…a moment before cramming, the birds were so frightened that they huddled
together as far away from the farmer as they could get – pushing themselves
against the bars of the cage in an attempt to escape…the geese are terrified
by the whir of the machinery, associating the sounds with more pain, they have been
dragged struggling from the cage – normally by a wing…
This is a part of a daily routine for those miserable birds who never get the chance to fly.
Three times a day, workers enter a small duck pens in a factory-farm building where ducks are
imprisoned. The ducks, know what is coming. They struggle to get as far away from the human as possible.
The workers grab the ducks one at a time, hold them down, forcibly open their bills, and shove
a long metal pipe down their throats all the way to their stomachs.
They then squeeze a lever attached to the pipe, and an air-driven pump forced a third of the
day's six-to-seven pounds of corn mixture into each duck's stomach.
Each worker is expected to force-feed 500 birds three times a day. So many ducks die when
their stomachs burst from overfeeding.
The workers who kill less than 50 of "their" 500, receive bonuses. No more words needed.
These ducks, together with geese endure this painful and enormous
distressing procedure at least three times a day for about four weeks.
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The majorities of these birds ( 20 million ducks) are kept parceled rank after rank of them,
in individual cages so small that they are unable to stand or stretch their wings. Cages
are so small that their tails stick out at one end of the cage, and their necks at the
other, allowing the force-feeder to grab their heads and force their beaks open.
These Humans cram the miserable birds by stuffing Half a kilo of salted, cooked maize, oil,
and water, often lubricated with goose fat, into their
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crop – the equivalent of about 8 kilos of
spaghetti to a Human being – in only two seconds.
A single ‘operator’ can force-feed more than a thousand birds in less than an hour.
By the 12th day, the goose is being crammed every three hours – that is 8 times in one day –
even through the night.
Their liver is sickly swollen, out of proportion to the birds' body,
10 to 12
times the normal size. The force feed
causes terrible injuries including bruising
and tearing of the neck. Their increasing weight
cause blisters as their breasts rub on the cage floor.
"…One duck had a maggot-covered neck wound so severe that water spilled out
of him when he drank."
Workers routinely carried ducks by their necks and sometimes forcing food
down the trachea (breathing tube) causing them to choke and defecate in distress, and even die.
The corn mixture is deliberately deficient in nutrients. This ensures that the
liver does not function normally and accumulates fats instead of breaking them
down. They cannot even walk or stand, they propelling themselves by pushing with
their wings because their legs had given out.
"…swollen sacks shuffling on inadequate legs in cramped spaces", as eyewitness describes.
Their bills become deformed or broken, and they extremely suffer damage to their
pharynx and esophagus. Sometimes the force of inserting the metal pipe raptures their
necks and of course some of them die outright from burst internal organs. Ducks and
geese live in terror of these force-feeding ordeals.
Necropsies show ruptured livers, throat injuries, esophagus trauma, and food spilling
out of dead birds' nostrils.
The birds cannot live this way for long. They will certainly die.
After four weeks, they are been send to be murdered. Their bodies are so distended by this
time that they can hardly move and have difficulty even with breathing. Most of them only pant.
One farmer describes the right time to kill them: "when they have difficulty
breathing,
appear as if they are about to have a heart attack or simply to have had enough…"
Between 30 and 70 percent of birds at slaughterhouses suffer from multiple bone fractures.
In addition to the extreme suffer they endure; many birds are debeaked and additional
to the confinement they cannot perform any of their normal behaviours. They cannot keep
themselves clean, their feathers become curled and sticky.
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Their dead eyes are showing their utter misery.
In their natural state, they live in social groups and spend long periods in water.
Most of their day is devoted to searching for food, bathing, and preening.
Only male ducks and geese are used for 'Foie Gras' – it is claimed that they 'produce'
larger livers and are considered as more “convenient” to withstand the four weeks of
torture. Female hatchlings are treated as trash – literally.
Common workers were observed stuffing nylon feed sack with female duckling tying the bag
at the top and dropping it into a trash can filled with scalding water.
And it's not all; they killed the surviving ones by smashing their heads against the trash can.
Every year, worldwide, more than 25 million ducks and geese are forced-fed.
90 percent of all 'Foie Gras' is produced and eaten by the French but it is consumed by
people all over the world.
In France (the biggest producer of ‘Foie Gras’ in the world), 80 percent of all ducks
are now kept in individual cages in factory farms, which are closed to visitors. This
change has enabled costs to fall and production levels to increase by more than 100
percent over the past ten years.
Animals are purposefully raised to become deformed and diseased.
Almost all the non-human animals are raised for the same purpose. More than
HUNDRED BILLION non-human animals killed every year after life of misery.
It will never stop. It is just getting worse. There is only one way to stop
this insanity. This terror. This suffer.
Geese suffer the agony of being plucked alive four or five times during their short lives.
One description of all that down in the stores each winter: "The geese of the Hungarian Soviet
Friendship Cooperative Farm live short and unhappy lives. They are hatched without benefit of
Mother Goose in oven-like breeders. Until they are eight weeks old, the goslings are fed
either a diet 'good for livers or good for feathers.' Neither is good for the birds' happiness."
If the geese are white, they are destined to be plucked for their down (the soft, fine feathers
of young birds), which will go into pillows, parkas and comforters. These geese lead particularly
painful lives. Four or five times during the short span allotted to them, they are plucked.
"…terrified birds being lifted by their backs and then having all their body feathers ripped out.
The frantic geese struggle to escape, causing strained muscles and sometimes broken limbs."
After the last plucking, when winter approaches and cost accountants say it is more expensive
to heat the sheds than the feathers are worth, the geese are slaughtered for their meat.
Down is in high demand for bedding, and world production adds up to THOUSANDS OF TONS.
The main market is Germany. Countries where live plucking takes place include China,
Poland, and Hungary, and allegedly France and Israel.
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