Farmed Animal Treatment

World Farm Animals Day is supported by people of conscience, regardless of their personal dietary choices, who are outraged by the abysmal treatment of animals raised for food. Nine out of ten people who still eat animals believe that they should be treated humanely.

Each year, nearly 50 billion cows, pigs, chickens, and other innocent, feeling animals are caged, crowded, deprived, drugged, mutilated, and manhandled in the world's factory farms and slaughterhouses. In the US alone, 10 billion land animals are abused and slaughtered.

"Veal" calves are torn from their mothers at birth, chained by the neck for 16 weeks in tiny, filthy wooden crates, and force-fed an anemia-inducing liquid formula. They are deprived of their natural diet--including water, roughage, and iron--as well as exercise, fresh air, sunshine, and their mother's love.

Meanwhile, their mothers (dairy cows) suffer horribly as they are pumped full of growth hormones and perpetually impregnated for their milk. When their production slumps, they are slaughtered.

Breeding sows are kept pregnant for three years in metal "gestation crates," enclosures so small the sows cannot even turn around. Their piglets are torn away after only two weeks so the sows can again be impregnated.

Laying hens are crammed 5-7 birds into wire-mesh "battery cages" the size of a folded newspaper, which cut their feet and tear at their feathers. They are frequently starved for up to 14 days to boost egg production, a process known as forced molting. Upon hatching, male chicks are placed in garbage bags, where they suffocate slowly or are crushed under the weight of their brothers.

Animals are transported to slaughter in crowded trucks with no food, water, or protection against weather extremes. Many die in transit. Sick and injured animals, called "downers," are dragged with chains to the killing floor.

According to a 10-year investigation based on interviews with slaughterhouse workers and USDA inspectors, many animals actually survive the slaughter process. Many -- alive and conscious -- are skinned, dismembered, gutted, scalded, and drowned in their own blood.

Additional details and documentation are provided under internet resources.

Remedial Legislation

State and federal regulations to protect farmed animals are nonexistent or unenforced. More than half of the states have enacted legislation exempting factory farms from anti-cruelty statutes. The others just ignore them.

The 1958 Federal Humane Methods of Slaughter Act, expanded in 1978, has never been funded or enforced. USDA inspectors who have complained about slaughterhouse atrocities have been reprimanded or fired.

Congress has yet to pass a bill requiring euthanasia of downed animals. Reacting to the public's concern about Mad Cow disease, the USDA imposed guidelines to keep downers out of the human food supply. However, these guidelines are self-imposed; they can be reversed at any time and do not carry the weight of law.

Farmed animals fare somewhat better in Western Europe. Germany amended its national constitution to protect "the natural foundations of life" for animals as well as people, and Switzerland adopted a constitutional amendment acknowledging animals as "beings" rather than things.

Sow gestation crates have been banned in the United Kingdom and are being phased out in the European Union and New Zealand. Florida recently passed a constitutional amendment banning the use of gestation crates. Norway is banning the castration of pigs.

Battery cages were banned in Switzerland over ten years ago. Germany is phasing them out by 2007, and the European Union by 2012.