Help us expose cruelty on factory farms

[Guest guest]

Dear Ingrid, A terrified cow is thrown onto the floor. She is wrestled onto her back as people stand on top of her body. Her back leg is chained so that she can be hoisted up to have her throat slit. Before the killing blow is delivered, her tendons and muscles will stretch and rip and her bones will become dislocated from their sockets. This practice, called "shackling and hoisting," is happening in a kosher slaughterhouse in South America. Because of a PETA undercover exposé, this cruel slaughter method may be done away with. You can help end terrible suffering like this by supporting our undercover investigations on factory farms and in slaughterhouses around the world. PETA's undercover investigators take huge risks to get inside these filthy and often dangerous places and get out with evidence of cruelty to animals. Our brave investigators have been beaten up, have had their cars run off the road, and have even been shot at. As hard as the physical and emotional toll on PETA's investigators is, it is perhaps harder to imagine where we'd be without the carefully documented acts of cruelty that they collect and can then show to the world. The precedent-setting victories that PETA has won in our factory-farming campaign—including reforms from McDonald's, Safeway, and Smithfield Foods—began with our investigative team's work to uncover the misery hidden behind the doors of factory farms and slaughterhouses. The cruelty that we're exposing is changing consumer behavior, rewriting corporate policies, and reducing the suffering in countless animals' lives. It is even changing corporate practices for good! Of course, PETA is only able to conduct these investigations because of people like you who recognize how vital this work is and fund it. Today, I am counting on you to help provide the resources that we need to get our investigators inside more of these hellholes where animals are being abused at this very moment. With your support, PETA is fundamentally changing how companies raise, confine, and kill animals. We begin by uncovering—and exposing—what they don't want the public to know:PETA documented shocking cruelty to chickens inside Tyson Foods' slaughterhouses in Union City, Tenn., and Cumming, Ga. We videotaped workers while they beat live chickens against walls and rails until the birds' bones broke. The workers ripped animals' heads off their bodies and stabbed live chickens in their necks, and we even caught them urinating near the conveyor belt that moves the birds to slaughter. As a result of our work, Tyson fired several of the workers that we caught on tape. State and federal authorities are also investigating, and we're hopeful that criminal cruelty-to-animals charges will follow.Our investigation of a South Carolina egg farm found hens—whose beaks had been seared off with a hot blade—crammed into cages so tightly that they couldn't spread a single wing. Some had broken wings and legs. Hens suffered for up to two years, only to be sent to slaughter when they could no longer produce. As a direct result of our investigation, the egg farm is stopping egg production and has credited PETA for its decision to do so.South America is a major exporter of meat to the U.S., Europe, and Israel, but many South American slaughterhouses still use the terrible, old slaughter method for kosher meat that I described earlier. Take heart, though, because our investigation prompted Israel's Chief Rabbinate to announce plans to phase out the "shackling and hoisting" killing method. Kosher slaughterhouses worldwide will soon be prohibited from abusing animals in this way.Undercover investigations are the very foundation of PETA's work to protect animals—they are a proven and powerful tool in reducing suffering. And no one else can do them as effectively as PETA can. But please remember that our investigators can't work without your support. Please make a generous gift to PETA today to help us stop animal suffering on factory farms and in slaughterhouses around the world. Thank you for answering the animals' call. Very truly yours,Ingrid E. NewkirkPresidentP.S. A picture is certainly worth 1,000 words. And a picture can save the lives of 1,000 or more animals. Powerful images of cruelty help shock people out of their complacency and ignorance. It's much harder to do nothing once you've seen the terrible things that are done to cows, chickens, pigs, fish, and other animals on factory farms and in slaughterhouses. Please make your tax-deductible gift online today to help our investigators obtain these images of animals—and stop the abuse. This e-mail was sent by: PETA 501 Front St., Norfolk, VA 23510United States