The Three Types of Animal Cruelty
Animal cruelty is all around the world. It’s everywhere and anywhere; even your neighbor could be an animal abuser for all you know! There are three major types of animal cruelty: domestic, farm, and wild.
Domestic:
There is a connection between domestic violence and animal abuse. Animal abusers are five times as likely to harm humans. Children in violent households, who have likely been abused themselves, represent one-fifth of domestic animal cruelty cases. When a child harms animals it can indicate that serious abuse has been inflicted on the child; consequently, animals are abused in nearly all households in which children have been abused. Furthermore, children who witness animal abuse are at greater risk of becoming abusers. Many violent offenders committed childhood acts of animal abuse. Domestic animal abuse also includes dog fighting, puppy mills, animal hoarding, and animal testing.
Farm:
“Factory Farming” is what farm animals (pigs, cows, chickens, and turkeys) have to endure. On today’s factory farms, animals are crammed by the thousands into filthy, windowless sheds and confined to wire cages, gestation crates, barren dirt lots, and other cruel confinement systems. These animals will never raise their families, root around in the soil, build nests, or do anything that is natural and important to them. Most won’t even feel the sun on their backs or breathe fresh air until the day they are loaded onto trucks bound for slaughter. The green pastures and idyllic barnyard scenes of years past are now distant memories. Cows, calves, pigs, chickens, turkeys, ducks, geese, and other animals live in extremely stressful conditions: Kept in small cages or jam-packed sheds or on filthy feedlots, often with so little space that they can’t even turn around or lie down comfortably. Deprived of exercise so that all their bodies’ energy goes toward producing flesh, eggs, or milk for human consumption. Fed drugs to fatten them faster and keep them alive in conditions that could otherwise kill them. Genetically altered to grow faster or to produce much more milk or eggs than they naturally would (many animals become crippled under their own weight and die just inches away from water and food).
“Factory Farming” is what farm animals (pigs, cows, chickens, and turkeys) have to endure. On today’s factory farms, animals are crammed by the thousands into filthy, windowless sheds and confined to wire cages, gestation crates, barren dirt lots, and other cruel confinement systems. These animals will never raise their families, root around in the soil, build nests, or do anything that is natural and important to them. Most won’t even feel the sun on their backs or breathe fresh air until the day they are loaded onto trucks bound for slaughter. The green pastures and idyllic barnyard scenes of years past are now distant memories. Cows, calves, pigs, chickens, turkeys, ducks, geese, and other animals live in extremely stressful conditions: Kept in small cages or jam-packed sheds or on filthy feedlots, often with so little space that they can’t even turn around or lie down comfortably. Deprived of exercise so that all their bodies’ energy goes toward producing flesh, eggs, or milk for human consumption. Fed drugs to fatten them faster and keep them alive in conditions that could otherwise kill them. Genetically altered to grow faster or to produce much more milk or eggs than they naturally would (many animals become crippled under their own weight and die just inches away from water and food).
Wildlife:
The abuse that wild animals encounter when humans set traps, shoot them for "target practice", and skin them for fur coats.
Seals:
Each year, the Canadian government gives hunters the green light to bludgeon to death hundreds of thousands of baby harp seals. During the slaughter, baby seals are shot or repeatedly clubbed. Sealers bludgeon the animals with clubs and “hakapiks” (metal-hook–tipped clubs) and drag the seals—who are often still conscious—across the ice floes with boat hooks.
Hunters toss dead and dying seals into heaps and leave their carcasses to rot on the ice floes because there is no market for seal meat. Veterinarians who have investigated the slaughter have found that hunters routinely fail to comply with Canada’s animal welfare standards.
Trapping:
Approximately 10 million animals are trapped and killed worldwide each year for fur. Animals caught in traps suffer immensely while waiting for the trapper to come and kill them. In the U.S., trappers are licensed by state agencies, just as hunters are. Beavers, raccoons, opossums, muskrats, skunks, and foxes are among the animals targeted by trappers. Many states require the traps to be tagged with the trapper’s identifying information and require trappers to check their traps once a day, but even a short period of time with a limb caught in a leg hold trap is excruciating. Animals will chew off their own limbs to escape the traps. Several U.S. states and many countries have banned the steel-jawed leg hold trap, which is notorious for its cruelty. Trappers now get around this ban by using other types of traps, including snare traps, conibear traps or leg hold traps with a thin layer of padding added. Once the trapper finds the captured animal, if the animal is still alive, the trapper will usually club or stomp the animal to death. Shooting is not as popular because the trapper would risk damaging the pelt.
The abuse that wild animals encounter when humans set traps, shoot them for "target practice", and skin them for fur coats.
Seals:
Each year, the Canadian government gives hunters the green light to bludgeon to death hundreds of thousands of baby harp seals. During the slaughter, baby seals are shot or repeatedly clubbed. Sealers bludgeon the animals with clubs and “hakapiks” (metal-hook–tipped clubs) and drag the seals—who are often still conscious—across the ice floes with boat hooks.
Hunters toss dead and dying seals into heaps and leave their carcasses to rot on the ice floes because there is no market for seal meat. Veterinarians who have investigated the slaughter have found that hunters routinely fail to comply with Canada’s animal welfare standards.
Trapping:
Approximately 10 million animals are trapped and killed worldwide each year for fur. Animals caught in traps suffer immensely while waiting for the trapper to come and kill them. In the U.S., trappers are licensed by state agencies, just as hunters are. Beavers, raccoons, opossums, muskrats, skunks, and foxes are among the animals targeted by trappers. Many states require the traps to be tagged with the trapper’s identifying information and require trappers to check their traps once a day, but even a short period of time with a limb caught in a leg hold trap is excruciating. Animals will chew off their own limbs to escape the traps. Several U.S. states and many countries have banned the steel-jawed leg hold trap, which is notorious for its cruelty. Trappers now get around this ban by using other types of traps, including snare traps, conibear traps or leg hold traps with a thin layer of padding added. Once the trapper finds the captured animal, if the animal is still alive, the trapper will usually club or stomp the animal to death. Shooting is not as popular because the trapper would risk damaging the pelt.