Things We Do for Animals

My Artifact for Animal Abuse is a movie called Earthlings. Earthlings shows hidden abuse that most companies try keep the public from being aware of. Earthlings is divided into five different sections: Pets, food production, clothing, entertainment, and scientific research. Pets are mistreated by a majority of people. Some are unintentional, other people intentionally hurt their animals. Earthlings shows scenes of animals getting beaten, dead bodies getting thrown in a garbage truck (without proper disposal), injured animals getting shot because the people can't afford a vet, strays dying by sun exposure, and the dangers of puppy mills. Any person can breed an animal, but not every person is certified. Those that are not certified, people should not buy animals from them. Make them run out of business and end the cruelty of puppy mills. Puppy mills are filthy, they don't show you the parents because almost all of the time the parents are in poor conditions. The dogs are in cages, walking in fecal materials. Strongly advisable to immediately bathe the dog. Most dogs from the puppy mills develop personality disorders, a common disorder being food aggression, a common reason for family's to get rid of the dog because the dog is redeemed as too aggressive for small children. Most stray dogs are of young age, a lot of them are pure bred dogs, and a lot of them die from sun exposure or Animal Control euthanizing them. People shouldn't dump their dog on the streets because they can't take care of them. The responsibility of buying a pet means the responsibility of finding the pet a new home if the pet can't get the proper care. It is common for people who move and cannot bring their pet to just let the dog roam the neighborhood or they leave them in the backyard of the abandoned house, some cases leave the dog inside the house. These pets eventually run out of food and water and have sun exposure. People willingly buy pets and don't take responsibility of getting them to the vet. These dogs get sick, and they do get injured. Some breeds are prone to more health problems than other breeds. Large dogs (german shepard) commonly get hip displasia, and elongated dogs (dashound) develop

spinal problems. Irresponsible people abandon these animals, some shoot them, instead of finding ways to save them. Some cases, it's cheaper to buy a new dog than to pay for the surgery. Food production is not as clean as most people believe it to be. Cows, pigs and chickens are slaughtered in the most disrespectful ways. Animals feel the shame, they understand what is going to happen to them and they are all afraid of what the future holds for them. People in the slaughterhouse are aware of the animal's feelings, because they have to prevent the symptoms of stress to keep the meat from getting infected. Temple Grandin is an autistic woman whom claims to be an animal whisperer. She has travelled through the chutes of slaughter houses and has identified all of the scary objects that cows face while preparing for slaughter. She now conducts an inspection each year to make sure that slaughter houses are less stressful, and that the cows don't moo (an indicator of stress). Earthlings shows scenes of cows getting bolted through the head (a form of killing the cow), hung up on strings tied around the ankles and the conveyor belt carries them off to a place where they are sliced at the neck and drained of blood. The blood gets caught in a bucket. The cow then gets sent to a basin of boiling hot water to burn off the fur and hair in preparation for the butcher. The cow doesn't always die by the bolt. Surprisingly, most of the cows don't die by the bolt. When they get transported to the part of getting the blood drained, some of the cows survive that part. Most die, but a good proportion survive the blood-draining process. All of the living cows die by the time they are dunked in the boiling water. They drown, and they get burned to death. Earthlings shows the pigs and chickens next. The baby chicks get their beaks removed, so they can't pluck their feathers, or the neighboring chicken. Pigs and chickens get put in tight pens, with their species. The pigs cannibalize each other. They chew off each other's tail and they rip off each other's ears. The chickens are put in tight box pens and they kill each other by climbing on top of each other and suffocating the chicken that is underneath. In the 1970's, people didn't nearly consume as much chicken as we do today. What the average person consumes in one week is about how much people in the 70's consumed in a year.

The only way to end the cruelty of slaughterhouses is to end the demand of meat. Meaning that everyone would have to become vegetarian. If you look at the shape of teeth and function, carnivores have sharp teeth for tearing in to meat and herbivores have flat teeth from grinding plants. If you look at the shape of human teeth, our teeth are flat, not sharp. This is an indicator that we are not truly meant to be omnivores. The average American lives to be 65 years of age. Meat has preservatives and has outbreaks of diseases leading items to be on recall because someone had become sick. People who don't eat meat tend to live longer. Centenarians are a culture of people whom have exceeded the life expectancy that Americans have. Their average life span is 101 years of age. These people are vegetarian, they exercise and they socialize with people around them. People at the age 100 had great posture, they didn't need the assistance of canes or wheelchairs, and they were not over weight. Another indicator that people would fare better without meat sources. Clothing is another obstacle that we face. Our material comes from sheep wool and they don't get the best treatment either. They get shaved and razor burned. No one pays much attention to their cries. They get muzzled to muffle the sounds and to prevent biting. Sheep are not very strong animals. They have the ability to kill themselves whenever they get stressed out. For example, if a chicken is chasing a lamb and the lamb decides that it gives up on running, it will drop down dead. People have to watch the stress levels to keep the lamb alive. During clothing production, the dead sheep get sent to grocery stores. Entertainment is the next section. Earthlings shows what happens behind the scenes at circus' (the training process) and it shows on the scene rodeos (people don't realize the abuse, they are too excited about the wrangling). The elephants performing in the circus get abused by the circus trainer. The circus lies about the animals not being abused, they say the animals want to perform for people. Truth is that the animals perform because they don't want to be beaten. The animals eventually fight back and the public gets astonished that the circus animals lash out and parade streets attacking things. This is how they express their pain and let out their fears.

People have trouble bottling up emotions, animals shouldn't be beaten for expressing themselves. In rodeos, cattle receive a lot of neck and body damage. The cattle run at top speed, get looped, and yanked back at a 90 degree angle. The crowd cheers, and the cattle get hog-tied at the limbs so it can't run. Bull riding and horse bucking is another part of the rodeo that is abusive. The bull and horse get the rope over their genitalia, the person gets on the bull or horse. When the gates open, the rider pulls the rope hard and hurts the bull and horse, causing them to buck. With each buck, the person continues to yank that rope. The bulls and horses get rope burn on the anal sacks, the public think about how long the cowboys stay on the backs. When the person falls off, the bull or horse stops bucking and tries to find an escape. A set of cowboys rope the bull or horse in and bring them back to the gates for the next round. The final section is scientific research. Animals get tested on for medicine and for products. Most people are aware of medical testing, on rats and other lab animals. Most people are not aware of the testing for other products outside of medicine. Earthlings shows scenes of lab rats and other quick reproducing animals for medical testing, and it shows a chimp testing out a helmet. During the medical testing, the medicines cause a lot of defects and kill a lot of these animals. The test results that they get from animals is a lot different from the results that scientist get from humans. Medical testing isn't restricted to animals, there is process that scientist undergo. They test the animal till they get the desired results, test humans that are willing to be sacrificed (most of the results differ), find that it doesn't work, and the scientist go back to testing on animals. That is why medicine has so many warnings on the bottles, because those are the results of the tested humans and the tested animals. The chimp testing the helmet never survives. The people strap the helmet on the chimp, but the chimp on a stretch table and they hook up a piece to the head that is suppose to give the speed and impact of a bike crashing. The neck gets snapped, first thing, before the actual part of the helmet gets tested. If the chimp survives that part, the chimp has a severe neck injury. Continuing the process, the chimps head is flung everywhere. The head gets banged up and down, tossed side to

side; this is the part that actually tests the helmet. The simulator stops. The inventory tester decides that one test is not good enough. The simulator starts again. Helmets are commonly tested 3-5 times before the product passes the test. The chimp is dead between the first and the second round. We are a dominant species and we don't share our planet with the creatures that have equal rights to be on the same planet as us. Earthlings quotes a man by the last name of Singer, an animal rights activist, ... The smugness with which men could do with other species as he pleased exemplified the most extreme racist theories, the principle that might is right. People use the power of fear to get the desired responses from animals. Animals then undergo the three stages of truth: ridicule (getting bossed around), violent opposition (reaching the breaking point and fighting back) and acceptance (getting beaten till forced to behave or die). Overall, we need to change how we treat our animals or we won't have an Earth of creatures to admire. The people of our future would look back and stereotype us as the monsters, not as the people who we think of ourselves as of today. It's never too late to change, awareness is the first step to a change, changes in our lifestyles are the next.