“Stopping farmed animal abuse, one meal at a time”
By Erica Meier
June 13, 2010

Every year in the United States, billions of birds, pigs and cows are raised and killed for human consumption. With few laws to protect them, these animals are routinely treated as little more than unfeeling meat-, milk-, or egg-producing machines, and their suffering is kept hidden behind closed doors.

So when images from inside factory farming facilities are exposed, it's no surprise that most people are horrified, as is the case with the recent release of graphic undercover video footage from inside Cal-Cruz Hatcheries. Such a reaction demonstrates that how we treat animals raised for food does matter. However, what matters most to the animals is what we do with this information.

For nearly a month in 2009, an undercover investigator with Compassion Over Killing worked inside Cal-Cruz Hatcheries, a chicken and duck hatchery in Santa Cruz County. While employed there, the investigator used a hidden camera to document the suffering endured by hundreds of thousands of newly hatched birds as they began their short lives in the meat industry.

Full op-ed at: http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/opinion/ci_15287493