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Madinat al-Muslimeen Islamic Message Board
| the importance of eating halal |
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| Ameeraana |
| 02/09/04 at 18:05:05 |
| [slm] In this day and age where many of us Muslims just go and purchase our meat from our local grociery stores not caring wether or not it is halal... this is for you... This is mainly covering chickens and at the end cattle, but if you investigate, it is not only these animals... warning: the photos and statements are shocking truths of what really happens ***this is important for those of you who do not eat halal to see what industry you are supporting and the animals you are eating**** **these photos are not from 'halal' companies-its from the big industries that supply its meat to grociery market chains, and fast foods like KFC** If you are going to eat chicken.. or any other meat for that matter, please eat only halal. The meat industry is incredibly cruel to animals, and chickens are probably the most abused animals in the food industry. In the big food industry, chickens grown for slaughter are raised in overcrowded conditions. They are genetically engineered to grow 3 times faster than a normal chick. Because of this rapid growth, many die of heart attacks. Many also break bones and become lame. This is because their heart and bones cannot handle the weight of the chicks. Many are unable to reach food or water and suffer a horrible death. The ones going to slaughter suffer even more... at the end of this post I will post a statement made by a former Tyson employee. here are some pics [img]http://www.mercyforanimals.org/images/broilers.jpg[/img] Record numbers of chickens and turkeys are being raised and killed for meat in the U.S. every year. Nearly ten billion chickens, and half a billion turkeys, are being hatched in the U.S. every year. These birds are typically crowded by the thousand into huge factory- like warehouses where they can barely move. Chickens are given less than half a square foot of space per bird while turkeys are each given less than three square feet. Both chickens and turkeys have the end of their beaks cut off, and turkeys also have their toes clipped. All of these mutilations are performed without anaesthesia, and they are done in order to reduce injuries which result when stressed birds are driven to fighting. [img]http://www.mercyforanimals.org/images/crippled2.jpg[/img] [img]http://www.animalactivism.org/documents/photos/med_22540__kfc01.jpg[/img]This chicken, genetically bred to grow to over adult size in under 2 months cannot stand or hold her own weight with her young legs. eggs battery farms chickens raised for eggs in battery farms suffer horrendously. They are suffed/overcrowded in cages in where they spend up to 2 years unable to have a space of more than a sheet of notebook paper. They cannot even strech their wings!! Some cages are so overstuffed that when it comes time to laying down, some chickens have to lay on top of the others!! They will live all their lives inside these battery farms without natural sunlight, the ability to dust bathe or to stretch their wings!! When they get some of their body parts stuck in cages, they are all ignored and since unable to reach food and water, die a slow agonizing death. When the egg production slows down, they are routinely starved since after a prolonged starvation, they will produce eggs again. many chickens die during this starvation times. When they are no longer producing eggs, they are routinely slaughtered and ground up to mix with chicken feed and this is what the chicken are eating. photos: [img]http://www.eggcruelty.com/images/crowded_buckeye.jpg[/img]this is how these chickens will spend the rest of their lives like... [img]http://www.eggcruelty.com/images/buckeye_rows.jpg[/img] [img]http://www.eggcruelty.com/images/trapped_buckeye_photo3.jpg[/img] Head caught under feeding tray for who knows how long.. and noone helped it. [img]http://www.eggcruelty.com/images/trapped_buckeye_photo2.jpg[/img] wing caught on cage [img]http://www.eggcruelty.com/images\buried_in_manure_day_photo.jpg[/img] hen who broke free from the cage but fell in the manure pit... she is stuck in the thick layer of manure unable to move--many hens die a slow death when they get trapped in these pits [img]http://www.ca4a.org/bbc/photos/index.cgi?file=F/d-000613-AUT_5933.JPG&show=1[/img] Their feathers fall off and their bare skin rubs against the wire cages... it is aweful!!! If you wanna see the full investigative video: http://www.petatv.com/tvpopup/video.asp?video=silent_suffer it is produced by PETA and yes, they promote vegetarianism but do not ignore the truths of cruelty they have proven to exist. I am not trying to promote vegetariansim to anyone, I eat meat, halal meat. I myself would probably have become vegetarian if I did not know about halal. so next time you go buy your eggs, puchase the ones labelled "free range" "cage free" and "vegetarian fed" eggs. They do cost more, but you are paying such cheap prices for those huge egg companies because they spend no money on the care of their hens. Do not support this cruel industry!! browse around PETA's site on animals raised for slaughter. If you click on PETA TV there is lots of these videos under the "vegetarianism" section. Again, I am not promoting vegetarianism, but just trying to get people to stop supporting the cruel industry and to turn people to eat halal where animals are treated kindly and cared for. They are not genetically engineered, and they are fed what they are meant to eat--not their own flesh and blood!!! All animals suffer in the big meat industry... you will find all the info you need on this website. Ok, now, here is the statement from the former Tyson employee. Most of these chickens he was slaughtering went to KFC. There is a huge campaign to boycott KFC for their known abuses towards chickens. The campaign website is www.kfccruelty.com if you wanna know more about it. Signed statement of Tyson employee, Virgil Butler January 30, 2003 My name is Virgil Butler. I worked at the Tyson plant in Grannis, Arkansas from July, 1997 until November 12, 2002. I worked on the night shift in the Receiving department as a live-hanger as well as on the kill-floor. I personally witnessed many acts of cruelty toward the chickens by employees of the plant on a nightly basis: One of the most recent problems that I observed was the night shift superintendent, Richard Frasier, turning down the stunner and ordering the employees to leave it down. This machine is the device that is supposed to stun chickens before they are killed. Turning it down results in the chickens missing the killing machine and evading the killer behind the machine, so that they end up being scalded to death by water in the scalding tank. The scalding tank loosens up the feathers so that they can be picked out. The chickens are supposed to be dead before they reach this point. I, as well as Ed Taylor (my immediate supervisor), Troy Shepmann, and Aron Harris (fellow employees) argued this action with Richard, who refused to stop doing this. We were not given a reason behind Richard's decision. The expected percentage that the killing machine was supposed to kill by slitting throats was 86%. On an extremely good night that percentage was accurate. The remaining chickens would miss the blade altogether. Most nights the percentage would fall to the high 70's. Some nights, even worse. I was responsible for trying to slit the throats of the chickens the machine missed on the nights I worked the killing room. Our line runs 182 shackles per minute. It is physically impossible to catch them all. Therefore, they are scalded alive. When this happens, the chickens flop, scream, kick, and their eyeballs pop out of their heads. Then, they often come out the other end with broken bones and disfigured and missing body parts because they've struggled so much in the tank. Sometimes, when we had a line broken down, they would be left hanging upside down in the stunner in the water to drown. In the stunner, the water is cold and salted to better conduct the electricity. I have personally seen them hang in this position for hours. One night in early spring last year we lost hydraulic pressure. Perhaps 300-400 chickens missed the stunner because the line slowed down so much that the birds could avoid it while those who were stunned were able to recover by the time they reached the killing machine-which was only working sporadically. The live birds were left hanging upside down in the scalders while the machinery was being fixed. We could have quit hanging more chickens at this point and let the line run empty while the killing machine was off-line. Instead, we were ordered by Richard Frasier and Ed Taylor to continue to hang the chickens, while Aron Harris was required to kill all of them by hand. This could not be done by one person, even at half the speed and it was clear to everyone there that birds were going by untouched. Several hundred chickens were scalded to death by this decision. Most of my fellow employees were extremely abusive to the chickens. Our job was simply to pick the chickens up off of the belt and hang them upside down into the shackles. This could rarely be accomplished without problems, due to several reasons. We were extremely shorthanded, due to the horrendous working conditions. This led to a high turnover rate with inexperienced, frustrated, workers under pressure to keep the production numbers up. If production fell, it would mean overtime work, so the belt speed was turned up. This resulted in the belt becoming overloaded in the area where the chickens awaited shackling, which ended up smothering hundreds of chickens a night. I heard Richard Frasier say, "I would rather smother a few hundred goddamned birds, than to lose time because of empty shackles." (This was said in late July, 2002 when temperatures in the hanging cage were exceeding 100 degrees in the middle of the night.) The absence of climate control is another cause of unnecessary suffering that results in death to the chickens. The heater in the "cage," which is the area where birds are hung, worked less than half of the time I worked there. Many times the temperatures would be well below freezing. This resulted in the chickens freezing to the belt last winter and the winter before. They froze to death this way inside the building, where the temperature was below freezing. I and my co-workers complained about this to Richard Frasier, but to no avail. He would just turn and walk away. The reverse of this problem happened in the summer time, where there is no adequate air conditioning. Most of the time, it doesn't work at all, and blows hot air. This results in the chickens dying of heat stroke, heart attack, and suffocation. When the plant breaks down or when there are too many chickens on the kill schedule for the shift, they are left over for the next shift. For the night shift, this is not as bad in the summer time as it is in the winter, because the chickens are forced to sit out in the cages on the trucks. In the summer on day shift, though, when they leave birds, they sit from 3:30 p.m. until 9 p.m. under a tin shed roof with no water and no food. I have seen hundreds die of dehydration from this practice. This could be remedied by simply stopping the catchers from catching any more until the problem in the plant is resolved or by not scheduling as big a kill to begin with. These uncomfortable conditions, coupled with the unrelenting pressure to keep the shackles filled at all costs, lead to much frustration and outright rage among the employees. I have witnessed Troy Shepmann build dry ice bombs (made by putting dry ice and a small amount of water in a plastic Pepsi bottle and screwing the lid down tight) and putting it on the belt with live chickens during break time. This results in a high pressure explosion that rips the chickens' bodies apart and scatters them all over the room. This occurred numerous times, but the one I remember the most was one night last June when he made a small dry ice bomb by shoving a piece of dry ice up a live chicken's rectum, then plugging it with a wooden cork. It built up enough pressure inside the chicken to blow it apart. I have also seen Aron Harris rip the heads, legs, and wings off of live chickens, or just stomp them to death on the floor because he was aggravated. This occurred on a regular basis for about the last year and a half that I worked there. I have also seen George Watson, a forklift driver, run over the chickens on purpose, then laugh about it. These kinds of incidents were ongoing and repetitive--just a part of a regular night's work. Other problems that came up when I worked there were a result of mismanagement. One, in particular, happened several times when we would get orders for bigger birds. The worst was in the week ending on September 14 of last year. In this instance we were given thousands of chickens to hang that were above the size limit we were used to. The shackles were not designed to fit the oversize legs of the chickens. They were too small for their legs to fit into. In the process of hanging the live birds, we were forced to break their legs to get them to fit into the shackles. This was unnecessary. The shackles could have been spread out to fit the larger-sized birds. It would only have taken about an hour for two maintenance personnel to accomplish this. However, Richard Frasier decided that it wasn't necessary and didn't want to lose the production time to do it. According to published plant progress reports, most of the chicken run by this plant is destined for shipment to Kentucky Fried Chicken. We processed deboned thigh and leg meat and boneless, skinless split breasts. Most of the deboned meat is shipped to a further processing plant where it is made into chicken nuggets for KFC. I am writing this letter because I want to see something done about this cruelty. I don't wish to be a part of the nightmare any longer and am willing to speak out about this to anyone at any time. Thank you, Virgil Butler ***************** now, don't think all companies do this to their hens and other slaughter animals. These investigations were done on the huge companies. I have friends who have farms and grow chickens and cows and such for slaughter for a local community. Not that I eat their meat, because they are not Muslims nor do they slaughter by the rules of the Holy Books, but they treat their animals well. They are fed vegetarian diets and are not genetically engineered to grow super fast. For chickens to be halal, they cannot be flesh-eating animals. And so if the chickens are fed chickens, like with some companies since the grains are so expensive, then they are haram even before slaughter. And definitely not genetically engineered to grow unnaturally causing them to suffer!! Here is a new alert on a so called halal industry: Saudi Arabia has announced at the end of January 2004 that it is lifting its ban on Indian beef. There was a major investigation on Indian leather by PETA which found horrible abuses towards the cows. The leather goes to Europe and the U.S. while the meat is slaughtered in the "halal" method to be exported to the Middle East. But the fact is these cows suffer so much. Many cattle are bought from extremely poor Hindu families who are promised their treasured cow is going to live a good life. But they are walked for miles and miles on "death journeys" without food or water and when they are too tierd to walk and collapse, they smash chili peppers into their eyes to "perk" them up. They are supposedly slaughtered in the halal manner but instead the knives are not sharp enough requiring sawing and pounding on the throats of these cattle. There were more than 5,000 to slaughter each day and so no time for any saying of Allah's name. Watch the video and make sure your "halal" meat is not coming from the Indian leather trade: http://www.petatv.com/tvpopup/video.asp?video=skin-trade-ili for those of you who would rather read about it than see it with your own eyes, here is a summary of what happens: The cruelty of India?s black market leather industry is drawing international attention. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), the world?s largest animal rights organization (600,000 members) has joined forces with Indian activists representing religious, environmental and animal advocacy groups to put economic and political pressure on the leather trade. PETA?s consumer education campaign has brought the issue to worldwide attention. This past winter, Chrissie Hynde, lead singer of the British rock band The Pretenders, led dozens of demonstrations in America and Canada to protest leather sales at The Gap. In the spring, The Gap (including its subsidiaries Old Navy and Banana Republic), Liz Claiborne and J. Crew pledged to ban Indian and Chinese leather products from their stores. But Indian leather profiteers are striking back. Several activists have been murdered. In April, a 28-year-old Gujurati man was severely beaten. Before his death one week later, he named his assailants, three area butchers. Advocates claim the police have intentionally bungled the investigation to protect the killers. The campaign is especially important to PETA founder, Ingrid Newkirk, who grew up in India. She personally traveled the country in 1999, documenting the abuses of laws regarding the transport and slaughter of cattle. Barbaric commerce While cow slaughter is illegal in most Indian states, the nation boasts the largest leather industry in the world. PETA investigators found that hundreds of thousands of small farmers unwittingly sell their old cows for slaughter believing that the buyers, undercover slaughter industry representatives, will provide the animals with life-long care. Once purchased, the animals are either herded or trucked up to hundreds of miles to West Bengal or Kerala, PETA says. Herded cows march without food or water and with little rest. Animals that cannot keep the pace are beaten. The arduous trek in searing heat wears down the animals? hooves to bleeding stumps. Trucked animals fare no better due to overcrowding. They trample and gore one another to avoid suffocation. India?s treacherous roads pitch the cows to and fro, causing more injuries and deaths. At the slaughterhouse, the animals are forced to jump from the elevated bed of the truck. PETA investigators witnessed one truck unload. More than a dozen animals had been injured during transport, at least four were unable to stand. The animals were pulled from the truck. Other animals were unloaded atop the injured ones. Unable to move, the cows were left in the searing 100-degree heat until they died. Slaughterhouse veterinarians did nothing to relieve the pain of the injured. Inside the slaughterhouse, the cows? throats are slit. Some have their legs cut off or are skinned alive. At least 13 million cows, oxen and calves are killed each year. Most Indians are unaware of this cruelty. According to PETA, the industry is rife with illegal practices. Bribery of public officials in charge of enforcing anti-cruelty laws is common. In its report on legal abuses, PETA notes: The Constitution of India prohibits the slaughter of cows and calves, and the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act mandates kind treatment. Beating, kicking, overdriving and torturing any animal is prohibited by Indian law. The transport of more than six cattle per [truck] or carrying animals in any vehicle in a manner or position that causes unnecessary pain or suffering is also prohibited. Failing to provide one?s animals with sufficient food, water or shelter is illegal as is the sale or possession of any animal, without reasonable cause, who is suffering pain by reason of mutilation, starvation, thirst, overcrowding or other ill-treatment. PETA?s delegation found that the transport and slaughter of cattle in India violate all these laws, yet they continue unabated to support India?s meat and leather industries. If you investigate further... cows in the milk industry, and the veal industry suffer horribly as well.. it really is shocking... all the greed and all the suffering... Ameera |
| 02/09/04 at 18:06:42 |
| Ameeraana |
| Re: the importance of eating halal |
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| Ameeraana |
| 02/09/04 at 18:11:56 |
| Me again... after seeing these horrible conditions I hope that those of you not eating halal do consider it. Now here are some encouraging photos and captions. Here is a post about some nice stories/pictures of battery hens who were rescued and are living out the rest of their lives in animal sanctuaries? These hens have lived through enough hell to live the rest of their lives in as much of a natural environment as possibel and in full comfort. Chickens are actually cute, if you take the time to see that they all have different personalities. I hope to have a couple as pets in the future. You know they can actually remember their own names and will come to you when called? They love affection and love attention!! patti before her rescue: [img]http://www.ca4a.org/bbc/photolist/index.cgi?file=R/newsl8.jpg&set=scale=1&show=1[/img] patty recuperating [img]http://www.ca4a.org/bbc/photos/index.cgi?file=R/AUT_4906.JPG&show=1[/img] patty's 1st day outside at the sanctuary meeting and a new friend comes out to check her out [img]http://www.ca4a.org/bbc/photos/index.cgi?file=R/AUT_5303.JPG&show=1[/img] catherine awaiting veteranary attention: [img]http://www.ca4a.org/bbc/photos/index.cgi?file=R/AUT_6603.JPG&show=1[/img] catherine after her bath: [img]http://www.ca4a.org/bbc/photos/index.cgi?file=R/AUT_6609.JPG&show=1[/img] anna here has a broken leg: [img]http://www.ca4a.org/bbc/photos/index.cgi?file=R/AUT_6622.JPG&show=1[/img] catherine and anna become best friends right away: [img]http://www.ca4a.org/bbc/photos/index.cgi?file=R/AUT_6721.JPG&show=1[/img] catherine and anna sunbathe together: [img]http://www.ca4a.org/bbc/photos/index.cgi?file=R/AUT_6729.JPG&show=1[/img] Chickens' Lib hens. All the brown ones were rescued in featherless condition from the cruel confinement of Battery cages [img]http://greenfield.fortunecity.com/garden/156/libhens.jpg[/img] Rescued battery hens view the natural world for the first time. [img]http://www.awionline.org/pubs/Quarterly/Summer2000/chicken1.gif[/img] The same hens a few weeks later. [img]http://www.awionline.org/pubs/Quarterly/Summer2000/chicken2.gif[/img] Two Victorian animal rights activists hold a rescued battery hen from Hutchinsons egg farm at South Morang in Victoria. The rescue of this hen was conducted as part of a lucky Friday 13th rescue operation. [img]http://www.thylazine.org/photogallery/hutch/Hutch3a.jpg[/img] Rescued battery hens experience sunlight and grass for the first time, from the safety and security of their pet boxes. [img]http://www.thylazine.org/photogallery/hutch/Hutch4a.jpg[/img] This little ex-battery hen peers at the others to see what they are doing. [img]http://www.thylazine.org/photogallery/hutch/Hutch7a.jpg[/img] Ex-battery hens are gentle, intelligent birds who soon form a special bond with their rescuers and care-givers. [img]http://www.thylazine.org/photogallery/hutch/Hutch10a.jpg[/img] Two days after their rescue, these rescued hens scratch around in the dirt of their new home. [img]http://www.thylazine.org/photogallery/hutch/Hutch9a.jpg[/img] This rescued battery hen stands on grass for the first time. Her life is changed forever. No more cage for her! [img]http://www.thylazine.org/photogallery/hutch/Hutch11a.jpg[/img] |
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