Animal cruelty: the facts we don’t want to hear
By David Noble writer for End the Lie
Part one – Lab Experiments and Factory Farming
Here we see a chicklet being "debeaked" in an industrial farming operation
Animals feel pain and fear just as we do. Do these facts alone not make the way we treat them wrong?
I personally have heard it said countless times; if this cruelty is a benefit to humanity, it is justified. I am sure if animals could speak they would disagree.
Throughout history mankind has enslaved those that are deemed weak. It seems to be in our nature to try to justify cruelty when we can benefit from it. A perfect example of this is the sweat shop culture that so many of our big name brand stores profit from. Should we, as a society, be putting profit before our conscience? Should we not be trying to evolve away from cruelty?
Every year around 50–100 million vertebrate animals are used in experiments. It is hard to imagine the suffering and fear that these animals have to endure before they are euthanized at the end of the studies. A perfect example of the cruelty involved is the Draize test. This involves rabbits being blinded by having various products forced into their eyes. Can you even begin to imagine the 
pain and suffering these rabbits have to endure? Other tests include animals being poisoned, deprived of food, water or sleep, subjected to skin or eye irritants, subjected to psychological distress, deliberately infected with diseases, subjected to brain damage, paralyzed, surgically mutilated, irradiated, burned, gassed, force-fed, electrocuted, and killed. I would ask anyone who supports these practices to watch the video below and to examine their conscience.
Despite the high cost of these tests ninety-two per cent of new drugs fail in clinical trials – after they have passed tests on animals according to the 2004 Food and Drug Administration report.
The food industry is another example of where animal cruelty is widely accepted. But do we really benefit from these practices by putting profit before what is morally right?
Every year over 9 billion animals are slaughtered for human consumption in America alone. The majority of these animals are kept in deplorable conditions where many die of stress or disease. Take the fact that cows kept on factory farms live only about 4 or 5 years, as to the life expectancy of up to 20 years enjoyed by cows of an earlier era. These are made pregnant through the use of artificial insemination to achieve high levels of productivity so dairy farmers can make a bigger profit. The treatment that many of these cows suffer can be viewed in this video by PETA which was shot while undercover in 2009.
The plight of these milking cows is just one example of many to be found on conventional farms where profit is put before the welfare of the animals. Another example of this cruelty is the treatment of hens. Watch this video to see what I mean.
It is easy to ignore the suffering of others, whether it be human or animals when we ourselves do not need to see or endure it. It’s not just a question of morals, but also of the safety of our food that must be examined. This is a subject that I intend to cover in some depth in a later article. Watch the video below to get an idea why this is also an issue.
It worries me that as a society we feel that these practices are acceptable. We no longer try to live as one with nature, but instead try to control it. I feel that we are already starting to pay the price for our arrogance and that this price will indeed be high.
“Until he extends his circle of compassion to include all living things, man will not himself find peace.” — Albert Schweitzer
This is awful. Animals do not deserve to suffer excruciating pain forced by humans to benefit ourselves – why would anyone want to know they were benefitted medically through torturing innocent animals when they were left hopeless to die? People need to know products they are using may be associated with animal cruelty.