For Immediate Release:
December 10, 2001

Contact:
Lisa Lange 757-622-7382, ext. 1602

PETA CONFRONTS USDA RE CRUELTY DOWN ON THE FARM
Petition Claims Abuse of Animals Bred for Meat Covered by Federal Law

Washington — Tomorrow, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) will file a landmark petition with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), citing the agency's failure to apply the federal Humane Slaughter Act to animals handled and killed on factory farms. PETA contends that the USDA has arbitrarily chosen to apply the Act to cover only the treatment of animals in slaughterhouses, a policy that violates the mandate of the Act because it allows animals to suffer without inspection from birth onwards, including during transport to slaughter. Copies of the petition including video evidence will be released at a news conference tomorrow.

Date: Tuesday, December 11
Time: 12:30 p.m.
Place: National Press Club, Lisagor Room

The Humane Slaughter Act states that “the slaughtering of livestock and the handling of livestock in connection with slaughter shall be carried out only by humane methods” (emphasis added). Animals raised for food are raised “in connection with slaughter,” PETA wants the USDA to recognize its obligation to prevent cruelty throughout their lives, not just at slaughterhouses.

Many of the approximately 150 million “livestock” animals killed for food in the United States each year are routinely:

• castrated and dehorned and have their tails cut off, ears notched, and teeth clipped without the use of anesthesia

• kept in conditions so cramped that they cannot turn around or fully stretch and must lie in their own excrement, resulting in limb ulceration and upper-respiratory illnesses

• transported in extreme weather and succumb to heat exhaustion; in the winter, pigs and cows freeze to the sides of trucks and their skin is torn off

• slaughtered cruelly on the factory farm itself; they are bludgeoned to death with gate poles, hammers, and wrenches, painfully and slowly killed by being improperly bolted, and simply left to starve or dehydrate to death if debilitated and unable to reach food or water

“Animals don't suddenly develop the capacity to suffer on the day they arrive at the slaughterhouse; they possess that capacity their entire lives,” says PETA attorney Matthew Penzer. “A ruling in PETA's favor would make a world of difference to animals who live in pain every day and die horribly, by the millions, on farms every year.”

The petition with video and photograph attachments may be viewed at PETA.org