In the United States, 27-billion animals are killed for food every year, and that number includes 10-billion land animals: cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys, and 17-billion aquatic animals, and that’s a low estimate.

On today’s Stop Animal Cruelty program we feature an interview with Heather Patrick, the Chicago (USA) Campaign Coordinator of Mercy For Animals, a US-based non-profit animal advocacy group founded in 1999 that conducts research, undercover investigations, rescue missions, community outreach and advertising campaigns to raise public awareness about the deep suffering of farm animals.

We actually started in rural Ohio (USA). And the case that started the organization was in a high school class, a typical biology dissection course. And the teacher of the class had also been a pig farmer. So he brought in some of the dead baby pigs for the children to dissect. The students looked into the box of piglets, and they realized that one of the pigs was still alive. The pig was moving around and making noise.

And one of the students in that class raised his hands and said, “Oh, I can take care of this. I know what to do.” He had also worked on the farm that the teacher owned. And so he went up to the front of the class and took the baby pig out of the box, and proceeded to slam the pig’s head into the ground in an attempt to kill him. Most of the students were so shocked.

And one of the students ran up and grabbed the piglet, ran into another classroom and found a teacher that was known to be compassionate towards animals and they rushed the pig to the veterinarian. It created this whole stir in the community because so many people were upset that the teacher had allowed this to happen.

It went to court and immediately the court threw out the case. And the reason that they threw out the case was that the way that they had tried to kill that pig was considered completely acceptable under the law for a pig under three weeks of age. It started many people in that community thinking that things are not right for farm animals in this country. So people got together and founded Mercy For Animals. Mercy For Animals ever since has been working to help farm animals.

From this humble beginning, Mercy For Animals has received widespread support throughout the US, and the organization now has more than 35,000 members and supporters.

What’s amazing is that people are so interested in these issues. And as soon as they find out how farm animals are treated on factory farms across the country, they want to help. We grew until we had volunteers and coordinators working out of every city in Ohio.

And now we have our headquarters here in Chicago(USA), we have a New York City (USA) office, we have activists working out of North Carolina (USA) and other parts of the country as well. Since the majority of animal abuse occurs at the hands of the meat, dairy and egg industries, we’ve decided to focus on helping chickens, pigs, and cows.

Mercy For Animals members firmly believe that by widely sharing information about the cold realities of intensive animal agriculture, the public will soon seek to halt this horrific practice.

We do a lot of speaking in high school and college classrooms, educating young people about factory farming and what they can do to make a difference for animals in their daily lives. We also do advertising campaigns. We’ve had ads on the public transport here in Chicago, in Boston (USA), in Denver (USA). We’ve had billboards, in Canada. So the ideas are spreading. People are becoming more and more interested in these issues.

According to Ms. Patrick, most people have a false image of farm animals’ lives.

Almost all meat, dairy and eggs come from factory farms. Factory farms are large, industrial operations where the animals are viewed as commodities. The family farm that most people have in their minds with the green, rolling hills and the red barns is a thing of the past.

The factory model was applied to agriculture. Animals were taken from those family farms, taken indoors into these industrial, factory farms and that’s what remains today. The meat, dairy and egg industries continue to show images of the family farms as if they still really existed, and for the most part, they don’t exist.

Turkeys experience lives of endless pain and abuse from birth to death. The numbers of these birds that are murdered each year in the United States alone is staggering.

About 250-million turkeys are killed every year for Thanksgiving. And it’s really overwhelming to think about those numbers and the number of animals that are enduring horrible conditions. At birth, their beaks are cut off, and they’re put into large sheds with many, many other animals where they spend their whole lives indoors. And then they go to the slaughterhouse.

We did an undercover investigation of a turkey slaughterhouse in North Carolina (USA), and the conditions we saw were just horrendous. The turkeys were hung up by their legs when they go to slaughter and flapping their wings. Workers were using them as punching bags. They were ripping the heads off of live birds, slamming them up against the wall. The abuse is so terrible for such a beautiful, intelligent creature.

When Stop Animal Cruelty returns, we’ll continue our discussion with Heather Patrick, Chicago Campaign Coordinator of Mercy For Animals on farm animal abuse. Please stay tuned to Supreme Master Television.

One of the best things people can do would be to eliminate animal products from their diet, not only to help the animals, but to help the environment.

This is Stop Animal Cruelty on Supreme Master Television, featuring an interview with Heather Patrick of Mercy For Animals, a non-profit animal rights group based in Chicago, USA that informs communities about the absolutely appalling ways animals are treated on factory farms.

We do undercover investigations. So we will send a worker undercover into factory farm conditions. They wear hidden cameras. They document the way that the animals are treated. And then we just bring that information to the news media, so that the public can see where meat, dairy and eggs come from; the way that the animals are treated before they end up on our plates. And they can make conscious decisions.

Recently we released an undercover investigation that we did at a hatchery for egg-laying hens. And this was one of our most successful undercover investigations because the footage went all over the world, was translated into many foreign languages, and was viewed over two-million times online. So people were really interested in the issue.

It starts out in the hatchery where all the male chicks are separated from the female chicks at birth and thrown away. They are usually ground up alive or thrown away into the trash can, because the industry has no use for male chicks, because they can’t lay eggs. The female chicks are raised in battery cages. Each hen will have about a notebook-size piece of paper to live on her entire life in filthy conditions, in indoor sheds.

They live in a cage with many other chickens. They have to share that same space, and they become so miserable in such conditions that sometimes they peck each other. And so the industry just responds to that by cutting off the ends of their beaks. They endure that without pain killers. They live their entire lives in these cages. Many animals can’t endure the conditions. They’ll die in the cages.

And because so much is automated on these farms, there are so few workers, it’s all machines bringing in the food, bringing out the eggs, that their bodies remain there, decompose in the cages. And then the living hens have to live in a cage with the decomposed bodies of other chickens. So it really is one of the most cruel, if not the most cruel industries out there.

To prevent this barbaric treatment of egg-laying chickens, Mercy For Animals works diligently to reduce egg consumption. Ms. Patrick shares one recent success story.

A recent campaign was we talked to Boca, who is a meatless meal provider. They do a lot of veggie burgers, things like that, but they were using so many eggs in their products. And so we teamed up with Compassion Over Killing and some other well-known national animal organizations and asked Boca to remove eggs from their products. And within a couple of weeks of launching our campaign, Boca agreed to eliminate all eggs from all of its products by the end of the year.

Despite the widespread, horrendous, life-long suffering forced upon factory farmed animals, Heather Patrick feels optimistic about the future.

If you talk to most people, most people do not want to see animals suffer. We love our dogs and cats. We spend billions of dollars a year taking care of our companion animals.

And there was a research study from Ohio State University (USA) which asks people what they thought about farm animal well-being, and upwards of 70% to 80% believe that animals on farms should be well cared for, that the quality of their lives is important, that they are just as important as our dogs and cats, and that they should be prevented from feeling physical pain.

So if people realize that farm animals have similar emotions, similar intelligence, and are just as worthy of our respect as our dogs and cats, then I think that we will really see a change in this country.

There’s only one way to truly put an end to the utter savagery of intensive animal agriculture: the wise, noble vegan diet.

We believe that animals are irreplaceable individuals with morally significant interests and rights. And that, for us, includes the right to live free of unnecessary suffering, exploitation and abuse. So we promote a vegan diet, which is a diet free from meat, dairy and eggs. It’s the most compassionate diet because you’re not supporting these industries. It’s healthy, it’s good for the environment, and it’s great for animals.

Our deep thanks Heather Patrick and Mercy For Animals, and all the others around the world who are saving the lives of our co-inhabitants through your praiseworthy and effective animal advocacy. By your noble work you’re creating greater harmony among all beings and helping to raise the consciousness of our planet.

For more details on Mercy For Animals, please visit www.MercyForAnimals.org
Information on the vegan diet is available at ChooseVeg.com

Gentle viewers, thank you for joining us for today’s program. Enlightening Entertainment is next after Noteworthy News. May all animals forever enjoy lives of freedom and dignity.