Operation Animal Mutilation
By Kate Mathis, Web Editor
Image Courtesy of ModernFarmer.com
Cattle mutilation. It sounds bizarre and disturbing, but believe it or not, it has been occuring in the Western United States since the 1970’s. Ranchers have been waking up to their entire cattle stock completely dead, with neither blood nor footprints in sight. Oddly, many of the animals which had been killed-including cows, sheep, horses, and goats-contained no report of medical illnesses prior to the unusual incident. What’s even stranger, the animal carcasses had body parts removed with such laser sharp precision, denying the possibility that a human could have committed the bizarre acts. So, what in the world was occurring on these farms?
Image Courtesy of Insider.com
In 1979, the case was handed to the FBI where they launched “Operation Animal Mutilation.” The investigation lasted one year, and the final report claimed that the mutilations were predominantly the result of natural predation. The brief inquiry occured in New Mexico, and the mutilator seemed to have stopped while the investigation was ongoing. There were little to no reports of the mutilations during the inspections.
Many scientists and veterinarians took a stance on the matter, using natural causes as a justification for the bizarre mutilations. If the animal or herd died from natural causes like disease or illness, then the seemingly surgical precisions were just tears in the skin from dehydration or bloating. The absence of blood could be a result of lividity, a process when the heart is no longer pumping and gravity pools the blood to the lowest point in the body. As for the missing organs, maggots could have decomposed the animal carcasses. However, ranchers clarified that most of their mutilated animals were young, strong, and healthy animals. Why were they dying?
I believe that the government is mutilating the cows for the sole purpose of researching what exactly Americans are consuming in their everyday meat and dairy products. Steroid hormone implants have been approved for growth in food-producing animals since the 1950’s, and the FDA claims these drugs are safe for not only the animals, but also for human consumption. Yet, governmental approvals have not always been correct, and the FDA does not always guarantee drug safety. Also, the timeline suspiciously lines up; steroid use in cattle began in the 1950’s, and the first popularized report of cattle mutilation was in the late 1960’s. Consumer concerns have drastically increased over the past few years regarding injected meat and its link to causing various types of cancers. However, federal agencies can not regulate the presence of hormones in these foods, a huge problem with the meat and dairy industry. Since estradiol, progesterone, and testosterone are sex hormones naturally produced by the animals, regulation is not possible to seperate these natural hormones with the hormones used for treatment. This also explains the extremely brief investigation the government launched for the mutilations, and why the topic is relatively untouched upon by the government itself. The animal mutilation stunts could possibly be a method to collect data and research on the meat and dairy industries regarding hormone injections, and whether these chemicals are dangerous towards our health.
So what do you think… Are these mutilations natural or government tampered…?
Image Courtesy of SouthwestLedger.com
Infographic by Kate Mathis, Web Editor
Infographic by Kate Mathis, info from EcoPeanut.com
Image Courtesy of SouthwestLedger.com