Open Your Eyes [MUST WATCH!!!]

I want you to open your eyes.

Open your eyes
and take my hand.

There’s so much you need to see.

It won’t be easy,

but it will be
simple.

Don’t worry.

I’m right here with you.

[fading in sound of truck idling and a pig screaming until abruptly cut off]

Wake up.

Hi it’s Emily from Bite Size Vegan and welcome
to another vegan nugget.

As a society, we hide the realities of our food industry from
view. We shroud the process in secrecy, interact

only with sterilized, aesthetically-pleasing
packages. We tell ourselves our food animals

are treated nicely. That they’re killed
humanely. And when faced with evidence to

the contrary, we say “it’s not like that
here.”

Well I’m here to show you that it is like
that here.

This video is for vegans and non-vegans alike.

If you’re non-vegan, being fully
aware of what you’re purchasing and choosing

to eat is of vital importance. If you’re
vegan, keeping that connection to why you’ve

chosen this way of life is of equal importance.

Regardless of your lifestyle, the lives we
will encounter here together have value,

and turning a blind eye to their experiences is
condemning them to an existence completely

devoid of even a moment’s recognition.

Some of what I will be showing you today will
be disturbing, heartbreaking, even infuriating.

You will want to close your eyes, but I’ll
ask that you bear witness to this reality.

This is not sensationalized. These are everyday
sights, mundane tasks in the daily operations

of the animal products industry.

If you aren’t vegan and feel the need to
turn away, I’d ask you to think on the question,

if it’s not good enough for your eyes, why
is it good enough for your stomach?

This is the bare truth of where your food comes from.

If you are vegan, please find it within yourself
to validate what these individuals have gone through.

If they have to live through it and
die by it, the very least we can do is bear witness to it.

If you must look away, please
continue to listen.

This is reality for trillions of individuals
in our world.

This is not an isolated case.

This is not in some distant land.

This is
here and now, in your own backyard.

For this 24 hour vigil with the activist group
Toronto Pig Save, we started off in the early

morning at Fearman’s Pork, Incorporated
in Burlington, Canada. Before most people

had even gotten out of bed, these pigs were
around the corner from their deaths.

Pigs and other quote unquote livestock animals
can travel for days without food and water,

with the maximum allowable limit varying by
country. In Canada, it’s currently 36 hours

for pigs and chickens and 48 hours for cows.
Due to cramped and unhygienic conditions pigs

attack and cannibalize one another and suffer
from growths and infections.

Whether they come from factory farms or quiet
humane family farms, they all end up here.

And today is their death day.

"We love you! We love you sweetheart! We love you baby! Yes we..."

Our next stop was two cow slaughterhouses
in Toronto, St. Helens and the Halal and Kosher

Ryding-Regency. Under Halal and Kosher standards,
animals must be fully conscious when killed.

Ryding also slaughters spent dairy cows, mothers
whose bodies are so exhausted from repeated

pregnancies and milkings they they’ve given
out or succumbed to disease.

Ryding-Regency Meat Packers slaughterhouse
kills 50 dairy cows a day. A kill floor worker

told us this week that 60-70% of the cows are pregnant when on the kill floor.

The fetuses can be as small as 2 inches or as large as calves ready to be born the same
day.

The heads and spinal cords of the mother dairy
cows are labeled SRM or “Specified Risk

Material.” Anyone over 30 months is prone
to Mad Cow Disease.

That is, they may potentially carry bovine spongiform encephalopathy.

The
mother heads are painted blue to designate

them as Specified Risk Material. They are
sent off to incineration rather than to a

rendering plant for pet food or farmed animal
feed.

I met with a kill floor worker at Ryding-Regency
Meat Packers slaughterhouse, who told me that

he has born witness to cows being skinned
while they are still conscious. This atrocity

is unimaginable and anyone’s worst nightmare
in wars, yet this happens everyday in Toronto.

A scalper skins the faces while the cows are
awake. It often happens particularly to the

first 10 cows slaughtered each morning at
7 am because the owner doesn’t allow time

for the first cows on the kill floor to be
fully bled. There is pressure to start dismembering

the cows right away and not lose money by
slowing down the production line.

The skinning of cows while they are still conscious
was an atrocity reported in Gail Eisnitz's

book Slaughterhouse... It happens every day
here because they kill kosher or halal... There

is no stunning and if the cows are not bled
enough, the scalper begins

while the cows are still conscious.

The owners of Ryding-Regency and St. Helens
profess to be animal lovers, with St. Helens’

stating to one Toronto Pig Save activist “no
one loves animals more than me.”

The cows’ skins are loaded into trucks and
taken down the street to the tannery, leaving

a trail of blood along the way. The stench
at the tannery is almost unbearable as workers

run the skins through salt water to prevent
putrefaction of the collagen.

Towering stacks of skins are moved around on a forklift. This
is your luxurious leather.

At all of the slaughterhouses, semis are pumped
full of blood, which along with rejected body

parts is carted off to rendering plants to
be mixed into pet food and livestock feed.

We feed our food animals the blood and remains
of those who went before them.

Our final stop for the night was Maple Leaf
Poultry in Toronto, a chicken slaughterhouse

that runs 24 hours a day during the week,
slaughtering in excess of 60,000 chickens a day.

Each arriving truck carries between
5 and 10,000 chickens.

Some die slowly and painfully from disease,
injury, or exhaustion before even reaching slaughter.

While they appear to be full grown,
they are only 36 to 42 days old on the day

of their death. As with all animals killed
for food, they are but babies.

At the last 24 hour vigil, Martin, the plant
manager at Maple Leaf surrendered a chicken

to Toronto Pig Save activists. Mercy now lives
free at a local farm sanctuary.

Encouraged by this victory, activists asked to free one
more.

One of thousands today, one of hundreds

of thousands this week, one of millions this
year at this slaughterhouse alone. Just one.

But they were denied, pushed aside, and detained.

Later on, a truck driver pushed into an activist
with his semi. This is not an uncommon occurrence.

The slaughterhouse workers themselves range
from kind and helpful to outright hostile.

This is their livelihood, how they support
their family. Many feel they have no other

option, and many realistically have very few,
as the hourly pay is higher than other industries.

And with good reason.

This is no one's dream job.

Toronto Pig Save is working on developing
a transitional program to help slaughterhouse

workers find alternative employment. The industry
is rife with human rights abuses and violations,

worker injuries and even deaths. With the
priority on speed and quantity, safety falls

by the wayside.

The security guard at St. Helens told us he
has a wife and kids to support. He said

has no problem with what we’re doing but
with great agitation escorts us off the property,

saying he has to do his job. He’s looked
for security work elsewhere but no other business

pays as high. Of course other no business
has so much to hide.

The animal products industry thrives in secrecy and dies with exposure.

We asked if he ever goes inside to watch what happens.

He screwed up his face in disgust
and admitted he stopped eating cows and pigs altogether.

One of the truck drivers who delivers the
cows even admitted he’s gone vegan after

seeing what actually happens to the cows he
drops off. But he continues his work because

he can’t find anything to match his current
pay.

Our food system is broken in more ways than
one. The industry relies on consumers not

seeing the truth, and consumers are all too
ready to comply.

Profit over safety, the bottom

line over reason, corner-cutting over compassion.

We as consumers rely on having our food presented

without the bother of thinking how it got
there and what, or who, it was before being

neatly packaged for our purchase. Slaughterhouse
workers rely on the plants higher-than-average

income despite horrifying and often dangerous
working conditions.

And the animals…well, the animals rely on us.

Their only hope for freedom comes from us,
their tormentors. We have the ability to change

all of this. And it starts with acknowledging
that it is happening. It starts with coming

face to face with our choices and their real-life
impact. It starts with us bearing witness to the truth.

It starts, when you open your
eyes.

Please share this video to open eyes everywhere
to the reality of our food system. Vegan or

non-vegan, each and every person should experience
this firsthand. You don’t have to be strong,

you just have to be there. For more information,
resources and to connect with Toronto Pig

Save to attend a vigil yourself, please see
the blog post for this video and/or the links

in the video description below.

If you want to help support Bite Size Vegan
in creating this educational video-based resource

and Toronto Pig Save in bearing witness to
these beings, please see the support links

here, in the sidebar, and in the video description.

Thank you for listening.

Thank you for bearing witness.

Thank you for opening your eyes.