Some facts about factory farms

_Elsa_

As Farmer Joe is getting the food and drinks prepared his phone rings.

“Oh; hi Amelia, how are you doing?” asks Farmer Joe. “Yes I’ve sown them all the animals that I have hear on the farm. I hope that I didn’t load them up with too much information. Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. I’ll pass it along to them.”

Farmer Joe tells the girls that Amelia can’t make it back here.

“She said to tell you to call her when you’re ready to leave here,” says Farmer Joe. “She might be able to meet with you later. Now let’s eat some lunch and then I’ll tell you about the factory farms.”

‘Imagine a chicken. Picture her downy white feathers and small, intense eyes. Maybe she’s sitting on a nest, softly clucking. Perhaps she’s scratching in the dirt, a quaint red barn in silhouette behind her. Cows graze contentedly nearby, a pig snuffles in the mud.

It’s an idyllic vision, familiar from children’s books and songs. It’s also, for the majority of animals raised in the meat, egg and dairy industries, a complete fiction.

In the United States, almost all farm animals spend their lives inside factory farms, large-scale operations that turn lives into commodities by “processing” huge numbers of animals as quickly as possible. They’re bad for animals, bad for us and bad for the planet we share. Here’s why.

Bad for animals - Inside a factory farm, the chicken you just imagined spends her entire life in a space smaller than a standard sheet of paper. She can never spread her wings, scratch in the dirt or perch on a branch, which are natural behaviors crucial to her mental well-being. If she’s an egg-laying hen, she’ll spend the short year and a half of her life crammed in a cage with other chickens, until her egg production diminishes, and she’s slaughtered.

If she’s raised for meat, she’s similarly doomed. She was selectively bred to grow rapidly, so virtually her entire life will be filled with suffering, says Josh Balk, HSUS vice president of Farm Animal Protection. Unlike normally active, inquisitive, social chickens, by the end of her life she has difficulty walking and spends most of her time lying down. Her heart grows too large and her lungs too small. She has muscle damage from growing so quickly and sores from standing and sleeping in a manure-filled shed. At just 45 days—when she’s still a baby—she reaches her full size and goes to the slaughterhouse. 

The story is just as grim for pigs and cows. Taken from their mothers within a few weeks after birth, pigs live just six months before slaughter. Mother pigs spend much of their lives in gestation crates, confined so tightly they can’t turn around. These sensitive animals—who are smarter than our dogs—can’t socialize, root in the mud or engage in almost any natural behavior.

At dairy operations, calves are taken from their mothers the day they are born, while mother cows are forcibly impregnated over and over to produce milk for calves they’ll never see again.

Although small family farms do still exist, factory farms (sometimes called concentrated animal feeding operations) far outnumber them. And almost all of the meat, dairy and eggs Americans consume come from factory farms.

What you can do - When it comes to factory farms, we all suffer. But there’s another way. You can make more humane choices every time you sit down to eat. Incorporate more plant-based foods, whether by committing to Meatless Monday, eating vegan before 6 p.m. or eliminating animal products entirely. If you do eat animal products, choose ones that come from higher welfare producers. And if your local lawmakers consider legislation to eliminate extreme confinement in your state, be sure to support it.’ (Source) 

“Oh Tiffi, I’m sorry that I made you cry,” Farmer Joe says.  “But that’s not the type of farm that I have here so not all farms are factory farms.”

Let’s continue - What Is Animal Welfare and Why Is It Important?

Start at the beginning – Tiffi and Elsa take a trip to Dairy District