A Brief Summary of What Goes on in Each of the Animal Agriculture Industries

The situation is rather grim

We've created hell; it’s called factory farming. Or so I claim in my article, of the same name. In that article, of about 10,000 words, I documented, in great detail, what goes on in each of the factory farming industries.

But, you know, some of my readers have a family. Some people don’t want to spend an hour or two reading about all the horrible things that go on in each of the factory farming industries. So here I’ve compiled shortened summaries of the practices that go on in factory farms. This article should be seen as the TLDR of the other post. If people are interested in the documentation of the claims, they’ll find it in the other article.

Remember, these are not outliers. These are not isolated cases. These are the conditions of almost all farm animals in the United States—and globally—most of whom live in the cruel, torturous factory farms.

Pigs

Mother pigs spend their life in tiny crates unable to turn around. When pigs are babies, they’re separated from their parents at a young age, and sent to live in a tiny shed with virtually no space to turn around, covered in feces, such that horrifying diseases develop. Physical abuse is routine, castration is near universal, and the pigs are bored constantly. Pigs spent their life in a state of extreme boredom, with no space to roam, subject to constant disease and wounds, with no comfortable place to lie down, and subject to genetic manipulation that causes constant agony, even aside from specific mistreatment. Their welfare is totally unimportant to the industry, so the industry does nothing to improve it. The industry does not care if they’re stressed, hot, cold, or castrated unless it threatens their bottom line.

In transport, hundreds of thousands of pigs die every year, because they’re subject to extreme weather conditions as well as lack of space. Factory farmers employ violence routinely to get pigs to behave. Then, pigs are either gassed or have their throats cut.

Broiler chickens

Broiler chickens are the chickens raised for meat, rather than the ones raised to lay eggs. Chickens are endure cruel transport right from the moment of birth, in small crates. They’re sent to overcrowded sheds where they have no space to turn around. They have nothing interesting to do, and not enough space to do it. They express none of their natural behaviors and are subject to constant horrifying disease, injury, and artificial lighting that leads to torturous sleep deprivation. They spend their days unable to move much, living in feces and ammonia, subject to constant violence, and with horrifying diseases. Then, they’re cruelly slaughtered, wherein they’re crammed into small crates, leading to many chickens dying, and many more enduring bone-breaking injuries and weather extremes. Then, those that haven’t died yet are brutally slaughtered, some stunned, some with their throats slit while they’re conscious, and some boiled alive while fully conscious. Michael Specter gave an accurate summary after visiting a chicken farm

"I was almost knocked to the ground by the overpowering smell of feces and ammonia. My eyes burned and so did my lungs, and I could neither see nor breathe. ... There must have been thirty thousand chickens sitting silently on the floor in front of me. They didn't move, didn't cluck. They were almost like statues of chickens, living in nearly total darkness, and they would spend every minute of their six-week lives that way."

Egg-Laying Hens

Hens start their lives in hatcheries, where the male chicks are ground up alive, while the female chicks are sent to factory farms. Transport is very lethal. In the factory farms, they’re kept in tiny feces-covered sharp wire cages leading to horrifying injury, as well as numerous diseases. They often are covered in so much feces that they look like they’re been in an oil spill. All the things that naturally give them joy are gone, leaving to them lying in misery, with no space to move, turn around, or stretch their wings. They become insane and depressed. They’re starved to increase their egg production. Eventually, they’re either killed on sight or sent to slaughterhouses. In transport, a huge portion of them die, often horrifically.

Turkeys

Turkey farming is roughly the same as broiler chicken farming. Turkeys are subject to frequent abuse, sleep deprivation, cruel slaughter, a poor diet, separation via hatchery, lethal transport, and numerous diseases.

Beef Cows

Beef cows spend their first year of life outside on a ranch, enduring harsh weather extremes. On the ranch, they’re painfully mutilated in lots of ways—they’re castrated, dehorned, and their ears are notched. Then they’re subject to a cramped transport that kills many of them, during which they’re not fed, before they arrive at the feedlot. At the feedlot, they’re fed an unhealthy grain diet, forced to live in feces and filth, and crammed in small spaces. Diseases spread rapidly. Finally, they’re shipped in trucks, leading to bones breaking and painful transport conditions. Once again, they’re not fed. At the slaughterhouses, they’re subject to physical abuse, before being bolt gunned in the head and sent down a chute to have their throats slit. Sometimes they’re fully conscious and bleed out for several minutes.

Dairy Cows

Dairy cows repeatedly have bull semen injected into them, which is cruelly extracted from bulls via a strange electric shock procedure. They spend the beginning of their lives alone in small crates or domes, separated from their parents, causing immense distress, before being sent to be repeatedly artificially inseminated and milked, leading to rapid spread of diseases. In transport, they’re starved, left thirsty, and subject to weather extremes, all the while in extremely cramped conditions. Then, they’re cruelly slaughtered.

Conclusion

Nearly all the animals in factory farms spend their lives in cramped conditions, full of disease, mutilation, injury, and death. They are treated like products and their interests are not taken seriously. When the way to get them to make more eggs is to temporarily starve them almost to death, the industry does that. When chickens grow faster because of sleep deprivation, they’re sleep deprived. When pigs taste less good when they go through puberty, they’re castrated with no anesthetic.

This is what we should expect from an industry that treats living, breathing, intelligent creatures—ones that can suffer, love, and yearn—the way one might treat rubber in a rubber factory. They are a product, designed to be exploited as much as possible. And if the industry needs to give them third-degree burns because it makes it easier to keep track of them, then they’ll put hot metal on their skin until they get third-degree burns.

It’s no wonder the factory farmers demand they are not filmed and lobby for unconstitutional laws that would make it impossible to report what they do undercover. For the crimes going on in the dark sheds are crimes that can only go on in darkness—only when people are not watching can this horror show continue.