UPC is pleased to send you our letter
published in the January 14-20, 2004 edition of the Seattle Weekly:
http://www.seattleweekly.com/features/0402/040114_news_letters.php
FREE-RANGE MISERY
“The word ‘humane’ is the cheapest, most
prostituted term in our vocabulary. It should be retired from use.”
Samantha Storey says truly you can’t depend on labels to
be sure the dead animals you buy were “humanely” raised
and slaughtered (“Know Your Meat,” Jan. 7). Don’t
trust a phone call, either. The word “humane” is the
cheapest, most prostituted term in our vocabulary. It should be
retired from use.
I’ve visited places in Pennsylvania where the “free-roaming”
chickens were debeaked and virtually featherless. They weren’t
in cages, merely wall-to-wall in stinking sheds with an occasional
little opening onto a mud yard. My friends visited a “free-range”
turkey farm in Maryland in November. The turkeys were housed in
an open field in the freezing cold, with no shelter except a small
wooden, tarp-covered structure only big enough for half the turkeys.
The others were huddled together shivering in the weather, exposed
to the elements. The farmer grabbed the turkeys roughly by their
legs and held them upside down, while the birds flapped desperately
to right themselves. One had a twisted foot and an enlarged joint.
Under no production system do animals suffering from painful lameness
get pain relief.
These are two examples of the grim reality behind the fantasy of
“humane” treatment of living creatures brought into
the world merely to be containers of eggs, bladders of milk, and
dead flesh. As for the “humane” slaughter of these poor
souls, that’s as real as Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and
the tooth fairy. Please, good people, go vegan.
Karen Davis, President
United Poultry Concerns
| 
United Poultry Concerns, Inc.