Known as fistulated cows, the animals are fitted with a porthole-like device that can be opened, allowing direct access to the largest of their four stomachs in order to optimise and regulate nutrition.
CHRIS DYER: ‘An animal rights group has taken undercover footage of cows fitted with plastic ‘portholes’ at a French research facility. Activist group L214 published video of the animals with devices surgically inserted into their sides to allow access to their stomach contents. Scientists use the holes to study digestion in order to get the animals to produce more milk. Known as cannulated or fistulated cows, the animals are fitted with a porthole-like device that can be opened, allowing direct access to the largest of their four stomachs in order to optimise and regulate nutrition. The practice has been in use for decades by researchers and the agricultural industry, though it is not widely known to the general public.
L214 published clips it said was secretly shot between February and May at the Sourches Experimental Farm in Saint-Symphorien in northwestern France and is the largest ‘zootechnical centre’ in Europe. The site belongs to Sanders, one of France’s top providers of animal feed and a subsidiary of the French food research group Avril. Video footage shows workers at the site with their arms inserted directly into the cows through the rubber portholes. Activists said the use of cannulas was ‘symptomatic of the way animals are considered as simple machines at our disposal’ and has launched an online campaign to end it… L214 said it had filed a complaint with the regional prosecutor over the ‘illegal experiments and the serious animal abuses’ at the farm…
It said: ‘As citizens, we call on the ministers for research and agriculture to immediately ban experiments aimed at increasing the productivity of animals.’ ‘They have pierced a hole into the cows’ stomach so they can regularly access its content. Employees come regularly to open the porthole to deposit food samples or take them out,’ said a video released by the group. ‘The aim is to perfect the most effective form of feeding so the cows produce as much milk as possible,’ it says, describing the animals as little more than ‘milk producing machines’ that put out some 27 litres (seven gallons) per day… ‘For Sanders and those involved in intensive livestock production, which is the norm in France, these animals are nothing more than production machines, a basic raw material at our disposal,’ the video said’. SOURCE…
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