Mary Had a Little Lamb

A lamb in a field, abandoned by its mother.  

Photo: Michael Moss

Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Michael Moss is to be commended for his superb reporting on “U.S. Research Lab Lets Livestock Suffer in Quest for Profit” in today’s New York Times. His piece exposes the abuse and suffering farm animals endure at the U.S. Research Lab in Nebraska.

The lives of farm animals are shockingly brief and brutal as it is, yet man devises new and crueler methods to breed them in order to increase  profits.

Here is an excerpt from Moss' piece:

"At a remote research center on the Nebraska plains, scientists are using surgery and breeding techniques to re-engineer the farm animal to fit the needs of the 21st-century meat industry. The potential benefits are huge: animals that produce more offspring, yield more meat and cost less to raise.

There are, however, some complications.

Pigs are having many more piglets — up to 14, instead of the usual eight — but hundreds of those newborns, too frail or crowded to move, are being crushed each year when their mothers roll over. Cows, which normally bear one calf at a time, have been retooled to have twins and triplets, which often emerge weakened or deformed, dying in such numbers that even meat producers have been repulsed.

Then there are the lambs...

Read the rest of the story here.