You can help cows abused on factory farms

[Guest guest]

Dear Ingrid, By supporting PETA today, you can help reduce and end the suffering of more than 40 million cows—each a sensitive individual—who are killed in slaughterhouses in the United States each year. Most cows never enjoy a peaceful day in a grassy field. Instead, cows raised for their milk are commonly confined to filthy sheds and barren dirt lots. They're hooked up to milking machines several times each day and are given hormones and antibiotics. They are repeatedly impregnated until their weak bodies finally give out. Then they are hauled on filthy trucks, sometimes hundreds of miles, to slaughterhouses. When they arrive, they are hung upside-down, dismembered, and skinned—sometimes while they are still conscious. Cows on factory farms urgently need your help. One of the priorities of PETA's factory farming campaign is to open the eyes—and hearts—of consumers to the suffering of these sensitive animals. Can I please count on your support to help us expose the cruelty inflicted on these suffering animals? By making an online donation to PETA today, you will help sustain PETA's vital investigations into milk and beef factory farms and slaughterhouses around the world. Thanks to our efforts—and your kind support—people are waking up to the horrific lives of suffering endured by cows and other animals killed for food. People are learning that cows raised for their flesh bellow in pain as they are branded with hot fire irons, which inflict third-degree burns. They're learning that cows' horns are cut out of their skulls or are burned off and that male calves' testicles are torn from their scrotums without any pain relief whatsoever. The cows are shipped to massive, barren feed lots, and not all of them survive the journey. Next, they are fed an unnatural diet that can cause painful stomach ailments and sometimes fatal liver abscesses. The air is so full of ammonia, methane, and other noxious gases from the manure buildup that many cows have trouble breathing and develop severe respiratory problems. Finally, at the end of their lives, the cows go on a frightening truck ride to their deaths. The only U.S. law that exists for the protection of farmed animals—the decades-old Humane Slaughter Act—is rarely enforced. While the law requires that cows be rendered unconscious before they are strung upside-down, the high-speed assembly line often fails to stun them, which means that many cows are skinned and dismembered while they are still conscious. PETA has already won major animal welfare improvements at the world's largest suppliers of pig and chicken flesh, but we're still working nonstop to end such violence against cows and other animals. In order to win these battles, we need you to show your commitment to animals. Please make a generous contribution to PETA right now and help us give cows the peace and cruelty-free lives that they deserve. Thank you.Kind regards,Ingrid E. NewkirkPresidentP.S. Please help us end the terrible conditions that cows and other animals trapped on factory farms suffer every day. No animal should ever have to live and die this way. Please make your tax-deductible contribution to PETA today. This e-mail was sent by: PETA 501 Front St., Norfolk, VA 23510United States