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WellBeing International WBI Studies Repository 1994 This is What USDA Policy Looks Like. Can You Imagine What it Feels Like? Animal Rights International Follow this and additional works at: https://www.wellbeingintlstudiesrepository.org/facbcam Recommended Citation Animal Rights International, "This is What USDA Policy Looks Like. Can You Imagine What it Feels Like?" (1994). Face Branding Campaign. 1. https://www.wellbeingintlstudiesrepository.org/facbcam/1 This material is brought to you for free and open access by WellBeing International. It has been accepted for inclusion by an authorized administrator of the WBI Studies Repository. For more information, please contact wbisr-info@wellbeingintl.org. THI!. NI!.W YORK TIMBS. TUESDAY. MARCH 15, 1994 THIS IS WHAT USDA POLICY LOOKS LIKE. CAN YOU IMAGINE WHAT IT FEELS LIKE? Or what it sounds like. Or smells like. lmagfae a red-hot frying pan pressed against your cheek. -<he scoring pain. the heat and smoke of sizzling nesh. Even the melt down of your eye. Face Branding Is Barbaric! Hidden from the public. this organized atrocity is how !he USDA currently identifies Mexican steers. Now !he USDA proposes to expand this horTOr to all Mexican cattle in a pathetic gesture at monitoring tuberculosis. In branding. the tCITOrized steer is first lnlpped between bars. Then his head is immobilized with steel pincers painfully clamped on to his nostrils and pulled to one side. If that's not enough the cowboy steps on the stccr's face with his boot. As the red hot iron is pressed into his face, !he steer bellows. his eyes bulge as he disappears into a cloud of his own burning flesh. It's Completely Unnecessary! There are far less painful ways of satisfying the USDA's desire to truce Mexican cattle. Expens say face-branding is not only barbaric but unnecessnry. Far more humane alternatives have been suggested. including microchips. punching a distinctive symbol in !he ear. notching the car or branding near the edge of !he hide on the rear. In an age of DNA fingerprinting. why is the USDA using pre-historic brutaliry to identify cattle? Why is the USDA attempting to expand face branding when we should be outlawing such barbarisms? ls it just bureaucratic inertia. the convenience of doing things the way they've always been done at the USDA? ls it possible that Secretary Espy is not even aware of his organization's face branding program? Stop The Face Branding Nowl Call Mik.c Espy today at (202) 720-3631, fax him ai (202) 720-2166, or write him at: USDA, Room 200-A 12th & Jetrenon Dr. S.W� W�on, DC 20250. Please do it before one morc c:ilf has his face torched! Thil Id - p,oduced by che Cooliticn (o, Non-Vrol<nt Fcod. , pn>jea of Animol Rip Int'!. Box 214. Pbmeuriom S"'-. New Yen. NY 1007'. Hmry Spn. Coard,...,... (left) A terrlfled youno steer slowly disappears Into the anon of his own burning flesh. T11pped between metal blra, his hnd Is fmmoblllnd by mtlal pincers clamped to his nodrlls and pulled to lht side. He Is now al the mer., of Ille USOAa rtd-llol Iron. V,RI -

This is What USDA Policy Looks Like. Can You Imagine What it Feels Like?

Humane Society Institute for Science and Policy

https://www.wellbeingintlstudiesrepository.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1005&context=facbcam

This is What USDA Policy Looks Like. Can You Imagine What it Feels Like?

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WBI Studies Repository (WellBeing International)

Humane Society Institute for Science and Policy