The animals we eat are individuals capable of experiencing pleasure, fear, and pain. Think about dogs or cats you’ve come to know. They can feel sorrow, joy, terror, and other emotions. So can animals we don’t know so well, like chickens, cows, or pigs. All of these animals, whether chicken or cat, pig or puppy, experience a wide range of emotions and value their lives. Yet, the animals who we eat are treated so abusively in this country that similar treatment of dogs or cats would be grounds for animal cruelty charges most civilized states.
In the United States alone, more than 10 billion land animals (and billions more aquatic animals) are slaughtered for food every year—more than 1 million animals every hour. The overwhelming majority of them are kept on factory farms, where the goal is to raise as many animals as possible in the least amount of time and space.

“Our inhumane treatment of livestock is becoming widespread and more and more barbaric....These creatures feel; they
know pain. They suffer pain just as we humans suffer pain.”
— Senator Robert Byrd, addressing the U.S. Senate

The Birds

“Layers” (chickens raised for their eggs), “broilers” (chickens raised for meat), and turkeys are forced to endure horrific abuse.
Only female chickens lay eggs, and since the breed of egg-laying chickens is totally different from that of bulked-up broiler chickens, male chicks are useless to the egg industry. So they are gassed, crushed, discarded in trash bags to suffocate, or simply piled one on top of another, to die from dehydration or asphyxiation. They have it easy compared to female chicks.
While many countries are banning the battery cage system because of its inherent cruelty, egg producers in the United States still cram hens into small, wire cages for their entire lives.
These hens spend their days unable to engage in nearly any of their natural habits, like perching, nesting, dust-bathing, foraging, roaming, or even flapping their wings. Frustrated and overcrowded, the birds often attack each other. To reduce the impact of stress-induced aggression, soon after the chicks are born, parts of their beaks are seared off with a hot blade without painkillers. Debeaking causes them both acute and chronic pain.
When their egg production declines, “spent” hens are killed and sent to rendering plants as their flesh is too battered to even go into
canned soup.
Broilers—the chickens we eat—and turkeys are confined in large, warehouse-style sheds housing tens of thousands of animals. To reduce the pressures of overcrowding, factory farmers amputate turkeys’ toes and mutilate their beaks shortly after birth, causing pain and physical conditions that makes eating, walking, and even standing difficult.

Chickens and turkeys grow so abnormally fast due to selective breeding and growth-promoting antibiotics that their legs and organs can’t support their enormous weight, leading to disabling bone and joint problems. The air in the sheds is heavy with toxins and ammonia from feces, and the birds must endure the stench without relief.

 

While their lives are filled with suffering, their slaughter is horrific, as well. Before they can be transported to slaughterhouses, the birds must first be gathered. Egg-laying hens are pulled from wire battery cages that can catch— and rip off—their wings, legs, and feet. Broiler chickens and turkeys are snatched by workers who gather three or four animals at once. The birds are crammed into crates stacked one atop the other inside the trucks.
At slaughter, they’re torn from the crates and shackled upside down onto automated metal racks. Some birds are stunned in electrified baths, but most are left conscious, yet paralyzed. Those who are stunned often regain consciousness before their throats are slit and end up being immersed alive in tanks of scalding water that de-feather their bodies.

The Pigs

Each year, millions of pigs are kept constantly confined by U.S. animal agribusiness. In the wild, pigs root the earth, cool themselves in mud baths, and walk for miles sniffing for food or exploring their surroundings. On factory farms, they’re unable to do much of what is natural to them and are treated as though they are unfeeling, meat-producing or piglet-making machines.
Sows (female pigs) suffer through constant cycles of pregnancy and nursing, in metal stalls so small the animals can’t even turn around or lie down comfortably during their entire four-month pregnancies. Piglets not used as “breeders” suffer mutilations just as chickens and turkeys do. Confinement in fattening pens—concrete cells housing several pigs—and the unnatural conditions inherent in factory farming result in frustration, boredom, and aggression such as tail biting and fighting. The industry’s response is not to make conditions less inhumane. Instead, factory farmers cut off the tails of baby piglets, punch bits out of their ears, cut off the ends of some of their teeth, and rip out the males’ testicles—excruciating procedures performed without painkillers.

 

The slaughter of pigs can be horrific.

While they are supposed to be stunned before being killed, the procedure is often rushed and imprecise. As a result, pigs are commonly still conscious as workers hang them upside down, slit their throats, cut off their limbs, and rip their skin from their bodies.

The Cows

Every year, millions of cows are slaughtered to stock our grocery stores with beef, veal, and even dairy products. As with all mammals, cows produce milk for their babies. To ensure the highest milk yield possible, U.S. factory farmers artificially inseminate dairy cows every year and keep them pumped full of steroids and other hormones.
After giving birth, the mothers are hooked up to machines two or three times a day that take the very milk intended for their calves. After two months, the mothers are once again impregnated and then milked for seven months of their nine-month pregnancies. The physically taxing cycle of impregnation, birthing, and mechanized milking forces the average dairy cow to be “spent” by her fifth birthday. If allowed to live naturally, cows can live to be 25.
One byproduct of the dairy industry is a calf per year per cow. A calf ’s fate depends on his or her gender: If female, she will likely join her mother on the dairy line. If male, he will be sold to beef or veal farmers, often before he is a week old.

The veal industry is thus a direct byproduct of the dairy industry. Virtually every calf slaughtered for veal is the child of a cow on the dairy line. Most of these calves spend their entire lives chained alone inside wooden crates too small for them to even turn around. To produce the most tender meat, the crates are purposefully designed to prevent movement and cause muscle atrophy. The urine-soaked
wood-slat flooring causes many calves to suffer from chronic pneumonia and other respiratory problems, so veal farmers dose them with antibiotics. And, while their mothers’ milk is being stolen on dairy farms, these calves are fed an iron-deficient milk substitute that keeps them anemic and pales the color of their flesh. After roughly 16 weeks of lonely intensive confinement, without being nursed by their mothers or feeling grass beneath their feet, the calves are slaughtered.

Cattle raised for beef sales are also subjected to cruel treatment. Without painkillers, they have their testicles ripped out, their horns cut off, and third-degree burns (branding) inflicted on them. For the first six to ten months of their lives, they are allowed access to the outdoors before they’re trucked—often over hundreds of miles—to feedlots where they’ll be fattened on an unnatural diet of grains and “fillers” (including sawdust and chicken manure). They’ll stay on the feedlot for another six to ten months until they reach “market weight” of more than 1,000 pounds. Finally, they’re shipped to slaughter.
Food given to animals the day before and during transport to slaughterhouses won’t be converted into flesh, so they receive no food or water. Animals may die on the trucks—frozen to the metal sides, overheated, or dehydrated. At slaughter, they endure painful deaths like pigs and other farmed animals.

The Aquatic Animals

It may be difficult for some of us to empathize with fish, but the science is clear: Fish are animals with complex lives and the ability to feel pain. The British Farm Animal Welfare Council reports: “The fact that fish are cold-blooded does not prevent them from having a pain system and, indeed, such a system is valuable in preserving life and maximising the biological fitness of individuals.”

The number of aquatic animals killed to be eaten in the
United States is not reported, but annual estimates exceed 15
billion. Commercial fishers use football field-sized trawlers
equipped with advanced electronics to track aquatic animals.

Nets several miles long trap tens of thousands of animals in one “pull.”
They’re dragged along the ocean bottoms for hours and eventually killed when the animals are removed from their habitats.

Aquaculture, the factory farming of fish, has become lucrative for U.S. animal agribusiness. Many fish species are raised in shallow, concrete troughs. As with other forms of factory farming, the fish are intensively confined and often diseased. The industry responds by dousing them with antibiotics and other chemical treatments, but death losses are still high.

The Free-Range Myth

While many of us may think of “free-range” farms as idyllic places where pigs relax in mud baths, chickens strut about, and cows
graze leisurely in lush, green pastures while their calves romp playfully, most are nothing like that. There are few government
regulations or industry standards to monitor the use of the term “free range,” so inhumane conditions and mistreatment of the animals are common. In fact, the U.S. Department of Agriculture defines “freerange” and “free-roaming” only for labeling purposes and has no inspection system in place to verify that those farms claiming to be “free-range” actually are.
As with factory-farmed animals, “freerange” animals can be subjected to the same physical mutilations without painkillers and are still sent to the same slaughterhouses as their factory-farmed relatives at a young age when their “productivity” wanes.
Dr. Charles Olentine, editor of industry trade journal Egg Industry, put it best: “Just because it says free-range does not mean that it is welfare-friendly.”