meatmeanzmurder
feeding you the facts
Factory Farms: A Deeper Look at the Lives of Harvested Animals
Cows grazing in a green pasture, horses soaking up the sunlight, pigs grunting happily, roosters crowing.
Is this what you thought the life of a farmed animal was like? Welcome to the cruel world of factory farming.
Farms like the one mentioned above are few and far apart in existence. The happy lives of animals have turned into a living nightmare, there's no waking up from this one. On today's factory farms, animals are crammed by the thousands into filthy windowless sheds, wire cages, gestation crates, and other confinement systems. These animals will never raise their families, root in the soil, build nests, or do anything that is natural to them. They won't even feel the sun on their backs or breathe fresh air until the day they are loaded onto trucks bound for slaughter.
Why aren't there laws to protect
these animals? Good question. Many animal welfare laws specifically
exclude harvested animals. Why the double-
standard?
The factory farming system of modern agriculture strives to maximize
output while minimizing costs. Cows, calves, pigs, chickens, turkeys,
ducks, geese, and other animals are kept in small cages, in jam-packed
sheds, or on filthy feedlots, often with so little space that they
can't even turn around or lie down comfortably. They are deprived of
exercise so that all their bodies' energy goes toward producing flesh,
eggs, or milk for human consumption. 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. It's all about the maximum output, and neglegence to make
meat costs lower.
What can I do by going vegetarian? How will it help? It's all linked to supply and demand. The less meat consumed, the less meat bought. The less meat bought, the fewer animals suffer.
Meet the Animals: A Look Into the Lives of Just A Few Farmed Animals
Chickens
Chickens are inquisitive, interesting animals who are as intelligent as mammals like cats, dogs, and even primates. They are very social and like to spend their days together, scratching for food, cleaning themselves in dust baths, roosting in trees, and lying in the sun.
Chickens raised for their flesh, called “broilers” by the chicken industry, spend their entire lives in filthy sheds with tens of thousands of other birds, where intense crowding and confinement lead to outbreaks of disease. They are bred and drugged to grow so large so quickly that their legs and organs can’t keep up, making heart attacks, organ failure, and crippling leg deformities common. Many become crippled under their own weight and eventually die because they can’t reach the water nozzles. When they are only 6 or 7 weeks old, they are crammed into cages and trucked to slaughter.
Pigs
Did you know pigs are smarter than dogs and three year-old children? Many people who know pigs compare them to dogs because they are friendly, loyal, and intelligent. Pigs are naturally very clean and avoid, if at all possible, soiling their living areas. When given the chance to live away from factory farms, pigs will spend hours playing, lying in the sun, and exploring their surroundings with their powerful sense of smell.
As piglets, they are taken away from their mothers when they are less than 1 month old; their tails are cut off, some of their teeth are cut off, and the males have their testicles ripped out of their scrotums (castration), all without any pain relief. They spend their entire lives in overcrowded pens on a tiny slab of filthy concrete.
Breeding sows spend their entire miserable lives in tiny metal crates where they can't even turn around. Shortly after giving birth, they are once again forcibly impregnated. This cycle continues for years until their bodies finally give out and they are sent to be killed. When the time comes for slaughter, these smart and sensitive animals are forced onto transport trucks that travel for many miles through all weather extremes—many die of heat exhaustion in the summer and arrive frozen to the inside of the truck in the winter. According to industry reports, more than 1 million pigs die in transport each year, and an additional 420,000 are crippled by the time they arrive at the slaughterhouse. Many are still fully conscious when they are immersed in scalding water for hair removal.
Cows
Cows are clever and curious animals. They have been known to go to great lengths to escape from slaughterhouses. These social animals form complex relationships, and prefer to spend their time together. Cows form strong maternal bonds with their calves.
41 million cows die and suffer in the U.S. alone for the meat and dairy industries. Young cows are branded, castrated, and their horns are burned or cut off. All these procedures occur without the use of painkillers. Beef cattle are transported hundreds of miles in all kinds of weather conditions. The transportation conditions are so terrible, many cows die in the proccess. During the slaughter proccess, some cows remain fully conscious the entire time. Veal calves are kept in crates so small they cannot turn around, as to prevent muscle tissue from developing.
Fish:
Fish lead complex and intellectual lives that rival those of dogs and some other mammals. Today’s commercial fishers use massive ships the size of football fields and advanced electronic equipment and satellite communications to track fish. These enormous vessels can stay out at sea for as long as six months, storing thousands of tons of fish onboard in massive freezer compartments. Methods used to catch and kill fish are as cruel as those used by factory farmers and slaughterhouse operators. In fact, 90 percent of large fish populations have been exterminated in the past 50 years and a recent report published in the academic journal Science, estimates that by the year 2048 our oceans will have been completely over-fished.
Regarding the ability to feel pain, fish are equal to cats, dogs, and all other animals. Dr. Donald Broom, scientific advisor to the British government, explains, “The scientific literature is quite clear. Anatomically, physiologically and biologically, the pain system in fish is virtually the same as in birds and animals."
Dying to meat you
- Millions of calves, lambs and pigs are conscious when their throats are cut.
- many ducks are factory farmed in overcrowded sheds. They never see daylight or swim in water.
- 40% of all piglets have their teeth crushed with pliers. Tails are cut without anaesthetics.
- Sheds for broiler (meat) chickens contain up to 30,000 birds. Space per bird - about the sme as a telephone directory.
- Up to one-fifth of chickens may be fully conscious when they enter the scalding tank to loosen their feathers.
- Nearly all 850 million UK chickens are fed antibiotics daily. 35 million die from disease.
- 70% of all UK eggs come from battery hens, kept five-to-a-cage the size of a microwave oven.
- Four-fifths of broiler (meat) chickens have broken and deformed bones, legs and feet by the time they're slaughtered.
- 25% of turkeys are in chronic pain because of swollen joints - 70% in the case of big birds.
- 24% of dairy cows are pregnant when slaughtered - many nearing full term.
- Calves are taken from their mothers a day or two after birth. Males are usually shot.
- 20% of lambs (4million each year) die from cold, disease and starvation.
- Disease, dirt and overcrowding, drugs and antibiotic growth promoters - that's the five month life for most pigs.
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- Facts provided by Viva! (Vegetarians International Voice for Animals )
Vernon Coleman
Each year in the UK five million electrically stunned sheep regain consciousness before they die from loss of blood. Researchers at Bristol University have found that after electric stunning, sheep are still able to feel pain and may still be fully aware of their surroundings. Sheep are unable to cry out because the massive electric current used to stun them paralyses them.
Nearly a quarter of a million cattle are shot at least twice or knifed to death while still conscious. Every year nearly two million pigs which have been electrically stunned regain consciousness before they die.
Around a quarter of a million pigs are incorrectly stunned and don't lose consciousness at all.
At least sixty million chickens, turkeys, geese and ducks regain consciousness and then die slowly from loss of blood. Nearly ten million birds are put into the scalding tank while still conscious.
Tens of millions of animals are fully conscious as they hang upside down, in shackles, bleeding to death.
British newspapers often carry stories of animal cruelty abroad. Few ever dare mention what goes on in British abattoirs. Britain doesn't need a Minister for Women. It needs a Minister for Animals. Oh, how it needs a Minister for Animals.)
Globally, the animal killing industry is now the biggest industry in the world - a multi-trillion dollar industry with 43,000,000,000 animals killed every year.
It is hardly surprising that people who kill for a living tend to become increasingly aggressive and, in the end, uncontrollably violent.
Depression and violence are much commoner among abattoir workers, vivisectors, butchers and others for whom cruelty is a way of life.
KENTUCKY FRIED CRUELTY
"We recognise, I hope, our special responsibilities to the aged and infirm, towards the sick, the mentally subnormal and the physically handicapped. We say that such sentient creatures that are less able to care for themselves deserve our special care and support. The same argument applies to children - and we as adults claim we recognise special duties towards them. If this is so, then why do we not recognise our special duties towards individuals from less clever species?"The Theory And Practice Of Hell
What's the real story behind the glossy commercials for Kentucky Fried Chicken? Is it a wholesome tale of happiness and health? Or a catalogue of cruelty and suffering which Kentucky Fried Chicken don't want us to know?Hidden behind the ads, the victims of Kentucky Fried Chicken suffer lives of degradation and distress. The natural needs and instincts of the birds are ignored altogether. Right from the hatchery until slaughter, they are subjected to a succession of cruelties. The chickens undergo mutilation, crowding, injuries, diseases, debeaking, forced molting, antibiotics, ammonia burn and heat stress. The combs and toes of breeding chickens are cut off. The birds are constantly exposed to "the excremental assault".
Chicken feathers, guts, and waste water, which normally need to be discarded during processing, are routinely "recycled" back to the layer and broiler houses as feed. Industry experts believe that along with unclean slaughtering and processing techniques, this enforced cannibalism is leading to the rampant salmonella epidemic in US poultry plants.
Abuse doesn't stop there. In the name of "poultry science", horrific experiments are performed on live animals in university departments. Meanwhile, male chicks born to laying hens by killed en masse. The chicks are weeded out by "chick-pullers". The young birds die by being suffocated, gassed or ground up while still alive. "Poultry processing plants" are factories of cruelty and killing on a scale it is difficult to comprehend. From the perspective of the distressed animal, life really is "an eternal Treblinka".
The victims of our last finger-lickin' meal are first hung alive and upside-down on metal hooks. They then pass through an apparatus which "ideally" kills them quickly by removing the head with a whirring blade; or alternatively they perish, agonisingly, by immersion in an electrical-shock tank. The doomed birds can see their fate and that of their fellows as they approach the killing station. They are distraught and terrified.
So-called "redskins" are those chickens which - on the conveyer belts to their deaths - missed not only the brine-filled electrified stunning trough, but the knife that was to cut their throats. Their deaths occurred in the scald tank where feathers are loosened before plucking. Industry throws aside piles of them every day.
One has to ask the question: does the nice taste of dead animal flesh morally outweigh the frightful cruelties our meat-eating habits entail? This isn't an ethical discussion Kentucky Fried Chicken is keen to promote.
Richard Ryder
Veal : A Cruel Meal
A calf lies dead in the slatted stall in which it stood for all of its life, with
no mother, sunlight or decent food. This is the fate of a calf raised for veal
Male calves are taken from their mothers shortly after birth. Some are slaughtered soon after birth for "bob veal." Others are raised in "open pens," a kind of minimum security prison, and even then they are sometimes chained. Most are destined for the veal crate.
Solitary Confinement
"Feeding" Time
Because of such extremely unhealthy living conditions and restricted diets, calves are susceptible to a long list of diseases, including chronic pneumonia and "scours," or constant diarrhea. Consequently, they must be given massive doses of antibiotics and other drugs just to keep them alive. (The antibiotics are passed on to consumers in the meat.) The calves often suffer from wounds caused by the constant rubbing against the crates.
A Fate Worse Than Death
What You Can Do
Pigs in Hell.
Piglets' tails are cut off and their teeth are pulled out without the use of painkillers.
Pigs are social and intelligent animals who often go insane from their intensive confinement and complete lack of mental stimulation in factory farms.
After they are taken from their mothers, piglets are mutilated. The confinement, stress, and boredom of life in factory farms causes some pigs to chew their neighbors' tails. Instead of giving them more room or access to the outdoors, factory-farm workers cut off the piglets' tails and cut out some of their teeth, which, like our teeth, are filled with nerve endings. In further efforts to curtail tail-chewing, workers castrate the males without the use of painkillers. This piglet is having his testicles ripped out of his scrotum.
To cut costs, factory farm operators often don't give individual veterinary attention to ill or injured animals. Instead, workers kill sick pigs who won't be able to make it to the slaughterhouse or simply leave them alone to die. In one investigation, workers were videotaped killing sick pigs by repeatedly slamming them against the concrete floor.
This farm worker beats pigs with a metal rod to force them onto trucks headed for slaughter. Pigs have no federal legal protection from abuse on farms or during transport. Read more about what pigs endure during transport and at slaughter.
Unable to move or stand on her own, this pig has been left to die. Her gaunt body indicates that she is starving to death. When pigs who are unable to walk (called "downers") arrive at the slaughterhouse, they have no protection from the most unthinkable cruelty: These sick and injured animals will be kicked, shocked with electric prods, and finally dragged off the trucks to their deaths.
Every year in the U.S., 100 million pigs are killed for food. At the slaughterhouse, slaughter lines move so quickly that the animals are often badly stunned or not stunned at all, so the pigs are still alive and struggling to escape when they are hung upside-down by their back legs and while they have their throats cut. Other times, workers says that they sometimes crack the pigs' skulls open with lead pipes before they are hung up to have their throats cut. One worker describes what pigs may face on the killing floor: "[I]t is in the stick pit, you are going to kill it. Only you don't just kill it, you go in hard, push hard, blow the windpipe, make it drown in its own blood. Split its nose. A live hog would be running around the pit. It would just be looking up at me and I'd be sticking, and I would just take my knife and—eerk—cut its eye out while it was just sitting there ... One time I took my knife—it's sharp enough—and I sliced off the end of a hog's nose, just like a piece of bologna ... I took a handful of salt brine and ground it into his nose ... I stuck the salt right up the hog's ass ... It's not anything anyone should be proud of ... It was my way of taking out frustration.
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The stunning process is often inadequate, leaving pigs conscious when they go down the slaughter line. U.S. Department of Agriculture inspectors at one slaughterhouse found hogs who "were walking and squealing after being stunned [with a stun gun] as many as four times." The pigs in this picture are still conscious but unable to stand up after falling from the slaughter line. They will be dragged back to the start of the line, slammed into shackles, and their throats will be cut.
Piglets in factory farms are often raised on hard metal grates. In addition to enduring excruciating mutilations, piglets are torn from their mothers only a few weeks after they are born. These piglets will never play outdoors or experience anything that is natural to them.
This pig was not properly stunned before her throat was cut. She struggled so violently that she slipped her shackles and fell into the blood pit below. The slaughterman laughed as he shackled her back up. She was disembowelled, cut into pieces and packaged for the supermarket shelf.
A recent Viva investigation revealed that tens of millions of animals killed each year in British abattoirs regain consciousness before they die. Our fellow creatures experience the terror of hanging upside down in shackles and staring into the blood pit below as their life-blood drains away.
