a particular perception of ourselves. I remember creating one or two myself before I thought long and hard about what I was contributing to. When I got really honest with myself about how lame my excuses were, I stopped - eating animals and making excuses. That decision was the best one I ever made, and it has filled my life with meaning and purpose.

So here is one of my favorites. I'll feature more in the coming weeks.

-"I don't have a problem with animals being killed for food, but I don't want to support the torture and abuse that take place on factory farms. In fact, I think I could even humanely kill my own animals to cause the least amount of suffering." I realize there are people who feel this way, and though I disagree with the premise (because I, personally, do have a problem with animals being killed for human consumption), that's not my issue with this statement. My problem has to do with the fact that it rests on hypotheticals:

1. This person isn't raising and killing her own animals, and by virtue of that, she is, unfortunately, contributing to the abuse and torture of animals.

2. What people don't realize is that even on the most idealized farms, animals are not lovingly and "humanely euthanized" when they're fat enough for the dinner table. They are sent to the same dirty slaughterhouses as "conventionally raised" animals. It's not legal for ranchers to kill their own animals (unless they're going to eat them themselves) and sell them to the public. The transportation alone is incredibly stressful (and often fatal) for the animals, and the slaughterhouse itself is a place of fear, pain, blood, and death.

3. I have seen what would be considered "humane slaughter," all I saw was an animal struggling to fight for her life. She did not want to die. She did not want her head removed. She did not want the blade to touch her body. As the blood drained from her, all I could remember was that line in Tim Robbins' film Dead Man Walking, when Sister Prejean lamented at how "calculated" the killing [of the deathrow inmate] was. The systematic execution of human beings is no different than that of animals - even in the most "idealized" situation, it is still messy, bloody, deliberate, painful, and unnecessary.

When we rely on hypotheticals to justify real-life situations, it is only because we want to hold onto a perception of ourselves that may or may not be true. I don't believe any of us want to consciously and willingly contribute to abuse or torture. But, there just isn't any way of getting around it when we eat meat. If we can't tell ourselves the truth about what we're supporting, then we need to ask ourselves what we're avoiding. Until then, we're not living in Truth - neither our own or that of the real world.

Those of us who have stopped eating animals aren't off the hook, either. Every time we hear someone justifying eating animals, we have an opportunity to reflect the truth. There are gentle, respectful ways of doing this, but there is no question that we must do it. The animals need us as their voice. If not you, then who?