The undercover video by The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) of cows at the Westland/Hallmark slaughterhouse shows downed animals--too sick to stand on their own--being poked in the eye, beaten, sprayed in the face, lifted and shoved with forklifts, and ultimately dragged by chains to their deaths.

By this point, the video has been viewed by millions of Americans. Millions have been introduced to the concept of downed animals, and to the enormity of their suffering. Millions can no longer say "but food animals are protected by law," and must also now acknowledge that animals deemed unfit for consumption are entering the human food supply chain.

I am so grateful for this video, for the attention it has received, and for HSUS's renewed demands that Congress enact pending farm animal welfare legislation -- the Downed Animal and Food Safety Protection Act and the Farm Animal Stewardship Purchasing Act – without further delay.

I also applaud the efforts of HSUS and other big guns -- Compassion Over Killing, Farm Sanctuary, PETA, , etc. -- to shine a spotlight on the most egregious abuses -- downed animals among them -- in a system designed to maximize efficiency and profit despite the costs to the "product" (in this case, living animals) and the consumer.

Gestation crates. Veal crates. Tens of thousands of chickens raised in a single building (9 billion each year grown and killed in this country alone), sitting in their own filth, the ammonia from their excretions damaging eyes, lungs and throats. Grown so quickly that the chicken industry now knows the percentage of birds that will die of "flip-over syndrome" -- i.e. violent heart attacks -- because their organs can't handle the stress of being forced to grow to slaughter weight in just six weeks. We chop off animals' tails, we chop off their toes, we chop off their beaks, all without anesthesia, because on these factory farms, in these chambers of horror, animals packed together peck and claw and bite each other...and god forbid the meat be damaged. I'm grateful for the courage and commitment that it has taken to gather this footage, and I encourage those of you who've heretofore turned a blind eye to look at it.

Within the animal rights community, the debate will continue over whether lobbying for slow, strategic, and incremental change (the HSUS approach) is preferable to demanding the absolute and immediate end of all uses of animals by human beings. But when we're talking about shifting sociocultural attitudes (if there is such a word!), all change happens incrementally. Sudden seismic shifts of attitude are rare in us humans, and I applaud HSUS, Farm Sanctuary and others for their strategic, long-term approach to changing policy as they also encourage individual animal lovers to adopt a vegan lifestyle.

But I've got to be honest. I just don't feel excited about lobbying for laws that would outlaw mind-numbing cruelty and replace it with a little less cruelty. Through our e-updates and our quarterly newsletter, we encourage Catskill Animal Sanctuary members to make the phone calls that will encourage their respective lawmakers to vote for these incremental changes--in that way, we do our part. But in my role as director of a sanctuary that rescues these animals,the only approach that rings true for me is to say to every single human soul who comes our way: PLEASE DON'T EAT THEM. If you've read my blog from the beginning, you'll know that this hasn't always been my approach. But seven years into this work, it's the only message I feel we can offer.

Of course, how we offer it varies depending on the visitor's predisposition and level of awareness. For those who clearly feel threatened or judged, it can be as simple as encouraging them to lie in the shavings pile with a happy pig, read our signage about the lives of animals, take home the literature to read on their own. For others, it can mean emphasizing the environmental devastation wrought by agribusiness. In other words, no single formula works. What works, I believe, is to be grounded in the "rightness" of this choice, to understand that we're all in different places in our journey, to know that if meat eaters have come to Catskill Animal Sanctuary, somehow the question of diet is one they're already wrestling with...or one with which they're ready to. It's incumbent on us to help them along that path.

It's part of our job that I believe we do well; it's a job we must do better.