NYT’s investigation into taxpayer funded nightmarish experiments.

An investigation by The New York Times has revealed nightmarish experiments being conducted with taxpayer money at a remote research center in southern Nebraska to further profits for the Meat Industry.

According to the article, “These experiments are not the work of a meat processor or rogue operation. Instead, they are conducted by a taxpayer-financed federal institution called the U.S. Meat Animal Research Center, a complex of laboratories and pastures that sprawls over 55 square miles in Clay Center, Neb. Little known outside the world of big agriculture, the center has one overarching mission: helping producers of beef, pork, and lamb turn a higher profit as diets shift toward poultry, fish, and produce.”

It is an eye-opening piece that goes into detail about some of the experiments going on in this facility. Here is an excerpt from the article where Dr. Keen, a scientist and veterinarian who worked at the center for 24 years, recounts his experience, “There was a young cow, a teenager, with as many as six bulls,” he recalled. “The bulls were being studied for their sexual libido, and normally you would do that by putting a single bull in with a cow for 15 minutes. But these bulls had been in there for hours mounting her.”

The cow’s head was locked in a cagelike device to keep her immobile, he said. “Her back legs were broken. Her body was just torn up.”

“The center has about 30,000 animals, tended by about 44 scientists, 73 technicians, and other support workers. The scientists, who do not have medical degrees, and their assistants euthanize and operate on livestock, sometimes doing two or more major surgical operations on the same animal.”

“Twenty years ago, it employed six scientists with veterinary degrees, including Dr. Keen. Today it has none.”

“Geoffrey Hirsch, a former technician, recalled helping with a routine procedure about 12 years ago to extract lung tissue from the carcass of a young pig. But efforts to euthanize the pig had failed, he said; it was still thrashing and gagging. Worse, Mr. Hirsch said, the scientist who had erred “seemed to be getting some kind of enjoyment out of this thing, talking and shouting at the animal, ” ‘How do you like that, pig?’ Stuff like that. The whole process was shocking.”

Please read the entire article in The New York Times.