What Is Factory Farming

It’s National Farm Animals Awareness Week. I wanted to write a sweet post about going to a happy family farm and showing some farm animals a little love, but every time I write the words “farm animals” that brain of mine ambles right on over to the dark side. Words like “battery cages” and “gestation crates” pop up and I realize that frolicking farm animals are not the ones who need our awareness. So, for National Farm Animals Awareness Week I do hope you’ll go pet some rolling-in-the-mud pigs somewhere, but in truth, those aren’t the pigs that need our attention right now.

According to the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) nearly 10 billion land animals are raised and killed for food in the United States annually. That’s 10 thousand million animals. (Just for some perspective, 10 billion inches is equal to 157,830 miles.)

While there is increasing awareness and consumer demand for animals raised humanely, the sad truth is that most of those animals raised for food in the United States are routinely mistreated on industrialized factory farms. What’s a factory farm? As defined by Webster’s dictionary, it is a “a system of large-scale industrialized and intensive agriculture that is focused on profit with animals kept indoors and restricted in mobility.” At factory farms, profit is the focus and it is attained by intensively confining animals and breeding them for rapid growth; it isn’t pretty.

There are no federal laws to protect farm animals. And although every state has animal cruelty statutes, they are rarely applied to agricultural practices, no matter how cruel those practices are. And cruel they are. The three most common and barbaric practices are battery cages, veal crates and gestation crates.

Battery Cages
At any given time, according to the HSUS, nearly 280 million laying hens in the United States are confined in battery cages. These are cages so restrictive the birds can’t spread their wings. Imagine not being able to stretch your arms! Laying hens are unable to engage in any of their natural behaviors, including nesting, dust bathing, perching, and foraging. More animal-enlightened countries such as Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, and Austria have banned battery cages. The entire European Union is phasing them out by 2012.

Veal Crates
Did you know that the veal industry is a direct byproduct of the dairy industry? Veal is a famously cruel food. In order to produce veal, baby cows are taken from their moms (dairy cows) several hours to several days after they are born. They will be slaughtered at four months, and leading up to that they are typically tied by their necks into crates so small that they can neither turn around nor lay down comfortably. In the US, nearly one million calves are raised for veal. The European Union banned the use of veal crates in 2007.

Gestation Crates
Breeding sows (female pigs) are forced to spend their pregnancies confined in two-foot wide metal stalls. These gestation crates are so small that the animals cannot even turn around. (Like being pregnant isn’t uncomfortable enough.) Gestation crates can lead to crippling joint disorders and lameness, as well as tremendous emotional suffering–don’t forget that pigs are highly intelligent. The European Union banned gestation crates effective 2013. In the United States, the use of these crates remains customary practice.

How to Help: The 3 Rs
The first thing that comes to mind: Go vegan. But that isn’t necessarily an option for everyone. The HSUS offers these important pointers to help minimize the problem:

Reduce
Every hour in the United States, 1 million animals are killed for human consumption. If each one of us cuts back on our animal consumption by only 10 percent, approximately 1 billion animals would be spared a lifetime of suffering each year.

Refine
If you do continue to eat animal products, know that not all animal products are equal when it comes to animal welfare. Each industry has its own abusive practices, and some are much more cruel than others. For example, the chicken, egg, turkey, and pork industries tend to be far more abusive to animals than the beef industry. And a growing number of producers are raising animals without intensive confinement. Refining your diet by choosing cage-free animal products, instead of the conventional factory farm products that fill most supermarket shelves, will help to reduce animal suffering.

Replace
Each one of us can help prevent animals from suffering in factory farms simply by choosing vegetarian options. It’s never been easier to replace animal products with readily available vegetarian alternatives. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, “Vegetarian diets can meet all the recommendations for nutrients.” The American Dietetic Association goes even further to state that vegetarian diets “provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of diseases.

Is the egg you eat "nature"?

Horrid Conditions for Parent Birds in Hatcheries

Virtually all chickens today are factory raised, with as many as six egg-laying hens living in a wire-floored “battery” cage the size of an album cover. As many as 100,000 birds can live in each “henhouse.” It is dark and filthy. The stench from feces and ammonia is constant and overwhelming.

There are dead and dying birds on the ground. The birds have no sunshine, no grass in which to forage, no dirt for dustbathing. Instead of living in flocks, exploring, and roosting in trees, they live in crowded squalor. They have no semblance of a normal life and nothing to do. Conditions are so psychologically taxing on the birds that they must be debeaked to prevent pecking injuries.

The hens are repeatedly mounted by the young roosters. After about a year, the roosters are killed and a new batch is brought in to mate with the hens, who by this time are worn out and bedraggled. By 18 months old, many of the hens have lost half or more of their feathers. Their misery is compounded at slaughter time, from being starved for two or more days days beforehand. (Most animals raised for meat, milk, or eggs are starved for a period of time before being killed, as a cost-cutting measure.) The slaughter itself, is violent and filled with pain and agony.

Disposal of Male Chicks in Hen Hatcheries

Male chicks born on factory farms—as many as 280 million per year—are simply thrown into garbage bags to die or ground alive because they’re of no economic value as meat or eggs. Click on the picture below to see a video of the hatchery cruelty. Some parts of the video may be disturbing and difficult to watch.

Hens are Forced to Lay Eggs

Jungle fowl hens lay about 20 eggs in the spring—enough to perpetuate the species—and then give their bodies a rest. Through intensive breeding, the hens that produce today's eggs lay 300 eggs a year—almost an egg a day—until they start to get worn out and their laying rate decreases.

Laying an egg requires resources from the body, notably calcium, the main ingredient in the egg shell. The artificially high rate of laying takes a toll on the hen's body, robbing her of calcium and often causing her bones to grow weak.

Hens have also been bred to lay larger eggs. The combination of so many eggs and the larger size of the eggs increases the chance of complications such as prolapse, a potentially fatal condition in which the egg sticks to the hen's uterine wall.

Meat. To eat or not?

Why should we limit intake of meat:

Cancer

A pan-European study of nutrition and cancer found that people who ate more than two 80g portions of red meat a week were 30 per cent more likely to develop lung and colorectal cancer than those who ate less than one portion.

Scientists are still unsure why there is an increased risk, but there is a theory that the compounds haemoglobin and myoglobin, found in red meat, trigger a process called nitrosation in the gut which in turn leads to the formation of cancer-causing compounds.

Processed meats such as sausages may also be risky because the cooking process can create carcinogenic compounds called heterocyclic amines (HCAs).

Alzheimer's disease

Research has shown that a Mediterranean diet - low in red meat but rich in plant foods and fish - can reduce the chances of developing Alzheimer's by up to two-thirds.

Again, there is no firm theory on this. Researchers University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) suggested last month that red meat could be linked to a build-up of iron in the brain, causing the opposite effect of antioxidants; in effect, the brain rusts. The researchers suggest it may also explain why more men develop Alzheimer's, as men eat more red meat than women.

Bones

Too much red meat can have an adverse effect on bone health. The digestive process of protein leaves acid residues in the body that need to be neutralised with alkalising minerals - and these may be taken from the bones, leading to a higher risk of osteoporosis and other conditions. While green, leafy vegetables are high in calcium, red meat has a low level and can cause excess acid to form, creating bone problems for the future.

Arthritis

Eating red meat every day could double your risk of developing rheumatoid arthritis. Scientists believe that collagen, found in red meat, may trigger an immune system response, which may also affect the joints.

Additives contained in processed meats may also play a part in the increased rate of the disease.

Cholesterol

Red meat is one of the first foods that doctors advise patients to stop eating if they are at risk of heart disease, because it contains high levels of dietary cholesterol.

A build-up of cholesterol in the arteries can eventually stop blood flow and trigger heart attacks.

However, it depends on the type of meat you are eating; lean red meat is relatively healthy - it is the fatty chops and burgers that are more risky.

Red meat is also high in saturated fat, which has been linked to a range of cardiovascular problems, including high blood pressure.

Food poisoning

Meat is highly subjected to contamination. The Food Standards Agency has launched an investigation into the safety of red meat after research suggested that beef, lamb and pork are the cause of one in six outbreaks of food poisoning. Experts are to test samples to find out the amount of bacteria in them, although the problems are more likely to be linked to poor hygiene in the home than to standards at abattoirs.

Up to 60 percent of chickens sold in supermarkets are infected with Salmonella entenidis, which can pass to humans if the meat is not heated to a high enough temperature. Another pathogen, Campylobacter, can also spread from chickens to human beings with deadly results.

Aggravates Global Hunger

The 4.8 pounds of grain fed to cattle to produce one pound of beef for human beings represents a colossal waste of resources in a world still teeming with people who suffer from profound hunger and malnutrition.

Today, hundreds of millions of cattle are being fed precious grain so that American and European consumers can enjoy the pleasures of "marbled" beef. Meanwhile, nearly one billion people suffer from hunger and malnutrition, and between 40 and 60 million people mostly children die each year from starvation and related diseases.

Currently, more than 70 percent of the U.S. grain harvest and more than one third of the grain produced in the world is fed to cattle and other livestock. We could provide proper nourishment to more than a billion people if we used the world's agricultural lands to grow food for human consumption rather than feed for cattle and other livestock.

Environmental Costs

U.S. factory farms generated more then 1.5 billion tons of animal waste every year. According to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), livestock raised for food produce 130 times the excrement of the human population, some 87,000 pounds per second.

The much-publicized 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska dumped 12 million gallons of oil into Prince William Sound, but the relatively unknown 1995 New River hog waste spill in North Carolina poured 25 million gallons of excrement and urine into the water, killing an estimated 10 to 14 million fish and closing 364,000 acres of coastal shellfishing beds. Hog waste spills have caused the rapid spread of a virulent microbe called Pfiesteria piscicida, which has killed a billion fish in North Carolina alone.

More than a third of all raw materials and fossil fuels consumed in the U.S. are used in animal production. Nearly half the water consumed in the United States is used to grow feed for cattle and other livestock. Beef production alone uses more water than is consumed in growing the nation's entire fruit and vegetable crop.

In the book "The Food Revolution", author John Robbins estimates that "you'd save more water by not eating a pound of California beef than you would by not showering for an entire year." Because of deforestation to create grazing land, each vegetarian saves an acre of trees per year.

The grain-fed cattle complex is now a significant factor in the generation of three major gases carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide that are responsible for global warming. The burning of the world's forests for cattle pasture has released billions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. The world's 1.3 billion cattle and other ruminant livestock emit 60 million tons of methane through their digestive systems directly into the atmosphere each year. Moreover, to produce feed crops for cattle requires the use of petro-chemical fertilizers which emit vast amounts of nitrous oxide. These gases are building up in the atmosphere, blocking heat from escaping the planet, and could cause a global climate change of cataclysmic proportions in the next century