quote:
Originally posted by Lid: Actually Chris it does not have to be like this. We can still eat animal products and not accept these kinds of things.
It is simply human greed that makes people intensively rear animals like this and treat them so badly. My grandfather and his forefathers were farmers. He abhorred cruelty to animals of any kind.
I agree with you 100%. I was brought up on a fairly large mixed farm in Scotland. We raised Scottish Black-Faced sheep, beef cattle, and pigs. There was also a small herd of Jerseys for milk, (we used to drink it raw and it was like nectar). We grew barley, oats, hay, turnips and silage for winter feed. We also kept hens, ducks and geese, but not commercially, just for eggs and the pot.
The people who worked on these kind of farms would find this treatment abhorrent. My grandfather, a shepherd on a neighbouring farm once pole-axed a contract clipper for being 'too rough' on one of 'his' ewes.
...castration and docking, but if this is done when the animals are very young, then I don't have a problem with this myself.
Beef has to be castrated. Cows you see, are not on the whole not much good to eat. Most of the meat you seen in the shops is from stirks (steers if your on the east side of The Pond). You cannot keep 'heards' of bulls together as they would fight and can be difficult to handle. They are therefore castrated when young,using rubber rings. This makes them much more docile. It does not seem to distress them too much at all. They flinch a wee bit when the ring is first applied, but are soon back to normal. Their testicles fall of about 10 days afterwards.
Although I don't like PETA, I see nothing wrong with showing things how they are. I don't think this is throat ramming and should instead make us change the laws on animal production.
Again, I concurr.
[ 29. March 2004, 12:31 AM: Message edited by: corydoras ]