10-FOOT PUPPY IN HAMBURGER BUN SERVES MEATY MESSAGE AT ANIMAL RIGHTS PROTEST IN DOWNTOWN (CITY)
Demonstration Questions Why We Call Some Animals Pets and Others Dinner
CITY, State - Lunchtime commuters in downtown (city) today will be served some serious food for thought - in a thought-provoking demonstration by the national animal rights organization Mercy For Animals that features a massive, 10-foot-long inflatable puppy crammed inside a hamburger bun and topped with ketchup, mustard, cheese, and lettuce. This provocative display will be joined by activists wielding signs with images of an adorable puppy and lovable piglet sitting side-by-side and reading, "Why Love One but Eat the Other?" Other activists will hold signs with images of pigs and chickens abused and confined on factory farms that read, "Boycott Animal Abuse - Choose Vegetarian."
Date: June 11, 2012
Location: 2nd St between Main and Harrison in downtown Davenport
The demonstration is part of a new campaign, which includes billboards, bus ads, and a national protest tour, and aims to spark debate over why we call some animals pets, and others dinner. Far from receiving the kindness and respect afforded most dogs and cats, the billions of cows, pigs, and chickens raised and killed for meat in America lead lives filled with misery. On today's factory farms, animals are crammed by the thousands into filthy sheds and cages where many are unable to even fully extend their limbs, walk, turn around, or engage in other natural behaviors. Animals killed for food are routinely burned, castrated, dehorned, tail docked and debeaked without any painkillers. Before slaughter, frightened animals are often electrically prodded onto crowded transport trucks and hauled through all weather extremes to the slaughterhouse, where many will have their throats slit while still alive and conscious.
Although farmed animals are every bit as capable of feeling pain and suffering as dogs and cats, not a single federal law provides protection to them from abuse on factory farms. Undercover investigations by Mercy For Animals at factory farms, hatcheries, and slaughterhouses nationwide have exposed workers beating animals with metal pipes, stabbing them with pitchforks, and bashing in their skulls with pickaxes. MFA's hidden-camera investigations have also exposed farmed animals suffering from untreated infections and wounds, live chicks being thrown into grinding machines, and dead hens left to rot in cages with birds still laying eggs for human consumption.
"If you wouldn't eat your dog, why eat other animals? Cows, pigs, and chickens are just as intelligent, sensitive, and worthy of our respect as the animals we consider companions," said MFA's National Campaign Coordinator Phil Letten. "If meat producers subjected dogs and cats to the array of standard abuses they inflict on farmed animals, they could be jailed on grounds of animal cruelty. The most powerful action we can take to prevent egregious animal abuse is to adopt a compassionate vegetarian diet."
About Mercy For Animals (MFA)
Mercy For Animals is a national non-profit organization dedicated to preventing cruelty to farmed animals and promoting compassionate food choices and policies. Founded in 1999 and over 75,000 strong, MFA has become a leading voice for farmed animals through undercover cruelty investigation, corporate outreach efforts, legal advocacy, and consumer education campaigns. MFA's work exposing animal abuse in the nation's factory farms, slaughterhouses and hatcheries has triggered international outcry as well as legislative reforms, corporate animal welfare policy changes, and criminal prosecutions of animal abusers. The organization is headquartered in Los Angeles. For more information, see
www.MercyForAnimals.org.
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