On today’s factory farms, animals are crammed by the thousands into filthy, windowless sheds and confined to wire cages, gestation crates, barren dirt lots, and other cruel confinement systems. These animals will never raise their families, root around in the soil, build nests, or do anything that is natural and important to them. Most won’t even feel the sun on their backs or breathe fresh air until the day they are loaded onto trucks bound for slaughter. The green pastures and idyllic barnyard scenes of years past are now distant memories. The factory farming industry strives to maximize output while minimizing costs—always at the animals’ expense. The giant corporations that run most factory farms have found that they can make more money by cramming animals into tiny spaces, even though many of the animals get sick and some die. The industry journal National Hog Farmer explains, “Crowding pigs pays,” and egg-industry expert Bernard Rollins writes that “chickens are cheap; cages are expensive.”
Why? As far as the factory farming industry is concerned, the creatures pain, suffering, filth, sickness, shoulder-to-shoulder crowding and environment are irrelevant so long as the animals get fat and can bring in a profit in ever shortening time frames. Think about what animal factory food really is. It is the spoils of a pure profit driven system fostered by collusion between government, a politicized judiciary, an efficiency driven industry and science-focused academia.
Slaughterhouses Animals in slaughterhouses can smell, hear, and often see the slaughter of those before them. As the animals struggle, they’re often abused by frustrated workers, who are under constant pressure to keep the lines moving at rapid speeds. Over 95 percent of U.S. land animals killed for food are birds, yet there is no federal law requiring they be handled humanely. To facilitate automated slaughter, birds are usually immobilized via electrical stunning. Hanging in shackles, the birds’ heads are passed through an electrified water bath. It is not known whether this renders them unconscious, and the potential for birds suffering severely painful pre-stun shocks is difficult to eliminate.Each year, several hundred thousand chickens and turkeys reach the scalding tanks alive.
There are countless documented cases of other behavior that IS considered to be animal abuse in slaughter houses. This is where the workers willfully cause the animals more suffering than is legal. Many of these cases are not reported and go undocumented. In 2011, Abattoir Staff at a Slaughter house in Essex, UK, run by a Cheale Meats, where up to 6000 pigs are killed every week, were seen striking the pigs with paddles and stubbing out cigarettes in their faces. Another worker punched a pig in the face, and others were filmed kicking them. Often the pigs were not stunned correctly, leaving them in screaming agony as they bleed to death. Unbelievably though, the Food Standards Agency in the UK refuse to prosecute those involved. In other cases such as this, pigs are repeatedly electrocuted with iron prods, by laughing workers. The people who do that kind of job lack compassion for animals, otherwise they could not do it. Their actions demonstrate their lack of respect and empathy for animals. |
Cows, calves, pigs, chicks, turkeys, ducks, geese, and other animals live in extremely stressful conditions:
What is a Factory FaRM? A factory farm is a large, industrial operation that raises large numbers of animals for food. Over 99% of farm animals in the U.S. are raised in factory farms, which focus on profit and efficiency at the expense of the animals’ welfare. Factory farms pack animals into spaces so tight that most can barely move. Many have no access to the outdoors, spending their lives on open warehouse floors, or housed in cages or pens. Without the room to engage in natural behaviors, confined animals experience severe physical and mental distress.
an inside look Factory farming produces a product from living machines, confined to one spot, fed but rarely cared for, living in stress and often pain, terror, boredom, and incredible filth. It is a high volume process designed to minimize cost using ever more efficient technology, pushing for faster and faster production lines such that the human workers can seldom keep up the pace; much to the detriment of the animals headed for a painful death. The toll that farm factories take on the long term health of their workers is severe but has been carefully hidden from view. The carnage extends to beef, dairy, poultry, pork and fish. No animal is spared if it can be squeezed to produce a profit for the multinational corporations and their stakeholders. You know who they are, you see their names every time you walk into a supermarket.
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