All Babies Should Be With Their Moms
A Meat and Dairy Industries Article from All-Creatures.org

FROM David Jack James
Facebook post, May 9, 2021

On this Mother’s Day, I hope human mothers will think about the other mothers and their babies who suffer so much, for nothing more than taste pleasure, convenience, and other trivial gratifications.

animal moms and babies

It's not a happy Mother’s Day for most of the world's mothers. Because I’ve never been a mother, I won’t claim to understand the profound bond between a mother and her newborn. But how can human mothers support the heartless separation of non-human mothers from their babies?

If you are a mother who consumes bacon, eggs, cheese, steak, chicken, ice cream, or any product that contains the flesh or bodily secretions of animals, then you should know how these babies and mothers suffer while being exploited and waiting to be slaughtered, to create and become your food. On this Mother’s Day, I hope human mothers will think about the other mothers and their babies who suffer so much, for nothing more than taste pleasure, convenience, and other trivial gratifications.

Chickens, pigs, cows, turkeys and other animals who are exploited and slaughtered for human food, are emotional beings with the capacity to love, and they have central nervous systems, which means that they have the capacity feel pain. These animals seek attention and affection, bond with other animals, feel emotions, and want to live—just like you and your babies, and your mother! There is no biological or nutritional necessity for humans to eat flesh, organs, or bodily secretions in order to be healthy and happy. Please think about what these mothers and babies endure, and ask yourself if paying for this kind of horrific treatment is compassionate, ethical...and who you really are.

What Happens to Chicks?

Baby chickens and turkeys are hatched in large incubators where they never even knowing their mothers. They spend their lives in filthy, crowded cages or warehouses filled with toxic ammonia fumes. They live in misery until they are slaughtered, never experiencing their mother’s love and protection.

Birds raised for meat live about six weeks, and because of genetic engineering designed to make them develop more flesh, they balloon to over six times their natural weight. Their underdeveloped bones often cannot handle this extra weight, which causes painful skeletal disorders. Many become lame and die because they cannot get to food or water.

Male chicks born to egg-laying hens are considered non-profitable waste by the egg industry. These babies can’t lay eggs, and the egg-laying breeds do not grow as large as the Cornish birds who are slaughtered for meat; therefore, the egg industry slaughters the male chicks born to egg-laying hens by grinding them up alive, gassing them, or just tossing them into trash bags where they slowly suffocate in agony.

Female chicks born to egg-laying hens will be kept alive from 18 months to two years, depending on their egg production. De-beaking these babies is standard procedure worldwide: The ends of their beaks are cut off with hot blades (without pain killers) when they are just a few days old so that they won’t frantically peck each other in the intense confinement of battery cages and “cage-free” warehouses. Many of these de-beaked chickens starve to death because eating is too painful.

Because their reproductive systems have been manipulated to produce up to 10 times more eggs than their frail little bodies are designed to bear, the constant egg production depletes their bodies of calcium, and most of them suffer from debilitating osteoporosis. They experience chronic physical and emotional pain until their egg productivity declines. When they are no longer “commercially viable” to the egg industry, these birds are sold to the meat industry, and slaughtered after lives of nothing but pain and misery. If you support the egg industry, then you are also supporting the meat industry.

What Happens to Piglets?

Baby pigs are taken away from their mothers just a few weeks after being born. They spend their short lives crowded in filthy pens on slabs of concrete before they are sent to slaughter. They are allowed to nurse through tiny, narrow gestation crates in which their mother is restrained. Because piglets compete for udders, they sometimes fight, which can cause injuries to their snouts and faces, and to the mother’s teats. To minimize potential damage to the “meat,” their eight eye-teeth are snipped off with sharp tools, with no pain relief.

The piglets’ tails are chopped off, their ears are mutilated, and the males have their testicles cut out of their scrotums with pliers. These babies scream in agony, and no pain killers are given. These procedures are legal and standard in the meat industry worldwide. The mothers are impregnated over and over again, and the cycle of forced breeding and restrained torture continues for years, as the mothers lose their babies over and over again, until the mothers themselves are slaughtered.

What Happens to the Calves?

Babies born to dairy cows are removed almost immediately from their mothers, which is devastating for them. The separation occurs quickly because bonding would make separation even more difficult later and could affect the mother’s milk production, which is the dairy industry’s only concern. When a calf is taken away from his or her mother, she will scream and cry for hours or even days.

The calves are denied their mothers’ milk and fed formula instead so that the milk “product” isn’t wasted. The impulse to suckle is so strong in baby calves that they will desperately try to suckle each other’s ears and faces when they are within reach, or even on the fingers of the farm and slaughterhouse workers.

Male calves born to dairy cows are considered non-profitable waste by the dairy industry. These babies can’t produce milk; therefore, the dairy industry kills them immediately, or keeps them for six months in dark, enclosed boxes all alone, until they are sold to the meat industry to be slaughtered for veal.

The female calves are destined to become tortured “milk machines” just like their mothers, which usually entails about four years of misery, during which they are forcibly impregnated, give birth, lose their babies over and over again. These mothers are hooked up to machines that pump their udders, until eventually, their worn-out bodies collapse, and then they are sent to slaughter. These procedures are legal and standard worldwide in the dairy industry, and any support of the dairy industry is also support of the meat industry.

Why Are you Paying for Suffering and Violence to Mothers and Babies?

If you are appalled by the separation of babies from their mothers, the restriction of maternal bonding and nursing, and the painful mutilations and confinement that these babies and mothers experience for their entire lives until they are slaughtered...then why are you paying for it with your food choices? Because you like the way flesh and bodily secretions taste? Is that who you really are?

All of this horror is very well-documented, and is accessible via numerous videos available online. In fact, the meat, dairy, and egg industries (and our governments) don’t even deny that these mothers and babies endure all of this misery and torture. It’s all about money, it’s all hidden from the public, and all it’s considered “humane.” But people don’t want to know, or simply don’t care because they like the way something tastes? How can that be? Is this really who we are? Can any mother imagine her baby being treated this horrifically?

These mothers and babies aren’t machines. They are sentient beings with central nervous systems. They endure severe psychological, emotional, and physical trauma for their entire lives. It’s absurd to claim that they are mere objects who aren’t capable of experiencing emotions, including grief, loneliness, terror, and fear.

Please think about these mothers and babies on Mother’s Day, and every day. There is an abundance of delicious, nutritious, and affordable plant-based food that doesn’t come from harming, exploiting, and killing mothers and babies. All sentient beings have the right to experience the nurturing love of their mothers, and to live free from exploitation, abuse, and slaughter by humans—because humans CAN behave morally, think rationally, and live happy and healthy lives without consuming flesh and bodily secretions. Please think about it and open your heart. Please treat all mothers and babies the way you want yourself and your babies, and your own mother, to be treated.



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