Poor Julia, pregnant with 16 piglets, had been kicked, beaten, and burned with an electrical cattle prod. When she finally collapsed from the abuse, the factory farm workers dragged her by her ears into the crate where she was to give birth. And it’s not against the law.

Every year in America, hundreds of thousands of pigs, goats, sheep, and other animals on factory farms who are too sick, injured, or weak to stand or walk are left to suffer for hours or days without food, water, or veterinary care.

These “downers” are thrown out like worthless trash—or end up being dragged, beaten, pushed with forklifts, or shocked with electric prods to get them onto slaughterhouse kill floors, where they are processed for the human food supply.

That’s why I’m asking you to take action with Farm Sanctuary in demanding an end to the abuse of suffering farm animals. Please sign our petition to U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to ban the slaughter of downed animals—with no exceptions.

Ever since I rescued Hilda—a sick sheep who was discarded on a pile of dead animals in 1986—Farm Sanctuary has led the fight to protect downed animals. In the 1990s, we petitioned, then sued, the USDA to ban the slaughter of downed cows. It took several years of hard work, but eventually we won!

More recently, we mobilized people across the nation to speak out against this intolerable cruelty—leading President Obama to strengthen the ban to include downed calves!

But the federal policy still does not go far enough. That’s why Farm Sanctuary recently filed a lawsuit against the USDA and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack for failing to stop the abuse and slaughter of sick or injured farm pigs like Julia.

Will you help us put pressure on the USDA to do the right thing for these vulnerable animals? Speak out against the terrible abuse and slaughter of all farm animals.

It is appalling that the meat industry has profited by selling downed animals into the food supply who are at a heightened risk of carrying a host of human-transmissible pathogens, including Listeria, Campylobacter, Salmonella, swine flu, and Yersinia!

Only when there is no longer a financial incentive to slaughter downed animals will the industry care about keeping these animals healthy. Only when thoughtful people like you say “no” to the horrific, but common, abuses of factory farming will these poor animals’ sad lives change for the better.

That’s why we need you to help us take on farming industry lobbying groups like the National Pork Council and American Meat Institute, and keep downed animals from ending up on kitchen tables and school lunch trays.

Take action now by signing Farm Sanctuary’s petition to Secretary Perdue to extend the ban on the slaughter of sick and injured cattle to protect ALL downed animals.

Thank you for refusing to be silent about this egregious factory farm cruelty.

P.S. If Farm Sanctuary hadn’t been there to save her, Julia’s life—and the lives of her babies—would have ended horribly. We need to stop this cruelty. Be the hero abused farm animals need by adding your name to our petition to Secretary Perdue.