Factory Farming.

Farm animals including pigs and chickens,are housed in
massive confinement buildings that resemble factory warehouses,and most of these
animals never see the outdoor until they are sent to slaughter.

In factory farms,animals do not even have enough space to move their limbs or turn around.Broiler chickens are crammed into buildings holding thousands of birds,while chickens used in egg production are confined in ”battery cage”that usually measures 144 square INCHES,often with cages stacked 3 to 5 layers high,there are usually eight or nine hens kept in each cage.The hens live like this for about two years or less, until their bodies are exhausted from the stresses of constant laying and their egg production decreases. At that point,they are shipped to slaughter to be turned into animal feed or sometimes human
food or are simply discarded. In 2003 a public outcry brought attention to a California ranch that was reported to have discarded thousands of live hens using a wood chipper; no charges were brought because, as it turned out, this is a common industry practice.

There are about 300 million laying hens in the United States; of these, some 95 percent are kept in wire battery cages, which allow each hen an average of 67 square inches of space—less than the size of a standard sheet of paper.Hens are usually kept eight or nine to a cage; long tiers of these cages are built one upon another in sheds that hold tens of thousands of birds, none of whom has enough room to raise a wing. A very horrible effect of the egg-production industry is the wholesale destruction of male chicks, who are useless to the egg industry. These chicks are not used in the meat industry either, because they have not been genetically manipulated for meat production. Male chicks are ground up in batches while still alive, suffocated in trash cans, or gassed.

More than 50 billion chickens are raised and slaughtered annually.

 

Only in movies do pigs spend their lives running across sprawling pastures and relaxing in the sun.
On any given day in the U.S., there are more than 65 million pigs on factory farms, and 110 million
are killed for food each year.

Mother pigs (sows)who account for almost 6 million of the pigs in the U.S.spend most of their lives in individual “gestation” crates.These crates are about 7 feet long and 2 feet wide too small to allow the animals even to turn around.After giving birth to piglets, sows are moved to “farrowing” crates, which are wide enough for them to lie down and nurse their babies but not big enough for them to turn around or build nests for their young.

Piglets are separated from their mothers when they are as young as 10 days old. Once her piglets are gone, the sow is impregnated again, and the cycle continues for three or four years before she is slaughtered. This intensive confinement produces stress- and boredom-related behavior, such as chewing on cage bars and obsessively pressing against water bottles.

After they are taken from their mothers, piglets are confined to pens until,they are separated to be raised for breeding or meat.Every year in the U.S., millions of male piglets are castrated (almost always without being given any painkillers) because consumers supposedly complain of “boar taint” in meat that comes from intact animals.In extremely crowded conditions, piglets are prone to stress-related behavior such as cannibalism and tail-biting, so farmers often chop off piglets’ tails and use pliers to break off the ends of their teeth without giving them any painkillers.For identification purposes, farmers also cut out chunks of the young animals’ ears.

Pigs and their life in horror.

When allowed to live out their natural lives,pigs live for an average of 10-15 years, but factory farmed pigs are sent to slaughter after just six months of life. In order to get the terrified pigs onto the trucks bound for the slaughterhouse, workers may beat them on their sensitive noses and backs or stick electric prods into their rectums.

Crammed into 18-wheelers, pigs struggle to get air and are usually given no food or water for the entire journey (often hundreds of miles). They suffer from temperature extremes and are forced to inhale ammonia fumes and diesel exhaust. A former pig transporter told PETA that pigs are “packed in so tight, their guts
actually pop out their butts—a little softball of guts actually comes out.”

According to a 2006 industry report, more than 1 million pigs die each year from the horrors of transport alone. Another industry report notes that, in some transport loads, as many as 10 percent of pigs are “downers,” animals who are so ill or injured that they are unable to stand and walk on their own. These sick and injured pigs will be kicked, struck with electric prods, and then dragged off the trucks to their deaths.

In winter, some pigs die frozen to the sides of the trucks. In summer, some die from heat exhaustion. Some fall and suffocate when additional animals are forced to pile in on top of them. All are in a panic—screaming and desperately trying to get away—and some die of heart attacks.

One worker reports, “In the wintertime there are always hogs stuck to the sides and floors of the trucks. [Slaughterhouse workers] go in there with wires or knives and just cut or pry the hogs loose. The skin pulls right off. These hogs were alive when we did this.”

In 2004, a transport truck owned by Smithfields foods and loaded with 180 pigs flipped over in Virginia. Many pigs died in the accident, while others lay along the roadside, injured and dying. PETA officials arrived on the scene and offered to humanely euthanize the injured animals, but Smithfield refused to allow the suffering animals a humane death because the company could not legally sell the flesh of animals who had been euthanized. After an accident in April 2005, Smithfield spokesperson Jerry Hostetter told one reporter, “I hate to admit it, but it happens all the time.”

Slaughter
The unloading at the slaughterhouses is as ugly as the loading. After being kept in an immobile state all their lives, their legs and lungs are so weak that the pigs can barely walk. But when they see space ahead of them, some of them begin running for the first time in their lives.

Like fillies, they jump and buck, overjoyed with their first feel of freedom. Then, suddenly, they collapse and cannot get up. They can only lie there, trying to breathe, their bodies racked with pain from abuse and neglect on the factory farms.Then drivers hook their legs up to winches to pull them, often pulling their legs right off.

A typical slaughterhouse kills up to 1,100 pigs every hour. The sheer number of animals killed makes it impossible for them to be given humane, painless deaths. Because of improper stunning, many pigs are alive when they reach the scalding tank, which is intended to soften their skin and remove their hair.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) documented 14 humane-slaughter violations at one processing plant, where inspectors found hogs who “were walking and squealing after being stunned [with a stun gun] as many as four times.”

According to one slaughterhouse worker, “There’s no way these animals can bleed out in the few minutes it takes to get up the ramp. By the time they hit the scalding tank, they’re still fully conscious and squealing. Happens all the time.”

The best way to help put an end to this cruelty is to stop eating/using animal products

http://friendsaganistcrueltytoanimals.weebly.com/

The veal industry.

Few people understand how their purchase of milk is connected to the veal industry, when in fact, veal is a by-product of the dairy industry.

For female cows to produce milk, they are kept in a constant cycle of being pregnant and giving birth. While pregnant and shortly thereafter, a cow’s body is producing the hormones necessary to maximize milk production. What happens to all those baby cows? Male calves are useless for milk production and are a different breed of cattle from the ones raised for beef.Dairy cows, female and male, lack the musculature necessary to maximize profits for beef producers. About half of the female calves will become dairy cows, to replace their mothers. The other half of the females are useless to the dairy industry. So, usually on the day they are born, nearly all of the male calves and half of the female calves are taken from their mothers, to be turned into veal.

It may seem counterintuitive that milk, which is so connected to birth and life, is also so connected to slaughter and death.

HOW VEAL CALVES LIVE.

Newborn calves are  collected at dairy operations, many never suckling the initial protective
colostrum from their mothers. At most they may be two or three days old and already so weak that many are unable to walk.

They are placed in wooden body crates barely wider than their shoulders, with slatted sides and floors, with no bedding, unable to stand or lie down but perhaps allowing a single step forward or backward. It’s a wooden box, almost a coffin. To produce pale bland flesh, they are fed an unnatural liquid milk-replacer diet deficient in iron and minerals, with no hay to eat. The veal calf is by definition a sick, deliberately malnourished animal. As infants, their instinct is to nurse, and as they grow, the calves become desperate for something to chew on so they gnaw at anything they can reach,like  the sides and floors of their crates. To prevent this, the handlers chain them  to the fronts of the small wooden cage. Lack of movement also contributes to keeping the muscles from developing and the meat darkening. Constantly frustrated and hungry, any human activity in the barn agitates the calves and they struggle and throw themselves against the walls, injuring and wounding themselves. Therefore feeding and cleaning procedures are as short and automated  as possible; at other times the sheds are dark to keep the calves quiet.

In this barren environment, the calves’ most basic needs are never met. Instead, they must suffer a small space allowance, no social contact,  the denial of roughage, minimal fresh water, darkness, and weakness from low  hemoglobin levels, which are maintained to produce the white meat. Under these circumstances, they are susceptible to a long list of diseases, including  anemia, chronic pneumonia, septicemia, enteritis, lameness, and diarrhea  (causing dehydration and a loss of electrolytes).

With continuous restraint and deprivation, from the beginning to  the end of their short lives, veal calves are the most miserable of farmed animals, the most pitiful victims: a reflection of extreme human cruelty and greed.

HOW THEY ARE KILLED.

A chain is put around one leg and they are hoisted up and connected to thenext conveyer belt moving them to the “sticking” station for their throats to becut. The arteries in their necks are slashed, even as they are squirming andbleating. They are bled, the food pipe is tied off, and facial skinning is started.The nose, ears, and feet are cut off, and some calves are still responsive and obviously in pain.

http://friendsaganistcrueltytoanimals.weebly.com/the-truth-behind-dairy.html

The dairy industry.

Dairy products can cause health issues for individuals who have lactose intolance or a milk allgergy . Some dairy products such as blue cheese may become contaminated with the fungus aspergillus fumigatus during ripening, which can trigger asthma and other respiratory problems in susceptible individuals. Dairy products if consumed after the expiry date can cause serious heart problems.

Physicians and nutritional biochemist T,Colin Campbell, argue that high animal fat and protein diets, such as the standard American Diet, are detrimental to health, and that a low-fat vegan diet can both prevent and reverse degenerative diseases such as coronary artery disease and diabetes.A 2006 study by Barnard found that in people with type 2 diabetes, a low-fat vegan diet reduced weight, total cholesterol, and LDL cholesterol, and did so to a greater extent than the diet prescribed by the American Diabetes Association.Various scientists and physicians have noted that there may be a link between dairy consumption and some cancers such as breast and prostate cancer.

 

 

Cows produce milk for the same reason that humans do: to nourish their young. In order to force the animals to continue giving milk,factory Framing operators typically impregnate them using artificial insemination every year. Calves are taken from their mothers within a day of being born—males are destined for veal crates or barren lots where they will be fattened for beef, and females are sentenced to the same fate as their mothers.

After their calves are taken away from them, mother cows are hooked up, several times a day, to milking machines. These cows are genetically manipulated, artificially inseminated, and often drugged to force them to produce about four and a half times as much milk as they naturally would to feed their calves.

Animals are often dosed with bovine growth hormone(BGH), which contributes to a painful inflammation of the udder known as “mastitis.” (BGH is used widely in the U.S. but has been banned in Europe and Canada because of concerns over human health and animal welfare.)According to the industry’s own figures, between 30 and 50 percent of dairy cows suffer from mastitis, an extremely painful condition.

A cow’s natural lifespan is about 25 years, but cows used by the dairy industry are killed after only four or five years. An industry study reports that by the time they are killed, nearly 40 percent of dairy cows are lame because of the intensive confinement, the filth, and the strain of being almost constantly pregnant and giving milk. Dairy cows’ bodies are turned into soup, companion animal food, or low-grade hamburger meat because their bodies are too “spent” to be used for anything else.

http://friendsaganistcrueltytoanimals.weebly.com/the-truth-behind-dairy.html