Political Quotes

“One of the areas where Congress has repeatedly come together in a nonpartisan fashion to make real progress has been legislation dealing with the protection of animals. This is something that unites us as we have been able to deal with a series of simple, commonsense steps to assure we meet the standard of care. That is why it was so horrific to read the terrible front-page article in The New York Times on January 20 about the Federal Meat Animal Research Center in Clay Center, Nebraska. Moving from the front page to two full pages on the inside were truly grotesque and horrifying examples of animal abuse. A young cow had its head locked in a cagelike device to keep her immobile while she was repeatedly--you can only describe it as sexually tortured for hours by as many as six bulls being studied for their sexual libido. Her back legs were broken, her body--in the words of one of the observers--was ``torn up,'' and the cow understandably died from her injuries. There were other experiments detailed, sheep and pigs, without consideration of animal health impact. It detailed horrifying and often unsuccessful results. At least 6,500 animals were known to have starved to death at this facility, and unknown numbers died from negligence from easily treatable infections, exposure to bad weather, or attacks by predators--all of this at a cost of almost $200 million of taxpayer money over the last 10 years, resulting in this grotesque abuse of animals.…”