How Are Factory Farms Cruel to Animals?

So what exactly is factory farming, and is it really cruel to animals?

What is factory farming?

Factory farms, also known as concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), are a form of intensive animal agriculture. Virtually all animal products in the United States are produced on factory farms, and while it originated in the US, factory farming is becoming increasingly common around the world. Factory farming includes terrestrial farms involving animals such as pigs, cows, chickens, and sheep. Aquaculture—in which large numbers of salmon and other fish are farmed for food—is considered another form of factory farming.

Is factory farming cruel?

Factory farming operations are designed to produce large volumes of yield for the smallest possible price. Animals need constant supplies of food, water, and shelter in order to grow large enough to be slaughtered, or to produce milk or eggs for human consumption. Factory farming is the result of techniques for keeping animals alive (and producing) at the lowest costs possible, using cost-saving measures like smaller cages and extreme confinement. Sadly, this means that animals—along with industry workers and our environment—end up paying the price.

Factory farms have significant impacts on the lives of animals. Because farmed animals are legally considered to be the property of the corporations they “belong” to, animals are treated more like machines than the sensitive, emotional, and intelligent individuals they are. Animals bear the burden of the cost-saving measures on factory farms. For the entirety of their brief lives, they're unable to engage in their natural behaviors; they're maimed and operated on without anesthetic; and/or they're forcibly impregnated over and over, only to have their offspring torn away from them.

How does factory farming affect animals?

On factory farms, animals are subjected to routine mutilations, endure extreme confinement, and are otherwise manipulated to benefit human consumers. Generally, all these practices are harmful to the animals. Below are just a few of the ways that factory farming affects animals.

Confinement

A lifetime of confinement is unnatural and difficult for any animal to endure. On factory farms, however, confinement is taken to extremes. Cows destined to become beef are allowed to wander outside for a portion of their brief lives. Even then, they are packed tightly together into feedlots, where they're forced to stand in their own feces.

Other species are not so lucky. Many are kept indoors for their entire lives. Layer hens used in egg production are often confined to battery cages. These small wire cages give each bird the same amount of floor space as about the size of a piece of printer paper, and are typically around 15 inches high. Birds can't even spread their wings without hitting the sides of the cage or another bird. Battery cages frustrate essentially all of a chicken’s natural behaviors, which include dust-bathing, nesting, and scratching.

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Female pigs are confined to cages not much bigger than their bodies.

Breeding sows—another name for female pigs used by the pork industry—also face extreme confinement on factory farms. Sows are confined to gestation crates, cages that are not much bigger than their bodies, during their four-month pregnancies and after giving birth. Sows are unable to turn around even to meet their offspring, who are taken from them permanently after a matter of weeks. Gestation crates cause numerous welfare violations; as a result, some countries have banned the devices. The US is one of the countries that continue to use gestation crates.

Birds are debeaked

Chickens on factory farms undergo mutilation at the very beginning of their lives. When they are no more than a few hours old, chicks are sent to a debeaking machine, which slices off portions of the chick’s upper and lower beak. Debeaking is intended to prevent birds from pecking one another. Pecking causes injury and sometimes death in other birds. Yet these behaviors are only common within factory farms. They are thought to arise partly due to the chronic stress these conditions give rise to. Aside from the initial pain caused by debeaking, there is evidence suggesting that chickens continue to endure chronic pain long after the procedure has been completed.

Cows and pigs are tail-docked

Tail-docking refers to the removal of part or most of an animal's tail. The procedure is done on factory farms largely without any anesthetic. Tail-docking is meant to dissuade pigs from biting one another’s tails. This aims to resolve behaviors only seen within the intense confinement on factory farms.

Tail-docking in cows is performed to reduce disease transmission and make milking more convenient for dairy workers. These claims carry little weight when compared to the pain and other health complications suffered by cows.

Genetic manipulation

Through selective breeding and other genetic manipulation techniques, various traits are amplified in farmed animals so that their bodies are more attractive to human consumers or their milk production is increased, which boosts profits for farming corporations. Examples of genetic manipulations of farm animals include:

• Chickens growing larger pectoral muscles (breast meat)
• Cows producing higher volumes of milk
• Pigs growing larger in shorter periods of time

Violence and inhumane treatment

What is considered inhumane and violent can vary widely. Often, factory farm corporations will argue that animals are well cared for in factory farms, whereas animal advocates tend to believe that factory farming is rife with the inhumane treatment of animals. The act of confining an animal for their entire lives and preventing them from ever seeing sunlight or the night sky can be viewed as an act of violence. Killing animals who are still children—as is the case in chickens, pigs, lambs, veal, and beef cattle—can be seen as violent and inhumane. Forcibly impregnating animals time and again, while denying mothers any ability to engage with their offspring, can also be an act of violence.

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Factory farms are predicated on violence and treating animals inhumanely.

Even though the concept of humane treatment tends to be subjective, it seems clear that factory farms are predicated on violence and treating animals inhumanely.

How are factory-farmed animals killed?

Factory farms often put profit before welfare when it comes to ending animals’ lives. In many slaughterhouses, processing lines move so quickly that animals endure more cruelty than they are meant to, usually by being improperly stunned before subsequent killing steps. Processing line speeds also harm workers, who are at risk of greater injury when animals are still alive and flailing as they are being killed.

Cows

In many slaughterhouses, cows are guided into a stall and their heads are locked into a vice. They are then shot in the head with a “captive-bolt” gun, a weapon with a retractable bullet. This gunshot is designed to render cows insensitive to pain before they are hung upside down by their legs and have their throats slit. Finally, they are dismembered.

Fish

Fish are often killed by a blow to the head. Many others are left to asphyxiate. However, this method is increasingly viewed as inhumane, since fish can remain conscious for minutes to hours after removal from the water, and growing research shows that they feel pain.

Pigs

Pigs are herded into a stall where they are shot in the head. However, they are shot with an electrical gun rather than a captive-bolt gun. Pigs can also be killed with CO2 gas. While this method is often touted as being more humane, it still causes pigs significant amounts of pain.

Chicken

Chickens are commonly killed by what’s known as the live-shackle slaughter method. First they are hung upside down with their legs clamped into metal stirrups, which often results in broken bones. Chickens are then dunked into an electrified bath of water meant to stun them before their throats are slit and their bodies are thrown into boiling water.

Many chickens are not effectively stunned and end up drowning in the boiling water, or dying from blood loss.

Is factory farming a defensible practice?

Factory farming harms animals, people, and the environment, and many advocates believe it is no longer defensible, especially given the growing number of plant-based alternatives to meat and dairy products.

Animal cruelty on factory farms: Statistics

Below are a few statistics illustrating the cruelty present on factory farms:

• Pneumonia is common among factory-farmed pigs, with one report finding infection rates of 80 percent.
• Around 30 percent of broiler hens are unable to walk properly due to genetic manipulation.
• Five-to-ten percent of hens die during “forced moultings,” where layer hens are starved of food and water to force them to continue laying eggs.

Laws to protect factory-farmed animals

Some laws do exist to protect animals from certain abuses on factory farms; however, these laws are usually inadequate and generally allow abuse to continue. In the US, livestock welfare laws are particularly lax. Below are two primary laws designed to protect farm animals from certain abuses.

The 28-Hour Law

At certain points in their lives, farmed animals are transported from farms to slaughterhouses. This transport is known to cause stress in animals. The 28-Hour Law stipulates that animals should not be subjected to transport for more than 28 hours at a time, after which they must be offloaded from the truck, usually into pens or stalls. Companies can request to extend the period of transport for up to 36 hours.

The Humane Slaughter Act

The Humane Slaughter Act requires that animals are handled humanely at slaughter facilities. This act does not apply to chickens or other birds, leaving billions of animals vulnerable to cruelty at slaughterhouses.

Laws protecting factory farms

Generally, factory farms are run by well-funded companies that have close ties to politicians and influential lobby groups. In the US, factory farms are also shielded from scrutiny by so-called “ag-gag” laws, which criminalize the gathering of evidence and documentation of conditions on factory farms by activists and members of the media. Though federal ag-gag laws do not currently exist, some states have passed forms of ag-gag laws. These laws have come largely in response to undercover investigations at agricultural facilities.

What can you do to change the industry?

Billions of animals endure cruel conditions on factory farms every year. As long as there is a demand for cheap meat, dairy, and eggs, factory farming will continue to dominate the rural landscape of countries around the world.

But there are many ways you can act to help change the factory farming industry and prevent systemic cruelty towards animals. The movement to end some of the cruelest practices, including battery cages for hens, is growing every day. Join us in demanding that corporations do better for animals. Together, we can create a more compassionate world.