Chad Dechow
Associate Professor, Dairy Cattle Genetics
Department of Dairy and Animal Science
The Pennsylvania State University
“Instead of redesigning the factory farm to suit the animals, they are redesigning the animals to suit the factory farm”
Matthew Scully. The American Conservative, May 23, 2005.
My most memorably painful experience occurred when I was a teenage farm kid that stomped on the end of a pitchfork. My intent was for the handle to swing up and whack my sister in the hand. Alas, she was not the embarrassed teenager who left for our family vacation the next day with a well deserved set of stitches. In the seconds after the handle did its damage, I knew where I was hurting, I knew that it was a rather intense sensation, and I knew that it was not at all pleasant. What I did not know was that these experiences where the result of two different sensory pathways. The first pathway told me that my chin hurt, and badly; the second told me that it was not pleasant (for me at least – my sister was on the ground laughing). Continue reading Guilt-Free Animal Abuse