| Angie's
Story |
 | In
the sheds we entered at Wegman's Egg Farm, there were long manure pits below the
rows of battery cages. Hens who manage to escape from the crowded battery cages
often fall through into the pits below. Once there, they have no way to access
food or water. Of the hens we found there, some had surrendered to a dark end,
sinking into the murk and giving up. In such a terrible place, this reaction is
hardly a surprise. Some of the hens, though, showed us that they had resolved
to survive. Angie was one of those hens. We saw her soon after entering the pits,
slowly making her way along the top of a tall manure pile. Without hesitating,
Melanie showed impressive balance and agility as she moved to scoop her up. Angie
saw her coming and tried to scoot away quickly, but was hindered by the fact that
her feet and legs were encased in solid dried manure. Only a couple of toenails
were visible at the ends of her 'boots'. | |
 | Through
the entire ride to her new home, Angie periodically stomped her muck-covered feet
inside the plastic carrier. It sounded like someone rapping on a door, the manure
on her feet was so hard. She backed up and stomped harder the first time I reached
in to give her some water and food, then slowly inched forward to investigate
the offerings. When she recognized the water, she drank all of it and seemed to
look for more, so I opened the carrier again to add some. Again, she stomped,
backed up, then came forward, but this time with a more confident movement toward
the water and my hand. She drank, ate, then settled back into the corner. Her
body condition was surprisingly good, considering where she had been. She didn't
look terribly underweight and unlike most of the birds in the cages, she had very
little feather loss. Other than the fact that she could barely walk because of
the manure immobilizing her feet, she seemed to have taken care of herself very
well in a very unlikely situation. | |
 | Her
feet needed soaking to free up the manure . . . When we reached the place that
would be Angie's new home, she had to endure the unpleasant ordeal of having her
feet cleaned off. Closer inspection revealed that the material cemented onto her
would have to be soaked before it would come off. After soaking in a mixture of
hydrogen peroxide and water, hoof trimmers and other tools had to be used in order
to carefully cut the debris from her feet. After about fifteen minutes, Angie's
feet and legs were her own again and she was ready to take her first steps. When
she was released, she quickly righted herself and lifted her right leg to take
a step, then froze. Image . . . and horse hoof trimmers cut off the manure. She
seemed truly astonished, holding her foot in the air and bending her neck to inspect
it carefully from all angles. After a very long moment, she began to lower it,
ever so slowly, and placed her foot flat on the straw. She looked down again and
almost lost her balance. | |
 | After
living with her 'boots' for so long, she didn't recognize the sensation of her
foot on the ground, and no doubt had never felt a surface of clean straw with
those feet, accustomed to the wire mesh floor of a battery cage. My heart welled
up as I watched her find her balance and quicken her pace until she was running
across the straw to rejoin the other hens. We don't know how long she spent in
the manure pits, but it obviously took a great deal of time to accumulate that
much hardened manure on her feet. I wonder what all those days were like for her
there, struggling through the quicksand of the manure pits, surviving because
of her tenacious refusal to give up and die. I am so grateful for the message
Angie brings about perseverance and personal strength.
She is a beautiful
soul, now spending her days pecking outside, dustbathing, and walking confidently
on solid ground. | |
| Friday,
05 August 2005 Today Compassionate Consumers members Melanie Ippolito and Adam
Durand will answer to felony charges for documenting conditions and rescuing sick
and dying chickens at Wegmans Egg Farm. The state police filed a warrant for their
arrest yesterday, and Ippolito and Durand will voluntarily travel to Wolcott,
Wayne County to be arraigned at Wolcott Town Court at noon today. The charges
include third-degree burglary, which carries a maximum sentence of 7 years in
prison. | |
| Factory
Farming In the U.S. alone, over 8.6 billion animals are slaughtered each year
for human consumption. They are slaughtered in high speed production-line fashion
as if they are inanimate objects. *
Regulations requiring ‘humane’ slaughter are rarely enforced, and birds (who represent
more than 85% of animals killed for food) are not included in these regulations.
Animals are often cut, skinned, scalded, and/or drowned while still alive. *
Cows are forced to produce 10 times the milk they would naturally generate to
feed their calves. The vast majority of U.S. cows suffer from mastitis and other
diseases of the udder. Once their production level drops (usually around the age
of five), the cows are slaughtered for low-grade beef. *
Male calves, a lucrative "by-product" of the dairy industry, are raised in solitary
confinement for veal. Most are taken from their mothers just 24 hours after birth.
For 16 weeks, calves are chained by the neck while isolated and held in small
crates. To keep their flesh pale, calves are fed iron-deficient diets. *
Restrained in stalls barely bigger than their bodies, sows are continually impregnated
and forced to produce piglets in intensive confinement. Living in their own excrement
on concrete floors, pigs often suffer from pneumonia and lung damage and constant
foot and ankle pain. Boars are routinely castrated without pain killers or anesthesia.
*
Egg-laying hens are crammed inside wire cages so tightly they cannot stretch a
wing. They are ‘de-beaked’ with a hot blade, and are likely to suffer from a number
of health problems. After a year of laying eggs, hens are slaughtered for their
meat. In the breeding of laying hens, any males born (more than 200 million a
year) are discarded on-site, which usually means dumping them into a trashbag
to suffocate them or grinding them into feed. *
Due to the overfishing of sea animals to dangerously low population levels, aquatic
animals are now ‘raised’ on factory farms where millions of them are crowded into
concrete pools. Bacteria, parasites, chemicals, and waste run off into waterways
infecting people, animals, and the entire ecosystem. *
Food industry experiments are a booming business in the U.S. Solely to increase
profits. Animals are genetically altered to grow bigger and faster to unnatural
proportions, causing extreme discomfort and suffering. Often, animals’ bodies
are unable to physically support their artificially overgrown muscles––the parts
people eat. *
Since farmed animals are excluded from the Animal Welfare Act and state anti-cruelty
laws, it is often considered more cost effective for a farmer to let a suffering
animal die than to medically treat her/him. | |
| Voiceless
- the fund for animals |
Voiceless
envisions a world in which animals are treated with respect and compassion.
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