Let’s stop animal abuse

Essere Animali has disseminated numerous investigations carried out inside intensive farms and slaughterhouses in Italy — some of which involved collaboration with reputable international media — in order to document the conditions of animals raised for food.

During these investigations, we filmed regular violations of legislation concerning animal protection and norms of the criminal code.

• Violence inflicted by factory farm staff while handling animals or when animals resist treatment, such as blows with iron pipes, improper use of electric tasers, lifting “downed cows” using a forklift, and kicking and throwing small animals.
• Mutilations carried out without anesthesia and analgesia, in the absence of a veterinarian and even beyond the age permitted by law.
• Systematic tail docking of piglets, an illegal but widespread practice in almost all Italian farms.
• Animals left to die of starvation or brutally killed by farm workers, without applying the correct guidelines concerning emergency killing of sick animals.
• Group killings inside slaughterhouses, with animals witnessing the deaths of other individuals, and use of ineffective stunning practices.

Several complaints have been filed to the relevant authorities for these abuses, but the frequency of such episodes is worrying as they were filmed in almost all the farms we visited. These farms were chosen on a sample basis throughout the country, including suppliers of PDO products.

Alongside these legal violations, Essere Animali investigations have also shown breeding types and practices which, although now legal, are the cause of undisputed physical and psychological suffering for animals, including:

• Use of cages in which animals spend much or all of their lives.
• High density when animals are raised “on the ground” or in enclosures.
• Surgical castration of piglets and debeaking of hens.
• Baby chicks, which are considered useless for breeding purposes, are ground up alive.
• Separation of calves from their mothers at birth for milk production purposes.

• Ban use of cages (even partial use)
• Ban of any mutilation or killing of male chicks if they are perfectly healthy but considered non-productive by the livestock industry.
• Stop public subsidies to the livestock sector.
• Increase penalties for the mistreatment of animals and for other violations, including withdrawal of authorizations and disqualification from activity in the most serious cases.
• Set up a monitoring system that is more effective than the one currently in use, for farms, during transportation, and in the slaughtering phases.
• Reconsideration of stocking densities, permitting animals more space to move, even outdoors, and with the inclusion of environmental enrichments.