To: William Douglas III, MD
 
Dear Doctor Douglas,
 
Usually I am in great agreement with what you say even when it is uncharted territory and you must wait years to be vindicated. I value the advice in your newsletters.
 
This time however, I am disgusted by your lack of caring for slaughter animals and feeling they do not deserve humane treatment. These are living feelings creatures who do not deserve to be treated callously no matter what. Not only do we need more meat Inspectors those same people need to be cross trained in cruelty to animals and need to report to two agencies, and perhaps be paid by both.
 
I am a meat eater but I am sickened by the thought of what those innocent helpless animals went thru at the hands of sadists who get jobs at slaughter houses so their abuses are "legal". You, Sir, were totally unfair to the Humane Society. Were it not for them this story of the tainted meat would not have been known! Did they report it as animal abuse when the story broke? NO! They reported on sick animals entering the food chain headed for schools and children. They did not even mention the horrible treatment I saw on video (that you called "knocked around a bit"). These people are parents also and tried to get their information to the public in time to stop as much tainted meat being eaten as possible. Some had already been consumed.
 
And the only way the H.S. could get ANY action taken on the gross abuses of animals was to tell about the children. Most people are like you, as long as the abuse is animal-like people abusing animals behind closed doors, they do not care. Slaughter animals endure months of horrific conditions and abuse and neglect before going to slaughter. Their lives are a living hell.
 
You have the audacity to chide the H.S. for doing it's job!! Those of us who donate money to them want them helping animals not people. There are enough bleeding hearts who only care about people and not animals. H.S. was doing their job. Other agencies need to do theirs. If you want to criticize, call them out on it. So far not enough has been said about the abuse.
 
Hear's another bit of shocking news for you. Those poor cows they were stabbing and lifting by forklifts...the rule for the Inspectors is if the animal is "standing" on it's feet, it can go into the food system! Does not have to be standing on it's own. This is how the Inspectors get around disqualifying many animals. As for the ones they were shocking, beating, and waterboarding to get to stand: If the pain they were enduring was worse than the pain of standing, assuming all the legs were not broken, the sick and diseased ones stood up long enough to "pass" inspection by those hypocritical criminals. If the inspections were real instead of going thru the motions, they would not want a sick animal to be made to stand up, other than with normal urging, in case the animal felt bad but was not diseased.
 
If animal cruelty laws were observed, we would not have to worry about all cases of containamated meat getting to us. We eat meat from sick animals ALL THE TIME.
You just did not know it until now. Meat Inspectors as well as Humane Society people and owners of slaughter houses take bribes so their findings are not reported. You are fond of saying "it's about the money" for the drug companies. It's about the money in every form of regulatory agency (eg. the FDA).
 
Most of the meat we consume is so contaminated with drugs and human growth hormone it is unfit for human consumption anyway. Why do you think teenage boys and men are developing breasts now? HGH. I see obese teenagers who do not eat more than teens in years past. They gain weight because of the legal guaranteed fattening ingredients allowed to be added to our food supplies. Why don't you go after them instead of putting down something thousands of us people care about? Just because you hate animals is no reason to vomit your views all over the rest of us. What goes around comes around, Doc. If the abuse were not the norm our food supplies would be safer. I blame people like you for allowing that to happen.
 
I'm sorry my words to you are harsh. But I believe yours have been worse. Please reconsider your opinion on issues concerning animals. Things work together for good or for evil. One thing affects another. We are not an "island unto ourselves."
 
Sincerely,
 
Shelva Sirry