High School Agriculture Program Reportedly Teaches Cruelty to Animals

PETA was recently notified about a high school agriculture class that reportedly demonstrates bull castrations for students without providing the animals with any anesthesia, even though a veterinarian is present. Apparently, chickens are also cruelly killed by having their heads “pulled off” as part of this teaching program, which is supposed to be aimed at educating youth about proper animal husbandry.

When a PETA cruelty caseworker called the head of the high school’s agriculture department to investigate this complaint further, the department head unabashedly confirmed that the bulls are indeed castrated without anesthesia. This instructor also admitted that he demonstrates chicken slaughter by pulling the chickens’ heads off himself. (He also indicated that students who express interest are given the opportunity to do so as well.)

These cruel teaching practices exemplify why PETA opposes high school agriculture programs, which compromise both animals and students. Such curricula indoctrinate students into thinking of cows, chickens, and other animals as mere commodities instead of sentient beings who deserve compassion and respect. When these projects are completed, most animals are killed in the classroom or auctioned off and subjected to the cruel agricultural husbandry and slaughter practices prevalent on modern-day farms. Those students who manage to bond with the program’s animals will often call PETA, desperate to save them from such a fate.

Please contact the head of this high school’s agriculture department, as well as the school principal and district superintendent, and encourage them to abolish these cruel practices immediately. Please remind them that a wide array of curriculum alternatives is available to educate students about careers working with animals in a positive, compassionate, and responsible manner, including working closely with farmed-animal sanctuaries dedicated to the humane treatment of animals or exploration of the humane-oriented book Careers With Animals. For more information about humane education alternatives, please visit www.TeachKind.org:

Mr. Rhodes, Director, Agriculture Department
Mr. Ernest Joe, Principal
Auburndale High School
1 Bloodhound Tr.
Auburndale, FL 33823
863-965-6245 (fax)

Dr. Gail McKenzie, Superintendent
Polk School District
P.O. Box 391
Bartow, FL 33831
863-519-8231 (fax)

Please also contact animal control authorities and the prosecuting attorney and urge them to investigate this situation for any cruelty-to-animals violations.

Polk County Sheriff’s Department
Animal Control Division
7115 de Castro Rd.
Winter Haven, FL 33880

The Honorable Jerry Hill
State’s Attorney
P.O. Box 9000
Bartow, FL 33831-9000
863-534-4945 (fax)
jhill@sao10.dsm.net

 

you know what, for hundreds of year folks have cut bulll nuts off with out nothing fancy for pain. Deal with it either way the chicken is gonna die. If you don't like it ignore it and flame me I am big and strong and can take it.

Why is it a crime to show youth the ways things are done animals are for food.

Think about this, and I am sure your veg or Vegan or what ever.

but everyday more and more farmers and ranches are losing ther farms and Ranches
what ae they suppose to do?

they can't compete with HUGE factory farms. Factor farms are what we need less of, FIGHT THE LARGE Corept coorperations that fund and opperate factor farms.

and Peta is not so kind and ethical as they paint there pictures. A few few years ago they let shit loads of mink loose at a mink farm near here. 100'' and 100's were killed by passing cars as they were DOMESTICATED mink and had never learned about roads and such. Fun way to be set free and ten get smashed!

think of the ethic's in that

support Local Ag. and commerace

 

I disagree with castrating bulls without anasthetic. It is actually quite painful.

However, killing a chicken that way is the most humane way possible. It is better than cutting it's head off because alot of people are not good with axes and whatnot -- it's easy to miss the exact mark you must hit. By pulling and dislocating the neck (which can pull a young chicken's head off accidentally), you are killing the chicken instantly.

 

I used to go to school next to a chicken processing plant. At recess we would watch them string the chickens up by their feet on this convayer (sp) belt thing. After a couple minutes, when all their blood was in their heads, they would basically run into a a bladed machine that would slice their heads off. How is that for an 8yr olds entertainment? lol.

Seriously... cows are pretty stupid. If it hurts them, they don't exactly remember it. Not that that is a endorsement to run out and hurt livestock. But cows will eat their own poop if you don't make a serious effort to stop them. Dumb as hammers, cow are. Yep. And their nuts have been cut off for thousands of years without any numbing. Cows and horses, and yaks and llamas, and pigs and sheep and goats and everyother livestock-ish animal out there has had it done without any problems.

Can ya tell I'm a country mouse? Yehaw! Farmer beget farmer beget farmer beget me!

 

"eating their own poop if you let them" is not a testement to how smart or dumb an animal is. Dogs will also eat their own poop....infact my dog likes to roll around in it.



And just because something has been done for "thousands of years" does not AT ALL make it right or OK.

Cutting off a part of an animals body without pain killers may have gone on without any "problems" for the person doing the cutting but I guarentee you it was problematic for the animal as it FUCKING HURTS!

 

Elle, I didn't say that I was endorsing it. I annually get into fights with my farmer family. My politics (and me in general) are a major disappointment to them! I was just looking at things from a farmers point of view.

how much does it cost to get your cat or dog spayed or neutered? Lots, right? Realistically, a ranch can have several hundred calves born each spring. Lets say half of them are male. Of that 100 male calves, all but 3-4 will be castrated. So, that's around 97 calves that have to eventually be castrated. If you had to pay a vet to come out and provide anesthesia to each calf, the farmer would be bankrupt... and that is before the other vet bills come in (shots and other things), and feed and water and all the other costs to running a ranch.

I don't know if anyone else has spent much time with cows, but they are spectacularily dumb. Dogs eat poop.. you are right... but it isn't exactly the most intelligent thing a dog does, and the dog is aware of it. The dog searches it out.
Cows don't even realize what they are doing. If your dog pooped in his food bowl or water dish and just continued eating the food, with the steamy turd pile added, without noticing, it would begin to be close to what cows do constantly.

Cows don't learn, they aren't aware, but as I said before, that isn't a reason to run out and hurt them. All I meant is that I don't think they are overly aware of what is happening to them.

I grew up on a farm. I don't eat red meat, and I don't wear leather. It was my decision. It made me very unpopular with the rest of my family. It was like riding a bike when your family are oil magnates. There are two sides of every coin.... and I was just showing the farmer's side.

 

Our agriculture programs at my school were and still are just like that. I do think killing animals is unethical, by philosophy (not something I exactly evangelize, but it's what I believe), but the way they are treated is probably a hell of a lot better than where most meat in stores and restaurants comes from. The only problems I ever had with high school ag programs in comparison to any other local farming operation was that a lot of students took those classes as "Easy A" classes and were very apathetic. Oh yeah, and that they'd cut funding in more popular programs to pay for the ag department, despite the fact a very small minority of students actually wanted to be farmers... and most of them already work on farms.

On castrating calves... I've seen it done. Most of them didn't even moo, let alone show any signs of terror. The part that got me was burning their horns out, and even then the visible signs of pain were over pretty fast.

 

That reminds me...When my dad was a teenager, he used to sneak onto farms and tip the cows over while they were sleeping...They didn't even wake up LOL.

 

I doesn't matter how smart or stupid someone is, that has nothing to do with them feeling pain. Anyone who ever took a basic biology course knows that, and unless you went to some hick high school you would have learned that in like the 9th grade.

 

It is a crime to treat animals cruelly, period.

I became vegan at 14 and have been fruitarian for 7 months. Did my sig give me away?

And it was the ALF that did the thing you mentioned with the minks...but better to die free and natural than be in someone's coat. LONG LIVE THE ALF!

I've been a member of PETA for 15 years and always will be a member. I may not agree with everything they do (this is true of any organization) but I will always support them. It's the radicals that get things done, not the people who sit on their asses.

 

Aww shucks Ma'am, we's can't all be sophisticated city folk! I waz gonna get duh truck runnin' and take a trip into duh city, but I just know I would get lost. Ain't all that good at you're fancy map readin' or lernin' in general, so I guess I shud just stay on duh farm for duh rest of my life. Stupid inbred hick dat I is.

Eucation is education. The fact that I spent most of my life on or near the farm has nothing to do with how smart I am or what is taught in science class. It's not like you are taught better biology in the big city. Farm kids aren't taught a dumbed down version. I never said that cows can't feel things... I said that they aren't aware.

Calves are castrated (usually) within 72 hours of being born. It's basically the equivalent of a circumsision... baby boys feel the pain, but they get over it quickly. They are young, and they don't remember the pain. THAT was the point being made. Sure it hurts the cow... it hurts for mere minutes, and then it's over and the cow doesn't remember it.

There are other methods of castrating cattle. Surgical castration is the quickest, the easiest and the least likely to cause painful complications for the cow.

 

PeTA sucks. And the ALF sucks even more. Both organizations make those of us who actually care about animals and make a consorted effort to coexist with them look like kooks.

I was called a Petard last summer when I was handing out flyers to people to encourage adoption over buying puppies from a particular petstore. A friggin petard and I hate the damned organization. I was out there delivering support for my local shelter and I got accosted with insults.

That's what PeTA does for the average animal-advocate.Fuck PeTA. $20 million dollars a year in donations PeTA recieves and they waste it on garbage like J-lo's fur or Star Jones. Imagine what the nation's SPCAs could do with $20 milllion dollars a year.

 

Back to cows and agriculture.

The typical PeTA member has never stepped foot on a real working farm and the closest they get to a cow is at a county fair while protesting. They wouldn'd dare get closer for they might ruin their pleather combat boots in cow shit.

In general they know nothing of actual animal care and life, so you have to beg pardonce to their ignorance.

Baby calves feel a quick pinch when they are gelded. It lasts a whole 2 seconds and they get back up and run around. There is no screaming and the mother cow doesnt even realize her baby is missing. Most ungulate mothers have little awareness about their young. They really arent great mothers.

Factory farms are horrid...most people with half a brain agree on that. But agriculture classes arent teaching kids to hire migrant workers and rear animals in shit-filled pens. They are taught how to be the best farmer possible and how to raise animals and crops in the cleanest,healthiest,and wisest ways. Yes they kill chickens but they learn the right way to do so.

They arent gonna eat nasty tofurkey so they might as well learn the realities of an omnivorous life.

 

icedteapriestess, lol, that was funny, i'm a farmer (and canadian too!) so that just tickled me! yeah, we farmer's 'don't got all that city fancy edjumucation' heh-heh!

I've worked with sheep and when we geld the boys we use a special elastic band. we'd pop one over the wee rams testicles and send him back to play with his friends. over the next couple of weeks his sack would just wither away. and he would just continue with his merry antics with his buddies. They don't seem to notice.

I actually don't geld my own rams, i find there is really no need. i sell them before the reach breeding age. but i only keep a small number.

okay are all the males reading this thread crossing their legs at this point, lol!

kathy

 

Actually, it's been pretty well established that schools in larger cities do teach their students better, mainly because they can afford to. I too grew up in the midwest and I can tell you that I can see the difference between the education that I received in the larger city I lived in and the education the kids receive where I live now. It's not the students' fault.

 

I'll always support them, period.

 

Well, you just met a PETA member who has stepped foot on a farm. My family comes from a long line of good family farmers. Luckily we have money now and were able to get out of that.

At least you admit that factory farms are horrid.

And tofurky isn't nasty! It's much nastier to eat a corpse. Thank God I will be raising my kids properly...as vegans.

 

Then you aren't a real animal-advocate..you're a poser throwing away your time and money on a garbage publicity-hound organization and supporting a bunch a crackheads with no sense of reality.

 

"MY DIET IZ TEH BETER DEN UR DIET OMGZZZ!11!11!!!"

How old are you?

With a whiny and preachy attitude like that,I hope you wont be breeding anytime soon.

 

Proof please?

Because the rest of us in the world seem to be under the impression that the smaller suburban and small-town schools(usually in agricultral communities)offer the best educations outside of private-schooling and home-schooling.

And larger cities,btw,have some of the worst public education do to the ever-growing poor population and urban sprawl.There is no money because the money moves away from the big cities.

You aren't the only one who grew up in the midwest or got to see the differences between urban schools and other schools.Get off your silly self-righteous high-horse already.