An investigation by The
New York Times has exposed a little-known institution in Nebraska called
the U.S. Meat Animal Research Center, where farmed animals are subjected to
cruelty beyond imagination. Not surprisingly, the facility’s mission is to help
producers of beef, pork, and lamb turn a higher profit.
According to the author, “Since Congress founded it 50 years
ago to consolidate the United States Department of Agriculture’s research on
farm animals, the center has worked to make lamb chops bigger, pork loins less
fatty, steaks easier to chew.
This research has included efforts to breed cows who produce
twins or triplets and sheep who are easier to care for and less domesticated.
There have also been numerous attempts to breed pigs to be bigger and leaner
and produce larger litters.
Many of these experiments have caused immense suffering of
animals, including multiple deaths from neglect and at least 6,500 from
starvation, and have not yielded favorable results.
While the Animal Welfare Act sets forth some protections for
animals used in experimentation, the law specifically excludes farmed animals
from consideration, leaving countless farmed animals subject to cruel
experimentation.
“The center’s parent agency, the Agriculture Department,
strictly polices the treatment of animals at slaughterhouses and private
laboratories. But it does not closely monitor the center’s use of animals, or
even enforce its own rules requiring careful scrutiny of experiments, the
author explains.
But this facility is far from the greatest abuser of farmed
animals. The factory farming industry keeps billions of farmed animals in
filthy, disease-ridden environments and
subjects them to immeasurable cruelty, including extreme confinement and
mutilations without painkillers, every year.
Photo: Michael Moss / The New York Times