Guest Editorial by Marty Fast, a former 4-H leader who lives in Ojai
Once again this year, the 4-H animals are on display at the Ventura County Fair. Many of these animals return home once the fair is over, but what happens to the pigs and other market animals? Market pigs begin their life with great pain and suffering. Procedures such as castration, tail docking and ear notching are all done with no painkillers or anesthesia.
Once these well-cared-for animals reach the fairgrounds, go to the judging arena and are purchased at auction, what happens next? They are forced into the livestock trucks and transported to the slaughterhouse to complete their short six-month life at 250 pounds.
Pigs are among the most highly intelligent mammals, comparable to primates and marine mammals in terms of their brain development. They have the most highly developed sense of smell of any mammal. When they reach the slaughterhouse after a long, crowded and terrifying ride, they become even more frightened by the cries of other animals and the smell of blood.
The Humane Slaughter Act, a federal law passed in 1958, requires that all swine, sheep, cattle and horses be humanely handled and rendered unconscious prior to being shackled, hoisted and bled at a slaughterhouse. This HSA is not enforced. The meat industry is indifferent to animal suffering. In an effort to keep the production line running, animals may not be properly stunned and, therefore, are shackled, hoisted, stuck and bled, and scalded while still conscious.
Gail A. Eisnitz has been investigating the abuse of animals for many years, and her work has appeared in numerous newspapers and magazines. She is chief investigator for the Humane Farming Association. Her book, “Slaughterhouse: The Shocking Story of Greed, Neglect, and Inhumane Treatment Inside the U.S. Meat Industry,” should be required reading for all 4-H market animal club members and their parents.
These market pigs were given names, bonded with their 4-H owners as a family pet, and trusted their owners to care for them and keep them safe. This is the ultimate betrayal. These 4-H market animal owners have been desensitized and programmed to believe that it is all right to trade an animal’s life for an inflated auction paycheck. What these 4-H members receive for their auctioned animals in no way reflects the price ranchers receive for their livestock. Few or none of these 4-H members will earn their living as livestock ranchers. These 4-H market animal projects are outdated and have no relevance.
Parents try to justify these projects by saying that the projects teach children responsibility and that the animals receive excellent care. This is true. However, it is a very short-term commitment. Children can learn responsibility by becoming involved in animal projects where the animal comes back home when the fair is over, instead of going to auction and the slaughterhouse. Raising a puppy for Guide Dogs also teaches responsibility.
Some adult friends who raised 4-H market animals when they were young have told me that they have never been able to rid themselves of the guilt of sending their market animal, that trusted them, to slaughter.
Related Stories
Today is Auction Day for the 4-H Animals.
http://www.ojaipost.com/2009/08/today_is_auction_day_for_the_4.shtml
Why 4-H Kids Should Not Send Their Animals to the Slaughterhouse
http://www.ojaipost.com/2009/08/why_4h_kids_should_not_send_th.shtml
Do 4-H Kids Really Know Where Their Animals Are Going?
http://www.ojaipost.com/2007/08/do_kids_really_know_where_thei.shtml
Earthlings
http://www.ojaipost.com/2008/03/earthlings_1.shtml
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Ventura County Fair Livestock Auction and Food Drive will Benefit Local Food Bank
Food Share
FOOD Share, Ventura County’s largest regional food bank serving more than 41,000 per month, is partnering with the Ventura County Fair to help feed the need of hunger, August 6-14.
Protein-rich foods, including meats and poultry, not only are important components to a balanced diet they are FOOD Share’s most needed items.
Thanks, Brian, I would be disappointed if you didn’t chime in!
Food Share is a wonderful program and it’s a nice gesture that extra meat is donated to people in need, and not languishing in someone’s freezer.
But it is ironic that we feel that even poor people need the most expensive and most polluting source of protein, instead of less expensive sources like rice and beans.
Let us be clear that poor people are not malnourished because they don’t have access to animal products They’re malnourished because they don’t have access to a healthy, diverse diet, which could just as easily be vegetarian or vegan.
There’s no need for people in industrialised nations, especially here in sunny California, to eat meat and dairy products three times a day, or even at all.
The scandal-plagued uber-rich vegetarian publisher of the Santa Barbara News-Press once wrote a now infamous editorial on Thanksgiving suggesting that the food banks and churches not hand out turkies, but instead give out rice and beans to the poor. It was not at all well received, particularly since the poor mostly eat affordable rice and beans anyway. It’s now remembered not as “Let them eat cake!” but as Wendy McCaw’s “Let them eat beans! essay.
One thing I think we can all agree on is that if the fair’s animals are slaughtered to then become a food source for organizations like Food Share, it is done humanely with protocols similar to Niman Ranch.
that’s turkeys (not turkies)!
What’s the best way to humanely slaughter an animal? Sneak up behind them and konk them on the head?
Brian, on one level that is funny. On another level there is nothing funny about inflicting pain, fear and suffering on an animal that is sacrificing its life to feed us.
The fact of the matter is that animal scientists like Temple Grandin, Ph.D., have designed ways of handling and slaughtering animals that are much more humane.
For starters, read her book, THINKING IN PICTURES.
Temple Grandin is autistic and thinks, feels, sees and experiences the world in a way that is far different from ours. Her insight into an animals world will knock your socks off!!
sort of, yeah, as long as the other animals can’t see. anyway, we answered your rhetorical question on another thread, but OK, I’ll play one last time:
Niman Protocols
Thanks, LS.
LS, about your earlier Comment #3, what I had in mind was not suggesting the poor eat rice and beans on holidays! The middle path as I see it is for everyone –rich or poor–to save meat for special occasions like Thanksgiving, from sources such as Niman Ranch. (Assuming that what I read about them is true, and not a marketing ploy. I have not had a chance to investigate this source.)
Please do check out the Niman Ranch website link above, (that LS already directed us to the other day).
After so many years of not eating meat, the whole idea has become foreign to me. I’m well-aware that under different circumstances if delicious vegetarian options were not available and if I were starving, I would eat just about anything.
I find it funny that people are spending their time putting down 4-H’ers. Having kids raise animals and take them to the auction gives people the opportunity to buy meat that has not been malnourished and has not been drug inflicted. I myself am a 4-Her and the opportunity to raise our own animals is very relevant compared to buying the meat full of steriods at the local grocery store. While you are spending your time putting down 4-H’ers, we are out there working out butts off raising our animals the right way.