Heather Leughmyer animal rightsIn the Name of Tradition
By Heather Leughmyer
An Animal Rights Poem from All-Creatures.org

All of God's creatures have rights, a fact that most people don't seem to recognize. This includes both human and non-human animals, but not all of them can speak for themselves.


In the Name of Tradition
By Heather Leughmyer

In a smothering sea of white
Gentle beauty is lost
Born and bred to be dinner
Whatever the cost.
Debeaked, detoed, crippled and weak
Disease running rampant
Your future is bleak.
In a huge sunless warehouse
Tens of thousands crammed tight
Kept like a secret
Out of mind, out of sight.
When your body is fattened
And you collapse from the weight
You are grabbed by rough hands
And sent to your fate.
Hung by your feet
Flapping and scared
Still conscious, confused
If only they cared.
Your neck is then slit
By a mechanized blade
As life drains from your body
You’re alone and afraid.
Another beside you
Misses the knife
Still conscious, she’s boiled
Slowly ending her life.

Neatly you are packaged
Shipped to every store
Butterball makes money
Spent breeding millions more.
Behind the tidy shrink-wrap
Is a mutilated bird
Who had feelings and emotions
And cries that went unheard.

In the name of “tradition”
Tens of millions will die
Somehow their sad remains
Seem so wrong with pumpkin pie.

Go on to: Letter To My Unborn Child
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