The images in the following program are highly sensitive and may be as disturbing to viewers as they were to us. However, we have to show the truth about cruelty to animals, praying that you will help to stop it.

I don’t know how to scream it from the rooftops that people will actually start to get it. But we need to get it because what we’re doing to animals today is absolutely unjustifiable. And anyone that gets to know any of these animals as individuals, as thinking, feeling individuals could never be comfortable consuming these products.

In today’s Stop Animal Cruelty we examine the sickening truth behind meat, dairy and eggs with registered dietitian, nutritionist, author and lecturer Brenda Davis from Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada.

Ms. Davis is a vegan, and a past chair of the Vegetarian Nutrition Dietetic Practice Group of the American Dietetic Association. She has co-authored seven best-selling books including: “Becoming Vegan,” “The New Becoming Vegetarian,” “Defeating Diabetes,” “Dairy-free and Delicious” and the newly released, “Becoming Raw.”

I was your basic conventional dietitian 30 years ago. I was schooled in traditional nutrition. I’m Canadian. I taught Canada’s Food Guide, with four food groups, one of which is meat. I became a vegan dietitian because of this very issue. What would have ever possessed me to go from a basic registered dietitian/ community nutritionist teaching Canada’s Food Guide to a vegan activist?

I’ll tell you the story. I lived in northern Ontario at the time, and one of my best friends who was actually the best man at my wedding was on his way deer hunting. And he was going to stop by for a little visit on his way. And I remember thinking to myself, “How can I make him feel so guilty that he won’t shoot that deer?”

When he arrived I said to him, “How can you feel good about taking a weapon like a gun and going and shooting such a beautiful innocent animal. This animal has no defense against you. It’s not a sport. Sports you have same equipment for both teams. (Competition) There’s not the same equipment here.” And I said, “It’s not fair. It’s not fair.” And what he said to me changed the course of my career and my life.

The friend pointed out that even though Brenda did not shoot animals, she was personally responsible for killing them every time she went to a grocery store and bought the neatly packed corpses covered in cellophane for her meals.

And he silenced me. And at that point I decided that it was time that I took responsibility for the food that was sitting on my plate. And I started to learn about what has happened to our system of animal agriculture.

What Brenda discovered next was shocking beyond belief.

Today 90% of the animals we eat in North America are raised in what we call a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation, C-A-F-O’s . And we are looking at 10 billion land animals a year, 17 billion sea animals a year in North America alone. We can’t even wrap our brains around those kind of numbers.

Cows, pigs, chickens and other innocent and gentle animals trapped in these CAFOs are caged up or jammed together, deprived of even the most basic of necessities, drugged, mutilated, and violently abused before they are hauled to the slaughterhouse and viciously killed. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, approximately 58 billion animals were killed for food worldwide in 2008.

This is a conservative estimate, as it does not take into account the high death toll of aquatic animals, wild animals displaced by animal agriculture, and the staggering number of animals that were victims of the factory farming system that died for reasons other than slaughter. US government statistics reflect that nationally 1 in 10 farm animals die of stress-induced disease or injury even before they reach the abattoir.

How can human beings justify enslaving these animals in the way that we do? They are literally robbed of everything that they need to function physically and mentally to be the animals that they are meant to be.

Animals used for food production are no different from us or our beloved dog or cat companions. They too experience profound emotions like joy and sadness and deeply desire to live in peace and tranquility.

Pigs would live 10 to 15 years, much like dogs. Their intelligence has been rated as equivalent to a three to five year old child. Dogs have been rated about a two-and-a-half year old child, so (they are) even smarter than dogs.

Our bright and affectionate porcine friends are callously treated as mere tools of production by the factory farming system.

In Confined Animal or Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (there) are 100,000 animals in one building. They never see the light of day. They have a stall so small they can’t lay down nor turn around. They’re on slanted floors so their excrement goes out automatically. The stench is so bad; the dust and dander and ammonia is so bad!

These animals have smellers (noses) that are 200 times more sensitive than ours. We have to put a gas mask just to go in the place and manage it. These animals live four to six months. They’re pumped with hormones and antibiotics. When they’re just little tiny babies their ears are docked, their tails are cut off, they’re castrated...

The pigs are forced to live in obscene filth and are in pain all their lives. The journey to the slaughterhouse is yet another ghastly nightmare for these frightened souls.

We’re literally trying to produce the greatest amount of meat for the least amount of money, with no consideration for the animal whatsoever. We treat them like they’re an inanimate object. And then at the time of slaughter, they’re four to six months of age. We truck them off and millions die being frozen to the sides of these trucks.

They get to the slaughterhouse and 50% of them have crippling bone diseases because of the condition of the slanted floor. Even as babies, four to six months old, 70% have pneumonia at the time of slaughter. The (production) line speeds are now so fast, we put through about 1,100 of them per hour. Ten to 30% of these animals are improperly stunned and skinned and boiled alive.

Now how we as human beings can justify treating these amazing creatures this way…. If we raised one of these animals in our homes, they’re like a family dog. What differentiates the dog from the pig? Nothing! Except that we call them food.

Sir Paul McCartney, a former member of the Beatles, famously once said, “If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegetarian.”

Somehow whatever is tradition in our culture is somehow okay. You know, slavery was okay when it was tradition. It doesn’t make it okay. Nothing will ever make this okay. This is not okay and the only reason our culture is thinking it’s okay is because we are so far removed from that system. You know, it’s all behind locked doors. If people actually could see what’s going on, I don’t know they’d be willing to eat that meat.

And the thing to remember is this: that we are in a situation in North America where we have plenty of food, plenty of food. We’ve no need to be consuming the dead bodies of these animals, who are tortured animals. None!

What many people do not realize is that the horror and death we see in the meat industry is the fate of every factory-farmed dairy cow and egg-laying hen.

Both of these industries, the dairy industry and the egg industry are absolutely brutal industries in my view. They’re horrible. Take a look at the way that these animals are treated. Eggs, it’s just insane. The egg layers have space (in their cage) about the size not even as big as a piece of paper. They need four times that just to spread their wings.

At hatcheries that supply egg-laying and chicken meat-producing factory farms with birds, male chicks are considered to have no value as they neither can lay eggs nor be profitably raised for meat.

Chicks that are born, if they’re female they go on to the egg laying industry. If they’re male, they are ground up alive and go back into the feed or they’re suffocated in garbage bags. They’re treated like a piece of garbage. It’s just beyond belief. That’s from an ethical perspective. We slaughter one and a half million little baby male chicks every hour because they’re useless to the egg industry. (Right.)

From an ecological perspective, same thing, it’s all bad news. From a human health perspective, it defies rationality to assume that any species would require the milk of another species for their survival. What a great blunder of nature or of God or whatever, that would have been!

Imagine dogs needing the milk of cats, or we need cow’s milk as much as we need moose milk, deer milk, dog milk, or cat milk. It just doesn’t make sense. Cow’s milk is a good source of calcium, it’s a very rich source of calcium; so is the milk of every other mammal. It doesn’t make it essential for human health.

What can each and every one of us do to shut down the barbarous production of meat, dairy, and eggs and save the precious lives of billions of animals worldwide?

Number one is just absolutely do not consume any animal products and see that you’re not depriving yourself of anything. Make a fabulous vegan feast and share it at work, bring it to work and show people how wonderful vegan food can be. Bring your family to a vegan restaurant. You know, just share vegan in a loving, respectful way with the people that you associate with. And I think that’s the very best thing any of us can do for the animals if we’re vegan, is to be an amazing example of vegan.

Be such an amazing example of health that people say, “What do you eat, you look so healthy?” Be fit, be joyful and share wonderful food. And I think that’s the most powerful tool any of us have is our own personal example.

Indeed, as consumers, we have the power to make daily purchasing decisions that prevent or continue cruelty to animals. We can make a wise and compassionate choice each time we sit down to eat; to live and let live. Brenda Davis, we applaud you advocacy for the animals imprisoned in CAFOs and elsewhere and raising public awareness through your books and lectures that kindness to animals is what humanity needs to practice right now by adopting the loving plant-based diet.

For more details on Brenda Davis, please visit www.BrendaDavisRD.com
Books by Ms. Davis are available at www.Amazon.com

Thoughtful viewers, this concludes this week’s Stop Animal Cruelty program. Coming up next is Enlightening Entertainment after Noteworthy News. May all beings forever live in happiness and peace.