PETA exhibit at Union shows students the cruelty of slaughterhouses

Students can experience the horrors of slaugherhouses by visiting Peta2’s giant inflatable barn exhibit this week in front of the Kansas Union.

Peta2 is touring colleges across the nation this fall with their Glass Windows exhibit. The tour started on Sept. 10 and will end after Thanksgiving. It will be in front of the Kansas Union today and tomorrow from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Ashleigh Lee/KANSAN
Stephanie Hindle, a freshman from Parsons, talks to Lisa Hines, exhibit coordinator of the Glass Walls Exhibit for PETA, about the display in front of the Student Union on Thursday, Sept. 19. “We want to educate people about the agriculture industry,” said Hines. “We don’t want to depress them, but to empower them to make individual choices.”

“We’ve found that students are horrified to learn that cows have their throats slit while they’re still conscience and that chickens are scalded to death in boiling hot water before being turned into Mcnuggets,” said Ryan Huling, manager of college campaigns and outreach for Peta2. “It’s simply not the kind of industry that students want to support.”

The exhibit is split into two sections. The first section has facts and pictures of animal cruelty along with examples of the small cages the animals are crammed into. The second section is a theatre with imitation cage seats and a graphic video showing the animals’ harsh living conditions and painful deaths.

“Wow,” Laisa Alcantar, a sophomore from Garden City, Kan., said after touring the exhibit. “I’ve never seen a video like that. I was kind of shocked at the things that happen in slaughter houses. I was appalled. The worst part was seeing the piglets being thrown down to kill because they were sick. There should be a better way to feed the population that isn’t that cruel.”

Huling said the purpose of the exhibit is to remind students of what’s behind closed doors in factory farms and slaughter houses and to look at the humane alternatives available, including vegetarian barbeque riblets, vegan pizza and other credulity-free options.

Some students hope for better living conditions for the animals but remain steadfast in their appetite for meat.

“Ignorance really is bliss when it comes to this kind of thing,” said Blaine Knox, a senior from Salina, Kan. Peta2 is the student division of PETA, which works with high school and college student groups around America on issues that directly affect students at their schools. Huling said Peta2 has seen a tremendous increase of students who identify as vegetarian since they were founded in 2002.

Peta2 coordinated with the University’s Compassion for All Animals student group in 2011 and 2012 to write a petition for more vegetarian and vegan options at the campus dining halls. Parendi Birdie, Compassion for All Animals founder, said the petitions were successful, and KU Dining Services will be adding more vegetarian and vegan options in the future.

Compassion for All Animals promotes a lifestyle free of cruelty and exploitations by spreading awareness about animal cruelty through discussions, lectures and volunteering at the humane society.

“All animals deserve the right to live free of suffering,” Birdie said.

Last spring, Compassion for All Animals hosted the University’s first cruelty-free fashion show, “Free Food, Passion and Compassion.” The student group also won the Student Group of the Year Award by Peta2 in recognition for its extraordinary efforts to help end animals’ suffering worldwide last semester.

— Edited by Stéphane Roque

Contact at rschlichting@kansan.com .
  • Updated Sep. 19, 2012 at 11:14 pm
  • KSJeffersonian

    I find it hard to believe that the use of scalding to kill the chickens is widespread. The stress of this process would cause the chicken to produce hormones that adversely affect the taste of the meat. The facilities of which I am aware cut or pull the head off of the chicken. The chicken may continue to flop around, as do many lower forms of life when the head is removed — this is the reason for the term, “running around like a chicken with its head cut off.” That does not mean that the chicken is actually alive.

    I know that cutting the cow’s, or steer’s throat is not the normal procedure. They use pneumatic or electric “guns” that propel a retractable bolt into the animals head at high speed. The vast majority are killed by this. Any that survive are hit in the head with a sledge hammer.

    It is unfortunate that people have been so removed from the production of their food, from the real world and from the cruelty of nature, that they are shocked by the means of production.

    Perhaps this removal from the real world is, in part, why Thomas Jefferson stated, “I think our governments will remain virtuous
    for many centuries; as long as they are chiefly agricultural; … . When
    they get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, they will
    become corrupt as in Europe.” – Letter to James Madison (20
    December 1787)