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BEAUMONT - The animal rights organization Mercy for Animals is bringing a 10 foot inflatable puppy dog on an inflatable bun to downtown Beaumont and asking the question "Why love one but eat the other?"

Watch KFDM News at 6 for a report about the demonstration. 

Go to www.MercyforAnimals.org for more information.

The group held its demonstrationon at 11 a.m. on Pearl Street between Bowie and Crockett.

Mercy For Animals says consumers should work to ensure farm animals are treated the same way pets at home are generally treated.

KFDM News spoke with the owner of Jack's Pak-It in Beaumont.

Sam Blanda told us they sell all-natural meats. That means the animals are all grass fed and aren't given any hormones or antibiotics.

He says it's unfair to make a blanket statement that all animals in slaughterhouses are mistreated.

According to a news release from Mercy for Animals:

The demonstration is part of a new campaign, which includes billboards, bus ads, and a national protest tour, and aims to spark debate over why we call some animals pets, and others dinner. Far from receiving the kindness and respect afforded most dogs and cats, the billions of cows, pigs, and chickens raised and killed for meat in America lead lives filled with misery. On today's factory farms, animals are crammed by the thousands into filthy sheds and cages where many are unable to even fully extend their limbs, walk, turn around, or engage in other natural behaviors. Animals killed for food are routinely burned, castrated, dehorned, tail docked and debeaked without any painkillers. Before slaughter, frightened animals are often electrically prodded onto crowded transport trucks and hauled through all weather extremes to the slaughterhouse, where many will have their throats slit while still alive and conscious.

Although farmed animals are every bit as capable of feeling pain and suffering as dogs and cats, not a single federal law provides protection to them from abuse on factory farms. Undercover investigations by Mercy For Animals at factory farms, hatcheries, and slaughterhouses nationwide have exposed workers beating animals with metal pipes, stabbing them with pitchforks, and bashing in their skulls with pickaxes. MFA's hidden-camera investigations have also exposed farmed animals suffering from untreated infections and wounds, live chicks being thrown into grinding machines, and dead hens left to rot in cages with birds still laying eggs for human consumption.

"If you wouldn't eat your dog, why eat other animals? Cows, pigs, and chickens are just as intelligent, sensitive, and worthy of our respect as the animals we consider companions," said MFA's National Campaign Coordinator Phil Letten. "If meat producers subjected dogs and cats to the array of standard abuses they inflict on farmed animals, they could be jailed on grounds of animal cruelty. The most powerful action we can take to prevent egregious animal abuse is to adopt a compassionate vegetarian diet."

About Mercy For Animals (MFA)

Mercy For Animals is a national non-profit organization dedicated to preventing cruelty to farmed animals and promoting compassionate food choices and policies. Founded in 1999 and over 75,000 strong, MFA has become a leading voice for farmed animals through undercover cruelty investigation, corporate outreach efforts, legal advocacy, and consumer education campaigns. MFA's work exposing animal abuse in the nation's factory farms, slaughterhouses and hatcheries has triggered international outcry as well as legislative reforms, corporate animal welfare policy changes, and criminal prosecutions of animal abusers. The organization is headquartered in Los Angeles. For more information, see www.MercyforAnimals.org