ANIMALS

Each year, ten billion cows, pigs, sheep, and other innocent, sentient land animals are caged and crowded, deprived and drugged, mutilated and manhandled in U.S. factory farms. They are hauled to slaughter for days without food or water, exposed to weather extremes, and many don't survive the trip. At the slaughterhouse, they are frequently bled, skinned, and dismembered while still conscious. These animals are just as capable of feeling pain, sorrow, and affection, as our family dog. The number of fish killed each year for human and animal consumption is huge, but not reported.

Cows & Calves

Cows and steers raised for beef are typically confined in feedlots that pack tens of thousands of animals. These animals have no protection from rain or snow, freezing wind, or searing heat. They are castrated, dehorned, and branded with no anesthesia or surgical training.

Cows raised for milk are confined in large windowless sheds, frequently chained by the neck. Twice a day, they are attached to milking machines. Some are injected with bovine growth hormone to boost milk production to unnaturally high levels, causing udder diseases and additional stress to the animals.

To maintain milk production, cows are artificially inseminated, forcing a birth. The newborn calves are removed from their mothers immediately after birth to prevent a drop in milk production in the mourning mother. Most of the male calves are raised and slaughtered for beef. Some are chained by the neck in tiny filthy wood crates for 16 weeks and slaughtered for veal. Most female calves are placed in the dairy herd, while their mothers are sent to slaughter. 39 million cattle and calves are killed for food in the U.S. each year.

Pigs

Breeding sows are kept constantly impregnated in cramped metal gestation crates, which do not allow them to turn around. They give birth and nurse their litter of 10-12 piglets in farrowing crates, nearly as cramped as the gestation crates. The natural nursing period of 12 weeks is cut to 2-4 weeks, so that the sows can be impregnated again. After 3-4 years of this abuse, their spent bodies are sold for slaughter.

Some 20 percent of the prematurely weaned piglets die of stress and disease. The survivors are tagged and castrated without anesthesia, then placed in stacked wire cage "nurseries" and fed a synthetic milk replacer. When able to eat solid food, the piglets are transferred to crowded pens, where they are kept for six months, then slaughtered. More than 120 million pigs are killed for food in the U.S. each year.

Chickens and Turkeys

Chickens raised for egg production. Male chicks (who won't lay eggs) are dumped after hatching into plastic bags, left to suffocate slowly, then ground up for chicken or other animal feed. The females have the tips of their beaks seared off with a hot iron to prevent stress-induced cannibalism. They are crammed 5-7 birds into wire-mesh cages the size of a newspaper page stacked on top of one another. The birds must stand on a sloping wire-mesh floor, which cuts their feet, while the wire-mesh walls rub off their feathers and bruise their skin. When the birds are about 15 months old, they are “force-molted” - kept in low lighting and fed a low-calorie diet for seven to 14 days, which stresses their systems and increases egg production for about six more months. Afterwards, they are sent to slaughter. 450 million chickens are killed for eggs in the U.S. each year.

Chickens raised for meat are crowded into large windowless sheds that hold as many as 30,000 birds, with each getting less than a square foot of space. Because they are bred to gain weight quickly, many birds are crippled by their own weight and unable to walk. They are then unable to get to food and water or to defend themselves from the other birds who trample them on the way to the feeding station. Over time, the building fills with the poisonous stench of hydrogen sulfide, ammonia, and methane. After seven weeks, the animals are crammed into cages for transport to slaughter. 9.5 billion chickens are killed for meat in the U.S. each year.

More than 300 million turkeys are raised under similar conditions, then killed for food in the U.S. each year.  

Fish

Today’s commercial fisheries use massive ships the size of football fields and advanced electronic equipment and satellites to track the fish. They kill hundreds of billions of animals every year — far more than any other industry — and they’ve decimated our ocean ecosystems. In fact, 90 percent of large fish populations have been exterminated in the past 50 years.

However, more than 30 percent of fish and other aquatic animals consumed each year are now raised in “aquafarms” -- cramped, filthy, parasite-infested enclosures, where they suffer from debilitating diseases and injuries. Up to 40 percent may die before farmers can kill and package them for food.

Transport and Slaughter

Animals are hauled to slaughter for many hours without food, water, or rest, and exposed to extreme weather conditions. Many die in transit, and those too sick or injured to walk are dragged with chains to the kill floor.

At the slaughterhouse, some animals are bled, skinned, gutted, or drowned while still conscious. They are then cut into smaller pieces and wrapped in cellophanefor the supermarket counter.

Fish slaughter plants in the U.S. make no effort to stun fish, who are fully conscious and suffocating when they start down the slaughter line. Their gills are cut, and they are left to bleed to death, convulsing in pain. Large fish, such as salmon, are sometimes bashed on the head with a wooden bat, and many are seriously injured but still conscious when they are cut open.

Wildlife Extermination

In addition to the ten billion animals killed each year for human consumption by U.S. animal agriculture, hundreds of thousands of prairie dogs, coyotes, wolves, mountain lions, bears, bison, and other wild animals are shot, maimed, poisoned, and burned alive by farmers and government agents to keep them from interfering with agricultural operations. Tens of millions of starlings and blackbirds are poisoned each year to keep them from eating animal feed.

An even greater threat to wildlife is posed by the destruction of their habitats. Animal agriculture turns hundreds of acres of forest, wetlands, and other habitats into grazing and crop lands to feed farmed animals.