Demonstration against Pig Brutality

by ?? Thu Jun 23, 2005 17:36

Time?
Place?

That is, if you have actually arranged a time and place.

by Ciaran Long - Alliance For Animal Rights. Thu Jun 23, 2005 18:27

Demo info;-

Time:- 12 30 till 2pm.
Place:- Department of Agriculture, Kildare St., Dublin 2.

by Ciaran Long - Alliance For Animal Rights Thu Jun 23, 2005 19:49

The Department of Agriculture has been slammed over claims a farmer was forced to kill his pigs with a sledgehammer. The incident took places on a farm in Co.Waterford in 2002 but details only emerged this weekend. The department had suspected the 4,300 pigs were being fed with carbodox-an illegal substance linked to cancer in humans-and insisted they be destroyed.

But, because of fears of contamination, the porkers could not be sent to a slaughterhouse and had to be killed on the farm-at the farmers expense. A stun-gun was being used but it broke and about 50 pigs were killed with the sledgehammer. The farmer said: "It was awful, but they forced me to do it. I had no alternative."

Labour agricultural spokeswoman Mary Upton, called for a full investigation yesterday. She claimed: "It appears there was little support available to the farms when he was faced with the problem of slaughtering 4,000 pigs and this appears to have contributed to the shocking scenes. "It is simple not good enough for the Department of Agriculture to shrug its shoulders and say the department inspectors present made no adverse comments in their reports."

A department spokesperson said nothing illegal had taken place during the cull. He added that a court case was pending over the allegations that illegal substances had been fed to the animals.

by animal nitrate Thu Jun 23, 2005 21:32

Please be careful with such demonstrations. Some of these animal rights groups have a serious case to answer. Are they more interested in their own political agendas or the welfare of animals? Outrage is a laudible response to cruelty, but please channel your energy wisely:

"In 2003, PETA euthanized over 85 percent of the animals it took in," said a press release from the lobby, "finding adoptive homes for just 14 percent. By comparison, the Norfolk (Va.) SPCA found adoptive homes for 73 percent of its animals and Virginia Beach SPCA adopted out 66 percent."

by A Proud PETA Supporter Thu Jun 23, 2005 21:58

PETA STATEMENT AT NEWS CONFERENCE REGARDING EUTHANASIA

June 17, 2005

Daphna Nachminovitch:

Since the news from North Carolina, we have received countless
enquiries. The two most pressing are "why is PETA in North Carolina?"
and "why do you euthanize animals?" We would like the opportunity to
answer these two questions. We will take your additional questions at
the end. First, let me explain why we started going to North Carolina.

My name is Daphna Nachminovitch, and I oversee PETA's Domestic Animal
and Wildlife Department, including our Community Animal Project and our
spay clinic, SNIP.

Let me give you some background as to how and why we started working in
North Carolina. In 2000, PETA was contacted by a police officer who was
distressed by conditions in the county pound. We were given photographs
which showed one dog drowning in a pool of water, too sick and weak to
lift her head, a starving dog eating a dead kitten, and a dead puppy
found in the gas chamber shed.

PETA then visited the Bertie County Animal Shelter to see things
firsthand. We found sick, injured animals in need of veterinary care, a
leaky windowless gas box in which animals were placed to be killed, and
facility that had no electricity and no covering for its cages. PETA
immediately offered aid to Bertie County and to the City of Windsor,
which operates its own facility within the county limits. There, animals
were restrained on a metal pole and shot with a .22. Shortly after this,
we found out that Hertford County's homeless animals were also gassed.
We made arrangements to pay a local veterinarian to euthanize those
animals by painless injection. PETA to this date subsidizes humane
euthanasia at the Hertford facility, and has so far paid nearly $9,000
for this service.

Our trips to Northampton County began after it was discovered that a
local veterinarian was illegally killing animals with injections of a
paralytic, succinylcholine chloride, which causes respiratory arrest
before loss of consciousness, leaving animals to suffer horrific deaths
by suffocation while their organs freeze up.

PETA has spent well over a quarter of a million dollars to improve the
facilities, build and deliver doghouses for animals left outside with
nothing but a metal barrel or not even so much as a tree in all weather.
Even when we try sometimes, we still can't prevent suffering. This poor
dog-despite our efforts-was retied in such a way that he could not reach
the shade we had provided him by delivering a doghouse. He baked to
death in the hot sun, just 2 weeks ago. We also spay and neuter animals
as well as provide other medical care, apply flea and tick preventative
to chained dogs who become so infested that they open sores on their
bodies from scratching, give away straw and tie-outs, send animal
control officers for training, hire staff to clean the shelters,
purchase supplies for the shelter, and even build from the ground up a
brand new cat housing barn in Bertie County. We have only ever helped
and alleviated cruelty and suffering.

I would like to show you these photographs.

Please take a look at the albums we have placed on the tables.

I will now turn this over to PETA's president, Ingrid Newkirk.

Now let me explain why PETA believes euthanasia is the kindest gift to a
dog or cat unwanted and unloved. Please also try to put yourself in the
place of those of us at PETA who care deeply for animals yet who have to
hold the animals in our arms and take their lives because there is
nowhere for them to go. The fact is that we cannot stop euthanasia
until people stop letting dogs and cats bring new litters into the
world. For every litter born, it is estimated that over 1,000 more
animals will end up being destroyed as those litters grow up and start
having litters themselves within six months. The numbers of unwanted
animals are pretty impossible for the average person to imagine. If you
have not worked in an open-admission shelter - one which does not set a
limit on the number of animals it will accept and then turn away the
others - you would be shocked. North Carolina shelters kill 35 animals
annually for every 1,000 residents, and, as you have heard, most do not
die a humane death.

Someone asked could we not bring the animals from NC to Virginia to be
placed? Well, Virginia already faces its own problem of large numbers of
animals who can't find homes. We have actively lobbied for increased
license fees for unsterilized animals, we were instrumental in getting
Norfolk to pass a regulation requiring the animal shelter to
pre-sterilize animals before adoption, and we run a spay clinic seven
days a week to try to help. Citizens who are up in arms about the need
for euthanasia should join us in being up in arms about stopping the
flow of unwanted animals.

We were asked, could we not advertise for homes for them? The open
admission shelters advertise every day for the animals they have, yet
every day they must euthanise, they have no choice, because not enough
people come to offer good homes to the ones already there and more
animals are coming through the door.

Could we not turn the animals loose on the street? No, they would come
to a bad end in traffic or by starving or they would simply end up in a
shelter again.

Could we not run a refuge for them ourselves? Well, we could warehouse
them and fill this building in a month, easily. There isn't the space,
the money or the staff to do that properly for even one month's worth of
unwanted animals, and what would we do the month after that and the
month after that?

That is why we try to prevent current and future suffering by doing two
things:

1) we work at the roots, trying to stem the flow of unwanteds so that
there will be fewer to euthanise. We do that by education, by advocacy,
through pushy ads, by running a mobile sterilization clinic that has
spayed thousands of animals in this area alone in the last few years.

And 2) we give the unwanted animals a painless exit from an uncaring
world. We will not shy away from doing society's dirty work as long as
the alternative is a life of misery and a bad death. And that is the
alternative. As you have heard Ms. Nachminovitch say, in North Carolina,
in these impoverished counties, the alternative has been slow death or
bad death. Animals have frozen to death in the pounds there for lack of
heat in winter; they have drowned there during floods, they used to be
shot in the head with a .22 (and I ask you to imagine one man out there
trying to hold the dog with one hand and shoot accurately with the
other), and they were gassed to death in a windowless, metal box,
struggling to get out. We would not be doing our job if we didn't stop
those things.

There is no magic wand that will stop euthanasia, but each of us who has
been upset by realizing that it happens, can look into our soul and
honestly ask ourselves: "What am I doing to stop the overpopulation
crisis for dogs and cats? To stop the killing."

If the answer is just feeling bad about it or complaining, that is no
help at all. To fix the flow people must stop breeding, casually
acquiring, and then dumping animals. We did not create the problem, but
we try hard to fix it every single day. We also, from the very
beginning, have begged North Carolina counties to allow us to help them
establish on-site adoption programs and we can only hope that the
current level of interest, after all these years, may allow that to happen at last.

Finally, let me say how PETA euthanises, and you are welcome to watch us
do that, by appointment under conditions that you will not disturb the
animal. PETA uses a barbiturate, sodium pentobarbitol, to deliver one
injection into the dog or cat's leg. The animal is held lovingly and
petted and talked to as the solution enters the vein. For many of these
animals, that is the only loving touch they have ever felt. Unconsciousness occurs in a matter of two or three seconds and occurs
without trauma, without pain, and without the animal knowing.

PETA has never made a secret of the fact that most of the animals picked
up in North Carolina are euthanized. We want attention for euthanasia
but no one is usually interested in this depressing story.

Now we hope that the counties of North Carolina will still not only
welcome our services - for it would be a terrible step back if all that
is focused on is the matter of the bodies put in the dumpsters. That
conduct disgusts us, violates PETA protocol, happened without our
knowledge and can never be allowed to happen again, but our work must go
on. Thank you. We will now take your questions.

by Mad Cyril Thu Jun 23, 2005 22:23

The majority of the REAL european grassroot animal rights activists do not support PETA. A 24 million dollar bank account and they have a kill policy for their old and not so cute animals. Where is the animal rights logic in that? Stinks of an animal welfare organisation to me. And just in it for the money that they accumulate by riding on the backs of celebrities.

by SABWATCH Tue Jun 28, 2005 01:13

for illegal dumping of animal carcasses.
Have a look at www.cnn.com backtrack five days ago.
As per usual the Boul Bernie is lashing out at the WRONG person!If you did your research you would see that it is the dept of agriculture offical /dept investigation squad that should be "taken out" not the poor sod of a pig farmer who was orderd by the Dept of Ag offical to kill his herd with totally inefficent means.
Does help to make sure you identify your correct target[s] before you start swinging the pick handle or setting off the ol petrol bomb.