In honor of World Farm Animals Day, AnimalAgribusiness.com has been launched to expose the ways that animal agriculture manipulates the government, institutions, and a well-meaning public in order to sell more of their cruel products.

Top 5 Dirty Secrets

Industries that raise animals for food have a lot to hide. Efforts ranging from Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle to the recent efforts to ban cruel confinement of farmed animals have been doing their part to bring public attention to the myriad of abuses to humans and animals done in the name of providing milk, eggs, and meat.

But these efforts merely scratch the surface.

Underneath the factory farm horrors and worker safety violations, there are a range of dirty secrets that are covered up by a network of corporate front groups, government agencies, misguided animal scientists, and public relations firms. Of the hundreds of horrors animal agribusiness hopes you don’t know, we have selected 5 of the most egregious. Make sure to try the quizzes for each section and visit the individual pages for further details about each dirty secret.

1. Repeat violators of laws protecting public health and animal welfare are allowed to continue producing harmful animal products. A prime recent example is Austin “Jack” DeCoster, the CEO of the farms responsible for the recent massive egg recall, who has a long record of sexual harassment, worker safety, and animal cruelty violations.
   
   
   Take our World Farm Animals Day QUIZ about Dirty Secret #1 and learn more about DeCoster and other repeat violators on the Egg Recall Culprits Page.
   
   
2. Waste discharges from animal farming are accountable for an ecological “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico, much larger than the BP oil spill. There may be nothing worse for the environment than animal agriculture.
   
   
   Take the World Farm Animals Day QUIZ about Dirty Secret #2 - Dead Zones and learn more on the Ocean Pollution From Farms page.
   
   
3. For years, meat purchased by the US government for school lunches was so low-grade that even McDonalds would not use it. After significant media attention around this disturbing issue, the USDA announced new standards for meat that is provided to the National School Lunch Program. The new standards include more frequent testing and went into effect in July 2010. However, remaining concerns include the several harmful strains of E. Coli (non-0157) that remain unregulated and the vast supply of low-grade meat already purchased for the schools that is stored frozen and could last for months or years. This meat is the product of “spent” dairy cows and egg-laying hens and also may include veterinary drugs, chemicals, and heavy metals.
   
   
   
   
4. Chicken and turkey feed contains chicken manure and the ground up carcasses of cats and dogs killed at local pounds. These birds constitute over 95% of all the animals raised and killed for food, and yet when people eat them, they may be unknowingly consuming an animal nourished by their old family dog or cat.
   
   
   Take the World Farm Animals Day QUIZ about Dirty Secret #4 and learn more on the Pets in Chicken Feed page.
   
   
5. Every single minute, over 100,000 farmed animals are killed globally- a number equivalent to entire human population of Berkeley, California. Approximately 99% of these animals are babies under 6 months of age. Had these slaughtered chicks, piglets, and calves been dogs and cats, the cruelties they endured would have been felony offenses.
   
   

Take the World Farm Animals Day QUIZ about Farmed Animals and learn more on the Animal Farming page.