Mr. HelgesonGold’n Plump
209 North Third Street Arcadia, WI 54612 Dear CEO Helgeson:
I am writing you today to give you some more information about farm animals and what is happening to them, also to inform you a little bit about how much our health has been changing since factory farms like yours have changed what we are feeding these animals. And hopefully by the time you finish reading this you will choose to change your ways for the safety of our health and your animals.
A few years ago in a Montana slaughter house a Black Angus cow awaiting execution went berserk, jumped a five foot fence, and escaped. She ran through the streets for hours until cops caught her with a tranquilizer gun, bringing her down. But her daring and challenging escape had caught the eye of many local hearts. The locals in the town started sending out telephones polls demanding her freedom. The slaughterhouses manager finally released the cow to a local farm to live out her life with joy and be worry free. She was also then given the name Molly (Mathew Scully). But unlike Molly, there are plenty of cows and other factory farm animals that don’t get a choice or are not as brave as she was. On the other hand, some cows and other farm animals just can’t wait to be taken to the slaughterhouse so they can finally escape the misery that these factory famers have been putting them through. Within the past fifty years factory farmers have changed the way they treat their animals. Most of them want to make money faster and be cheap about it, they are feeding animals to grow faster making most of them unable to stand up or even walk, also by changing what they are feeding these animals it is changing our diet too, making it unhealthy.
There are many changing we have seen, one of them being: “In the 1970s, there were thousands of slaughterhouses producing the majority of beef sold. Today, we have only 13 (Robert Kenner).” With less slaughterhouses producing the meat and with more people requesting it, we have to question the quality of our food we consume and how it is affecting our health. Farmers have changed their ways over the past years to make the animals themselves so unhealthy and overweight just to get the meat produced faster. These factory farmers have been feeding their animals so they grow big fast before their bodies are able to catch up just to get food out faster. Most of these animals are not even able to get up and walk around on their feet because of this.
On today’s factory farms, animals are crammed by the thousands into filthy, windowless sheds and confined to wire cages, gestation crates, barren dirt lots, and other cruel confinement systems. These animals will never raise their families, root around in the soil, build nests, or do anything that is natural and important to them. Most won’t even feel the sun on their backs or breathe fresh air until the day they are loaded onto trucks bound for slaughter.
Cows, calves, pigs, chickens, turkeys, ducks, geese, and other animals live in extremely stressful conditions on these farm. These conditions range from being kept in small cages or jam-packed shed or on filthy feedlots, often with so little space that they can’t even turn around or lie down comfortably. Also, these animals are deprived of exercise so that all their bodies’ energy goes towards producing flesh, eggs, or milk for human consumption. And sadly, these factory farm animals are fed drugs to fatten them faster and keep them alive in conditions that could otherwise kill them. “Many animals become crippled under their own wright and die just inches away from water and food” (Factory Farming: Cruelty to Animals). When they have finally grown large enough, animals raised for food are crowded onto trucks and transported over many miles through all weather extremes, typically without food or water, to the slaughterhouse. Those who survive this nightmarish journey will have their throats slit, often while they are