Where Your Food Comes From

Where your food comes from

Chickens

Chickens are social animals that originated from the jungles of Southeast Asia. In the wild, they form stable groups of about 30 members that roost and forage together. Chickens prefer the company of familiar chickens, and can recognize each other visually. Their eyesight is so good, in fact, that chickens can detect ultraviolet light, which is why roosters crow before dawn(1). A mother hen teaches her children how to forage for food and find shelter. She will even stand up to foxes and eagles to defend her chicks! In factory farmed conditions, however, she is powerless to defend her babies taken away for debeaking* the day after they’re hatched. Debeaking is the removal of all or part of a chick’s beak with a hot blade in order to keep chickens from pecking at each other out of frustration or boredom. A chicken uses its beak to peck, forage, explore, and groom itself. Consequently, this process causes immense pain to one of the animal’s most sensitive body parts. These newly debeaked chicks are then shipped from the hatchery to one of two miserable fates: that of the broiler chicken or the egg-laying hen.

*see section on eggs

Chicken Flesh

Broiler chickens are chickens raised for their flesh. They have been bred to develop abnormally large breasts and thighs, which causes painful genetic lameness. Many broiler chickens cannot even walk! Not that they have much room to. Broiler chickens are kept in filthy, crowded conditions in large barns. Producers cycle the birds between darkness and light in less-than twenty-four hour cycles. Some birds will have three hours of night and one of day in order to trick their bodies into eating more. This is akin to a human being suffering under constant jet lag(2). Because of these stressful, overcrowded conditions, disease spreads throughout a broiler chicken population like wildfire. Respiratory and skin diseases, cancer, and of course, avian flu are just some of the conditions broiler chickens must face. As a result, the entire population is fed antibiotics indiscriminately, even if the individual does not need it. This winds up in our food, strengthening a disease’s resistance to antibiotics. Although chickens can live up to fifteen years, broilers are slaughtered after just sixty days of life.

Lame broiler chicken

Eggs

Like dairy cows, egg-laying hens suffer longer than their counterparts killed immediately for food. At birth, chickens raised to be "layers" are separated according to gender. Male chicks, unless used for breeding, are of no value to the egg industry, and so, are killed at birth. They are either thrown into the trash to suffocate on top of each other or ground up while still alive. Their sisters will be put into battery cages for the rest of their lives.* The average wingspan of a hen is 30-32”, the average battery cage is 18”x15” and most cages have between two and six hens. This overcrowding leads to terrible physical and psychological damage to the animal. Over time, a bird’s feet will start to become malformed due to the wire mesh floor, and her feathers will fall out from so much friction. Cages are usually stacked at a slant on top of each other, which makes it easier for workers to collect eggs rolling downhill. However, this means that hens have to fight gravity just to stand up, and are constantly covered in their neighbors’ feces. Egg-laying is a private, sensitive time for a wild hen. Even in such squalid conditions, a hen will still try to find a quiet corner to “nest” and lay her egg. Of course this is impossible, and only contributes to the animal’s distress. Egg-laying hens use most of their calcium and minerals when forming eggshells. As a result, their bones are extremely weak and break easily, especially during the rough handling they typically endure (3). Layers are considered “spent” by the industry after just two years of life, and are then sent to be slaughtered for low-quality meat, such as pet food.

*See section on free-range & organic animal products

Hens in a cramped battery cage

1 Davis, Karen. Perceptions of Animals speech.

2 Coats, C. David. Old MacDonald's Factory Farm: The Myth of the Traditional Farm and the Shocking Truth About Animal Suffering in Today's Agribusiness

3 Grandin, Temple. Animals Make Us Human.

"You are eating fear, grief, and rage. You are eating suffering, horror, and murder. You are eating cruelty."

-Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin, on eating meat

Cows

Cows are shy, curious animals that form strong and complex bonds within their social groups. Instead of the immediate flight response that most prey animals exhibit when threatened, cows will group together with their horns facing outwards to protect their young and feeble (1). Cows are not docile, unintelligent creatures; they in fact hold grudges, nurture friendships, and become excited over intellectual challenges. One Cambridge University study of cows’ brainwaves found that cows experience a “Eureka!” moment in which some cows’ heartbeats increase and some even jump when they learned how to open doors that led to food. In factory farmed conditions, however, cows live in environments too stressful and inhumane to exhibit these complex behaviors. These gentle animals suffer unnecessary, painful medical procedures, such as branding, dehorning, castration, and tail-docking without anesthesia in preparation for their miserable life of confinement.

Beef

Beef cattle are typically separated from their mothers at six to eight weeks of age and then moved to what the agribusiness calls feedlots or Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs). They will spend the last months of their lives in these cramped dust- or cement-floored enclosures along with hundreds of other cattle, usually ankle-deep in their own manure. Beef cattle are fed a high-protein diet completely unsuited to their stomachs, which are structured to digest grass. Their food contains mainly corn and animal by-products, and is typically laced with growth hormones. Calves naturally grow to adult size in three years; today’s factory farm has reduced a cow’s lifespan, from birth to the slaughterhouse, to just 11 months (2). As a result of their diet and their surroundings, beef cattle raised in commercial feedlots suffer from a wide range of diseases including respiratory and digestive problems. Many animals will die from stress and illness in transit from feedlots to slaughterhouses.

Cows in a CAFO

Dairy

Inconceivably enough, dairy cattle’s lives are even more tortured and miserable than their brethren raised solely for their flesh. Dairy cows are treated as milk-machines; they are denied any semblance of a fulfilling life. Unlike beef cattle, who at least have a few square feet to pace on, dairy cows rarely leave their pen. They spend their lives chained to a stall with only room to sit down and stand up for milking, which is rarely done by hand. Dairy cows are expected to produce one to two calves a year through artificial insemination. Like humans, cows only produce milk when they have young to nurse. Babies are typically ripped from their mothers’ sides a few days after birth, although they would otherwise have stayed with their mothers for at least another two years. Mothers and their calves bawl for days from the pain that this separation causes. Dairy cows are “engineered” for efficiency; like beef cattle, dairy cows are also fed a fattening, non-nutritious diet. Cows are also typically injected with bovine somatotropin or recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH), which increases their milk production to 7 tons per year, compared to the 2.5 they would produce ordinarily. Their diet causes them to grow quickly and disproportionately, and does not support their bone growth. As a result, lameness among cows on dairy farms ranges anywhere from 5-50% (3). rBGH causes a cow to develop incredibly swollen, pendulous udders that often contract mastitis , a painful condition that requires a liberal dosing of antibiotics to fix. Dairy cows are usually too exhausted after two to six years of intensive milk production to be of any use to the dairy industry; fully fifteen years less than their natural lifespan. Their bodies are too spent for “high-quality” cutlets; therefore dairy cows who have “exhausted” their milk production are slaughtered in the same manner as their counterparts raised for beef, but can only be sold as hamburger meat.

Veal

After being separated from their mothers, many male calves are kept in a pens to be raised for veal. They are kept in small pens and fed an unhealthy, high-protein diet so that their muscles never fully develop, making their meat more tender. Some calves will even lick their own urine in order to get some scrap of iron in their diet (4). These conditions are so inhumane that veal crates have been banned in 6 states. At six weeks, they are sent to the slaughterhouse. Female calves are sometimes raised in similar conditions as veal calves in order to then become dairy cows and so replace their exhausted mothers. Other times, female calves will be slaughtered for the rennet in their stomachs.

Veal crate

1 Grandin 2 Coats

3 Grandin 4 Coats

Pigs

Pigs are highly social, gregarious, and intelligent creatures. When left to their own devices, pigs form large, tight-knit matriarchal groups. Pigs develop close interpersonal relationships, and prefer the company of a familiar social group. Mother sows will even sing to their young while they nurse. Contrary to popular belief, pigs are actually pretty clean animals and have no sweat glands. Consequently, they have discovered that rolling in the mud will protect their sensitive skin from burning, and keep them cool in hot weather. Pigs can spend up to 75% of their time foraging for food . This makes them highly curious and clever animals at about the same level of cognition (or higher) than the family dog. One study found that pigs even enjoy playing video games! Their intelligence only makes their brutal captivity on a factory farm the more tragic, since the bleak conditions pigs routinely face quickly make them go insane.

Breeding Sows

“The breeding sow should be thought of as, and treated as, a valuable piece of machinery whose function is to pump out baby pigs like a sausage machine.”

L.J. Taylor, Walls Meat Company Ltd.(1)

This quote very accurately reflects the pork industry’s view of gestating (pregnant) and farrowing (birthing) female pigs, or sows. These animals are useless to the industry unless they are pregnant or nursing. Therefore, as soon as a sow gives birth, she is already being forcibly inseminated, artificially or otherwise. While pregnant, sows are typically kept in what is known as a gestation crate. These steel bars are barely a few inches wider than the sow, preventing her from turning around or scratching an itch. She is kept like this until she gives birth three months later, supposedly to prevent any injury to the pregnancy. Instead, the sow incurs a great deal of psychological damage, and often develops stereotypies, or an abnormal repetitive behavior (ARB).(2) This may include compulsive “mouthing” of the crate bars, swaying, head shaking, and other symptoms that humans with neurological disorders often display. After giving birth, the sow is placed in an even smaller cage called a farrowing crate, which leads to rampant lameness among sows. She is strapped or chained to the concrete floor so that her piglets can nurse whenever they want. She cannot stand up or nuzzle her babies. Consequently, she develops no maternal instincts and often crushes her piglets. Although pig babies would typically wean themselves off of their mother’s milk in eight to twelve weeks, on a factory farm they are forcibly removed at three weeks or less, greatly increasing their mortality rate. Their mother is then re-impregnated, and the cycle begins again. Sows are kept alive like this for four or five years so that they’re bodies can be constantly used and violated until the day they collapse from exhaustion and are killed for meat.

Sows in gestation crates

Pork(3)

Soon after the trauma of being separated from their mother prematurely, piglets are subject to extremely painful medical procedures. They typically have their tails cut off and some teeth removed with pliers so that they will not injure each other due to the stress caused by factory farmed conditions. Piglets then have notches carved out of their ears as identifying marks and the males are castrated. All of these procedures are performed without anesthesia. Pigs will then be put in battery cages similar to those of egg-laying hens until they become adults. At that point, they will be shoved into equally cramped pens with other pigs in their same age and sex groups, which frustrates these highly social animals. In a normal group of pigs individuals of varying genders and ages serve to keep the cohesiveness and hierarchy of the band intact. Without a leader to check aggressive behavior, the unnatural group arrangement on factory farms causes pigs to cannibalize each other. Pigs raised exclusively for slaughter also develop ARBs like those of breeding sows. These animals are forced to stand in their own excrement, although they would otherwise never choose to smear themselves with their own feces (they will sometimes take mudbaths). These unsanitary, cramped conditions result in rampant respiratory diseases and lameness, bone development problems, and of course, the infamous H1N1 (swine flu). Pigs are typically sent off to slaughter as teenagers at just twenty-four weeks old, at least nine and a half years before their normal lifespan.

Pig in a crowded pen

1 Coats 2 Grandin 3 Coats

Free-Range and Organic

A miniscule percentage of animals raised for meat come from free-range farms. (Meaning that the animals raised there have room to graze in the sunshine during their short-lives before being shipped off.) However, the USDA does not regulate these"free-range" or "free-roaming" claims made by meat industries. Free-range as applied to broiler chickens only requires access to a very small opening allowing the hens closest to the opening to get out to "fresh air." Please click here to learn more about the myth of free-range chickens and their stories. Click here for more information about the environmental sustainability (and other information) of free-range agriculture.

"Free Range" hens

The Organic label is only subject to governement regulation when it appears on egg crates. Meat and dairy products with these labels have very little to no standing as far as regulation goes. In the end, these labels which should stand for some compassion are just a marketing tool.

Transportation

There are only thirteen major slaughterhouses left in the United States. That means that even "free-range" and "organic" meat is slaughtered in the same manner as animals from regular factory farms. These animals are still transported in crowded conditions and are often stacked on top of each other through all kinds of weather without food or water. This process is both terrifying and inhumane for the animals. The only law governing animal transportation is applied to train transport, although 95% of animals raised for meat are not transported by train (1). Slaughterhouses don't quit production in the winter because it's snowing or in the summer because it's too hot. Hundreds of animals die during transportation or are too sick and tired to move. Although there are now some laws protecting downed cows, most animals are still processed for consumption, regardless of their health.

Pigs being transported for slaughter

1 Freedman, Rory and Kim Barnouin. Skinny Bitch.

"If slaughterhouses had glass walls, we'd all be vegetarian" -Linda McCartney

Slaughter

WARNING: the following links may be disturbing to some readers. Proceed with caution.

Please click here to learn more about what happens to animals after they are transported to the slaughterhouse.

To learn more about how animal abuse goes on even during kosher slaughter, click here or watch "If This Is Kosher..."


	"The green pastures and idyllic barnyard scenes of years past are now distant memories. On today's factory farms, animals are crammed by the thousands into filthy windowless sheds, wire cages, gestation crates (intense confinement for the duration an animal is with children), and other systems that prevent even the most natural of movements. 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.
	Animals on today's factory farms have no legal protection from cruelty that would be illegal if it were inflicted on dogs or cats: Neglect, mutilation, genetic manipulation, and drug regimens that cause chronic pain and crippling, transport through all weather extremes, and gruesome and violent slaughter. Yet farmed animals are no less intelligent or capable of feeling pain than are the dogs and cats we cherish as companions.
	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. Industry journal National Hog Farmer explains, 'Crowding Pigs Pays,' and egg-industry expert Bernard Rollins writes that 'chickens are cheap, cages are expensive.' They are fed drugs to fatten them faster and to keep them alive in conditions that would otherwise kill them (70% of antibiotics produced in the U.S. go to factory farmed animals to prevent them from infection from the filthy mass sheds where they are kept), and they are genetically altered to grow faster or to produce much more milk or eggs than they would naturally. Many animals become crippled under their own weight and die within inches of water and food. " Text from "Meet your Meat"