While it may be difficult to admit, we are being told a story that simply isn’t true. The meat, egg, and dairy industries continually tell tales of happy farm animals frolicking in pastures loved by the family farmer who watches over them. They want us to believe that the final chapter is missing, though – the part about their slaughter.
These tall tales are simply that: fables.
In reality, nearly 99 percent of animals raised for food are forced to live on industrialized factory farms. These animals have virtually no legal protection and are treated as though they were nothing but meat-, egg-, and milk-producing machines.
Egg-laying hens are the most abused animals in modern-day agriculture. Shortly after birth, male chicks are separated from the females. Since these male chicks can’t produce eggs and are different breeds than those chickens raised for meat, they’re simply discarded – killed – either thrown away in trash cans to suffocate or ground up alive.
Female chicks have parts of their beaks sliced off with a hot metal blade and are then stuffed into overcrowded cages too small for them even to spread their wings.
The amount of cage space allotted to each hen to live out her entire life is smaller than a sheet of paper. These hens never go outside, touch the ground, or even escape the stench of their own feces. After about a year, they can be starved for up to two weeks in order to shock their bodies into yet another egg-laying cycle.
The vast majority of chickens raised for meat are bred to grow so quickly that their heart, lungs, and legs often can’t keep up with their unnatural size. They are forced to live inside barren, overcrowded warehouses without any outdoor access. At slaughter, millions of chickens annually miss the throat-cutting blade and are boiled alive in the scalding feather-removal tank.
While chickens are abused in the greatest numbers, mammals don’t have the best lives, either. Most mother and pregnant pigs are confined to crates so small they can’t even turn around, and their babies have their tails cut off, their ears notched and are castrated – all without painkillers. Those raised for meat spend the rest of their lives in holding pens on cement or wooden floors.
Cattle are branded, de-horned, and are castrated – again, all without any painkillers. Dairy cows, milked by machines two to three times per day, are impregnated every year to keep their milk production flowing. This cycle is so taxing that most dairy cows are considered to be “spent” after only five years, a fraction of their natural lifespan.
As terrible as these abusive-yet common-practices are, they are all legal. Virtually no laws regulate the treatment of these animals. Farm animals are exempted from the federal Animal Welfare Act and 95 percent of them-birds-are exempted from the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act. Further, most states’ anti-cruelty statutes either explicitly exempt common farming practices – no matter how abusive – or the statutes simply are not applied to farm animals.
It’s not easy to accept that the childhood story of Old MacDonald’s Farm we’ve been told our whole lives is nothing but a myth. But we can’t ignore the reality that for most animals raised for food, life is filled with misery.
While the abuse that’s forced on farm animals is unsettling enough to make even the strongest stomach turn, we don’t have to sit idly by and let these animals suffer. Every time we sit down to eat, we make a choice: We can either support suffering and cruelty, or compassion and mercy. By choosing more vegetarian meals, we can truly make the world a more humane place.
Josh BalkOutreach coordinatorThe Humane Society of the United States
