The worldwide trend in animal agriculture is to replace family farms (such as those seen from country roads) with corporate farms rarely seen by the public. These factory farms are large warehouses where animals are kept in crowded pens or tiny, individual stalls. Large numbers of beef cattle, dairy cows, pigs, chickens, and turkeys are raised under such conditions.14
Branding, castrating, dehorning, debeaking, tail-docking, and clipping the teeth of animals raised for food are standard practices and are often performed without anesthesia.15
A common misconception is that only healthy animals are profitable, so farmed animals must be treated well. In truth, Bernard Rollin, PhD, explains that it is "more economically efficient to put a greater number of birds into each cage, accepting lower productivity per bird but greater productivity per cage…individual animals may ‘produce,’ for example gain weight, in part because they are immobile, yet suffer because of the inability to move… Chickens are cheap, cages are expensive."16 National Hog Farmer suggests that "Crowding pigs pays" in an article recommending space be reduced from 8 to 6 square feet per pig (11/15/93).
According to Peter Cheeke, Oregon State University Professor of Animal Agriculture, "Most people who eat meat don’t think too deeply about all the processes involved in converting a living animal to meat on their plate…In my opinion, if most urban meat-eaters were to visit an industrial broiler house, to see how the birds are raised, and could see the birds being ‘harvested’ and then being ‘processed’ in a poultry processing plant, they would not be impressed and some, perhaps many of them would swear off eating chicken and perhaps all meat. For modern animal agriculture, the less the consumer knows about what’s happening before the meat hits the plate, the better. If true, is this an ethical situation? Should we [proponents of animal agriculture] be reluctant to let people know what really goes on, because we’re not really proud of it and concerned that it might turn them to vegetarianism?"10
In the U.S., virtually all farmed birds are raised entirely under factory-farmed conditions.10 Under these crowded, stressful conditions, chickens peck each other. To combat this, workers cut off up to two-thirds of their beaks without anesthesia. Cutting these delicate tissues with a hot knife causes severe pain for weeks.17 Some birds cannot eat after debeaking and starve.16
In poorly ventilated buildings, manure fumes exacerbate respiratory infections and cause infections and other damage to some chickens’ eyes.18
14 Agricultural textbook, Scientific Farm Animal Production, 1998.
15 USDA, Animal Welfare Issues Compendium, September 1997.
16 Bernard Rollin, PhD, Farm Animal Welfare (Iowa State University Press, 1995).
17 Br Poultry Sci, 1989;30:479.
18 Diseases of Poultry, 1997.
Forget the pig is an animal. Treat him just like a machine in a factory.
John Byrnes
Hog Farm Management, 9/76
This [the movie Babe] is the way Americans want to think of pigs. Real-life "Babes" see no sun in their limited lives, with no hay to lie on, no mud to roll in. The sows live in tiny cages, so narrow they can’t even turn around. They live over metal grates, and their waste is pushed through slats beneath them and flushed into huge pits.
Morley Safer
Pork Power, 60 Minutes, 9/19/97
U.S. society is extremely naive about the nature of agricultural production…[I]f the public knew more about the way in which agricultural and animal production infringes on animal welfare, the outcry would be louder.
Bernard E. Rollin, PhD
Farm Animal Welfare,
Iowa State University Press, 1995
According to experts, broilers [chickens raised for meat] now grow so rapidly that the heart and lungs are not developed well enough to support the remainder of the body, resulting in congestive heart failure and tremendous death losses.
David Martin
Feedstuffs, 5/26/97
Based on the history and the development of confinement systems in industrialized agriculture, it is clear that if the pain, suffering, and disease of the animal does not interfere with the economic productivity, the condition is ignored. (Hence the existence of the so-called "production diseases" endemic to confinement agriculture.) Most important, there are no legal or regulatory constraints on what can be done to animals in pursuit of increasing agricultural productivity, either in agricultural research or in industry. Given the absence of such constraints and the historical willingness of industrialized agriculture to sacrifice animal welfare for productivity, the moral problem inherent in genetically engineering animals for production agriculture is obvious.
Bernard E. Rollin, PhD
Bad Ethics, Good Ethics and the Genetic Engineering of Animals in Agriculture,
J Anim Sci, 1996;74:535—541
Up to six egg-laying hens live in a battery cage with a wire floor area of 1.7 square feet.14 These conditions lead to lameness, bone brittleness, osteoporosis, and muscle weakness.16
In 1888, the average hen laid 100 eggs per year;14 in 1998, it was 256.19 At the end of their laying cycle, U.S. hens are either slaughtered or "force-molted." This involves removing food and water for several days in order to shock their bodies into another egg-laying cycle.10
Egg-laying hatcheries don’t have any use for male chicks; they are killed by suffocation in plastic bags, decapitation, gassing, or crushing.16
People commonly believe they do not hurt cows by drinking their milk. The truth is, it is unprofitable to keep cows alive once their milk production declines – usually at 5 to 6 years of age,14 though the normal life span is 25. Thus, dairy consumption leads directly to the slaughter of cows.
USDA statistics show that in 1940, cows averaged 2.3 tons of milk per year. Despite large milk surpluses, Bovine Growth Hormone (BGH) was approved in 1993 to further increase milk outputs. The 1997 average was 8.4 tons per cow.19 Some BGH treated cows have recently produced more than 30 tons of milk in a year.20
High milk production leads to udder ligament damage, lameness, mastitis, and metabolic disorders, which often necessitate killing the cow.10,14
Dairy cows rarely get to nurse their young.14 One-third of male calves are slaughtered immediately, while 40% are raised for "special-fed veal."15 These calves are normally kept in individual stalls chained by the neck on a 2 to 3 foot tether for 18 to 20 weeks.15 They are then slaughtered.
19 USDA NASS, Agricultural Statistics 1999.
20 Associated Press, 20 September 1996.
When confronted with a bellowing cow, meat industry consultant and Professor of Animal Sciences, Dr. Temple Grandin noted, "That’s one sad, unhappy, upset cow. She wants her baby. Bellowing for it, hunting for it. It’s like grieving, mourning – not much written about it. People don’t like to allow them thoughts or feelings."
An Anthropologist on Mars, 1995
All vertebrates, including fish, feel pain. Many fish are long-lived, have complicated nervous systems, and are capable of learning complicated tasks.21
During transport, animals must stand in their excrement and are often exposed to extreme weather conditions in open trucks, sometimes freezing to the truck.22
The trauma inflicted by pushing animals to their physical limits can result in "downers" – animals too sick or weak to walk, even when beaten or shocked with electric prods.
At stockyards, downers and other animals are dragged by chains, still alive, either to slaughter or to the "deadpile," where they are abandoned (see photo on page 15).
21 New Scientist, 25 April 1992.
22 USDA, Survey of Stunning & Handling, 7 January 1997.
The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?
Jeremy Bentham
The Principles of Morals & Legislation, 1789
Like this bull I had last year…he was just trying his hardest to get off the trailer. He had been prodded to death by three or four drivers…I just said, "Why don’t you shoot the damn thing. What’s going on? What about this Code of Ethics?" This one guy said, "I never shoot. Why would I shoot a cow that can come off and there’s still good meat there?" When I first started, I talked to another trucker about downers. He said, "You may as well not get upset. It’s been going on for many years. It will go on for the rest of my life and your life. You’ll get kind of bitter like I did. You just don’t think about the animals. You just think that they aren’t feeling or whatever."
interview with a Canadian livestock trucker from A Cow at my Table, a 1998 documentary on the meat industry (video available from Vegan Outreach for $19; includes s/h)
If they survive their living conditions, all egg-laying, dairy-producing, and wool-bearing animals, whether factory-farmed or free-range, are slaughtered.
Animals in slaughterhouses can smell, hear, and often see the slaughter of those before them. As the animals struggle from fright, the human workers, who are pressured to keep the lines moving quickly, often react with impatience towards the animals.
In a 1996 USDA survey,23 the stunning procedures in 36% of sheep and pig and 64% of cattle slaughterhouses surveyed were rated either "unacceptable" or a "serious problem."
According to USDA slaughterhouse inspector Steve Cockerham and former USDA veterinarian Lester Friedlander, some U.S. slaughterhouses routinely skin live cattle, immerse squealing pigs in scalding water, and abuse still-conscious animals in other ways to keep production lines moving quickly. The men stated that the federal law requiring slaughterhouses to kill animals humanely has been increasingly ignored as meat plants grow bigger.24
The law does not require that birds be unconscious before slaughter. For ease of processing, electric stunning is normally used. There is considerable debate as to whether stunning even renders the birds unconscious.16 It is possible that the shock is an "intensely painful experience."25
23 Meat & Poultry, March 1997.
24 Reuters, 2 April 1998.
25 Humane Slaughter of Poultry: The Case Against the Use of Electrical Stunning Devices, J Ag & Env Ethics, July 1994.
Can one regard a fellow creature as a property item, an investment, a piece of meat, an "it," without degenerating into cruelty towards that creature?
Karen Davis, PhD
Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs, 1996
These large slaughtering operations are primarily concerned with productivity and profit. They don’t care about the effects on the animals.
Dave Carney
1997 Chairman, National Joint Council of Food Inspection Locals
as quoted in Slaughterhouse, 1997
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