For Immediate Release: February 5, 2003

Contact: Mercy For Animals (937) 652-8258

PRO-PIG ACTIVISTS DISH-UP FREE SOY DOGS TO HUNGRY LUNCHTIME CROWD

Group Says Pork Producers are Guilty of Animal Cruelty

Dayton, Ohio - Backed by a banner that reads "Pig Out on a Free Veggie Hot Dog," members of the Ohio animal rights organization Mercy For Animals (MFA) will distribute free soy dogs to Dayton’s hungry lunchtime crowd tomorrow afternoon. The activists will also air graphic undercover footage on a mobile TV unit of pig farmers castrating piglets without painkillers and beating sows with iron rods. MFA hopes to educate Daytonians about the cruel practices conducted by attendees of the Ohio Pork Congress, taking place Thursday and Friday at the Dayton Convention Center.

Date: Thursday, February 6

Time: 12 noon - 1 P.M.

Location: Courthouse Square, corner of Third St. and Main St., Dayton, Ohio

Why the soy hot dogs? On factory farms, millions of pigs are tied to "dry sow stalls" – small steel pens where they’re forced to stand on concrete slabs and lie in their own excrement. The stalls are so small that the pigs are unable to turn around, take even a single step, or lie down comfortably. These pens are so cruel that they have been banned in Switzerland, Sweden, and Great Britain.

Sows are treated like breeding machines, enduring a constant cycle of artificial insemination until they "wear out" and are shipped to slaughter. Piglets are taken away from their mothers shortly after birth to be castrated, have their teeth extracted and their tails cut off, all without anesthesia.

"If pork producers treated dogs and cats in the horrific manner they raise pigs, they could be locked up for animal cruelty, referred for psychiatric evaluation, or both," says MFA Director Nathan Runkle. "Adopting a vegetarian diet is a powerful way to take a stand against animal abuse."