PAWS Magazine   Issue 49, Summer 2001   Old McDonald's Nightmare
by Jennifer Hillman and Richard Huffman  Bucolic images of farm
life are burned into the conscience of Americans. Happy cows,
wandering in fields, lumbering into the barn for a morning
milking. Squealing pigs, playfully wallowing in their pens,
offering friendly snorts to passersby. Chickens resting
peacefully in nest boxes, with their eggs carefully collected by
a farmer who gently places them in a fabric-lined basket.  But
this Old McDonald version of typical farm life has long since
been replaced by an altogether darker, more cruel reality. Mass
mechanization techniques that had been perfected in auto
production and other industries have been increasingly applied
to farms. In the course of doing business each year, close to 10
billion animals are raised and slaughtered in the U.S. for food.
Americans have a natural abhorrence of cruelty to animals. When
Sacramento resident Andrew Burnett threw a defenseless dog into
the inescapable rush of o