When we think of farm animals, scenes that typically come to mind include chickens strutting and pecking in farmyard dirt, pigs cooling themselves in mud baths, calves nursing from Elsie-like mothers in verdant pastures. These are images the food animal industries want desperately to preserve. Unfortunately, however, reality for today's farm animals could hardly differ more from these mythic scenes. You see, most farm animals today live not in idyllic pastoral settings, but in "intensive confinement" in today's highly mechanized "factory farms."
In the last 4-5 decades dramatic changes have taken root in American agriculture. Far fewer farmers are producing far more food. According to the USDA, livestock production in 1985 was 2.2 times the 1930 level, though total labor and other inputs were virtually the same. And the number of American farmers declined from 10 million to 2 million between 1946 and the mid 1980's.
For farm animals the trend toward accelerated productivity has meant profound suffering. Modern farm animals have been selectively bred, genetically manipulated, and drugged with hormones, antibiotics, and other chemicals to be maximum-yield food producing machines. Their environment now consists of cramped cages, steel bars, fluorescent lighting or total darkness, and acrid, ammonia-filled air.
Neat styrofoam and cellophane packaging belies the suffering that goes into making today's animal foods. Few consumers realize the eggs they buy come from chickens who suffer in cruel battery cages such as the ones above.
In addition, they are subjected to cruel mutilations and bodily violations, such as ear cutting, beak searing, tail dock- ing, castration, and even sexual viola- tion. In short, food animals are treated as mere units of production, rather than complex beings with behavioral and psychological needs. And the food animal industries oppose every attempt to legislate even minimum humane standards.
The veal industry, notorious for confining animals in cruel conditions, raises and slaughters more than a million vulnerable newborn animals a year. The male calves of dairy cows are taken away from their mothers at birth and chained by the neck in crates so narrow that they cannot move. Movement is prohibited so the calves' muscles will be underdeveloped and their flesh will be tender. They are fed an iron-deficient diet to induce anemia so their flesh will have the pale color sought by consumers. Veal calves are also denied companionship, and even light - they are isolated in 20-24 hours of darkness per day for the entirety of their 4 months of life.
The National Pork Producers Council estimates 80% of the 95 million pigs reared annually in the U.S. are intensively confined. These animals never see daylight until they are transported to slaughter. They are conceived, born, weaned, and "finished" in buildings with automated feeding, watering, waste removal, environmental control and other features designed for maximum exploitation of their reproductive and growth cycles.
Though pigs are affectionate, sensitive, and highly intelligent creatures, sows are confined in farrowing stalls so small they cannot move, and piglets are kept in battery cages with as little as 1.7 square feet of space per animal. Crowding stress leads to increased susceptibility to disease and to psychological damage evidenced by cannibalism, fighting, and "boredom vices," such as mouthing, nervous ticks, and stereotypical behaviors.
Many stalls have slatted floors, which are painful for the animals to stand on and result in skeletal deformities. Under the slats pits collect urine and feces. Toxic gases from the excreta are trapped inside the buildings and constantly irritate the animals' lungs and noses. Over 80% of U.S. pigs have pneumonia upon slaughter.
Over 95% of U.S. eggs come from factories that often hold a quarter million to 5 million birds. The battery cages in these facilities have slanted wire floors that cause foot deformities and constant pain. Typically, 5-8 birds are confined in a cage the size of a folded newspaper. With such extreme crowding the birds cannot establish their natural social or "pecking" order. The overpowering frustration that results leads to cannibalism. To mitigate this behavior, when they are small chicks the birds' beaks are seared off with a hot blade, an excruciatingly painful procedure because the beak consists of sensitive tissue.
These miserable animals are allowed no expression of their natural behavioral needs. They never walk, scratch the ground, build a nest, or stretch a wing. They are subjected to constant light to accelerate egg production. At the end of a laying cycle they are either slaughtered and put into soup or pet food, or they are force-moulted by water and food deprivation to shock them into another laying cycle. Many birds die of "cage layer fatigue," in which their skeleton collapses because it is depleted of minerals used to make eggs.
The male chicks that hatch in layer flocks are of no use in egg production, so they are literally thrown away alive. Over half a million newborn chicks are thrown into plastic trash bags to suffocate every day.
The giant broiler chicken industry is a virtual oligopoly, with 60 companies producing nearly all the almost 5 billion chickens slaughtered in the U.S. every year. Derived from the red jungle fowl, an aggressive bird that still inhabits the jungles of Southeast Asia, today's broilers have genetically distorted thighs, breasts, and other marketable body parts. In fact, selective breeding has created birds so heavy that their skeletal development cannot keep up with their weight gain, making it difficult for them to stand.
What's more, the birds grow at an astonishing rate. Several decades ago broilers reached "market weight" of 3 1/2 pounds in 15 weeks. Today only 7 weeks elapse between the hatchery and the slaughterhouse, though chickens have a natural lifespan of 15-20 years.
Broilers are not kept in cages, because wire bruises and blisters the birds' flesh, making it unappealing. Nevertheless, overcrowding in broiler houses is so severe that darkness is often used to reduce fighting. Like layers, broiler chicks have their beaks and toes cut off without anesthesia.
About half the cows in the national dairy herd are intensively reared. These cows suffer emotional, behavioral, and social deprivation before going down the same slaughter ramp as animals raised specifically for their flesh.
Today's Holsteins are bred for unnaturally high milk yields, and injected Bovine Growth Hormone nearly doubles their milk production. Even so, cows produce milk for only about 10 months after giving birth, so they are impregnated constantly. After a few years productivity wanes and dairy cows are sent to slaughter, usually to become hamburger meat.
A factory dairy farm consists of a holding facility and a mechanized milking parlor. The holding facilities have automated feeding, watering, and waste removal systems. The cows are confined there, except for removal to the milking parlor twice a day. There a system of tubes and vacuum pumps extracts their milk and chemical teat dips are applied to their udders.
Female calves of dairy cows are kept to replenish herds, but most male calves are sent to veal crates. The dairy industry is so inextricably linked to the veal industry that to support the former is to perpetuate the latter.
It is impossible to raise animals in intensive confinement without continual reliance on antibiotics, sulfa drugs, and other substances. Incredibly, almost 50% of the antibiotics in the U.S. are administered to farm animals.
Because drugs form toxic residues in animal tissue, they pose a hazard to human consumers. Also dangerous is the development of resistant strains of bacteria fostered by continual antibiotics use. The U.S. Center for Disease Control estimates 2-4 million people contract antibiotic resistant salmonella poisoning every year from consuming contaminated eggs, meat, and milk.
In addition, farm animals are fed growth-promoting hormones and appetite stimulants, such as arsenic. These substances are passed on to consumers, along with pesticides, nitrate fertilizers, herbicides, and aflatoxins, which accumulate in the animals' tissues, organs, and milk after they are ingested in feed.
Refuse to support animal suffering by choosing a diet low on the food chain. Eat healthy, humane plant-based foods in lieu of animal products, and educate others about cruel farming practices.