How animals are treated is NOT a joke.
Pope Benedict 2002 interview: When he was asked about the rights of animals in a 2002 interview, he said, “That is a very serious question. At any rate, we can see that they are given into our care, that we cannot just do whatever we want with them. Animals, too, are God’s creatures . . . Certainly, a sort of industrial use of creatures, so that geese are fed in such a way as to produce as large a liver as possible, or hens live so packed together that they become just caricatures of birds, this degrading of living creatures to a commodity seems to me in fact to contradict the relationship of mutuality that comes across in the Bible.”
goveg.com/pdfs/PopeAdEaster.pdf
Here is a link to the undercover video at the Abby.
petatv.com/tvpopup/video.asp?video=mepkin&Player=wm
These Monks were cruel here. Please don’t be in such awe, just because someone is a Monk it doesn’t mean they are above the law or even basic cruelty standards.
At the hatchery that supplies birds to Mepkin Abbey, the sensitive tips of birds’ beaks are seared off with a hot blade. This process causes acute and chronic pain, as discussed in PETA’s letter to Mepkin Abbey. Unable to produce eggs and therefore unprofitable to the industry, male chicks are discarded as trash—often suffocated in plastic bags or ground up in a “macerator” while they are still conscious.
At Mepkin Abbey, the monks cram birds into tiny wire “battery cages” that are so small that the animals can’t even spread their wings. Their bones become weak and often break because the birds are unable to exercise them. They never see sunlight, breathe fresh air, or do anything else that is natural and important to them.
Sick and injured hens are often left to suffer. PETA’s investigator observed two hens with broken legs who were removed from a cage by one of the monks and left to suffer on the floor of the barn for at least 45 minutes while the monk continued to perform routine chores.
When the hens’ bodies become so weak that they stop producing eggs, the abbey starves them using a technique called “feed-withdrawal forced molting” in order to shock them into another laying cycle (to increase their economic utility). This practice is so cruel that up to 5 percent of the hens die during the molt, and many of the surviving hens lose all their feathers and much of their body weight.
After every last egg has been squeezed from the birds, Mepkin Abbey ships its hens to gruesome slaughterhouses. There, the hens’ fragile—and possibly already broken—legs are snapped into tight metal shackles and the birds are immobilized (but not rendered insensible to pain) with electrified water. Next, the birds—still conscious but unable to move—have their throats cut open with a metal blade. Many miss the blade and end up at the next stage—the scalding-hot defeathering tank—while they are still able to feel pain.