Cows. Over 33 million cows are slaughtered each year in America.9 These animals are also routinely mutilated without pain relief. American cows are hot-iron branded and castrated10 ; their tails are docked11 ; they are dehorned through sensitive tissue12 ; and their ears are cut for identification.13 The weaning process is traumatic for them, as it is for pigs. A calf would normally suckle from its mother for six months,14 but in factory farms, mother and child are separated almost immediately. Cows separated from their calves will mope and bellow for days.15 And then, if the calf is male, it might be put into the veal industry, with all its horrors.16
Cattle feedlots are like pre-modern cities, Michael Pollan writes, “teeming and filthy and stinking, with open sewers, unpaved roads, and choking air rendered visible by dust.”17 Ellen Ruppel Shell likens the feedlot to “a filth-choked slum.”18 Feedlot cattle often stand ankle-deep in their own waste19 and are exposed to the extremes in weather without shade or shelter.20 One study found that cattle lacking shade were four times more aggressive toward other cows than cattle in shade.21 This is how feedlot cows live, 24/7.
Poor sanitation and stress make the cows ill. Also, they’re fed grain, which they didn’t evolve to eat.22 Feedlot cows often get acidosis (kind of like heartburn) which can lead to diarrhea, ulcers, bloat, rumenitis, liver disease, and a weakening of the immune system that can lead to pneumonia, coccidiosis, enterotoxemia, and feedlot polio.23 About one sixth of dairy cows have mastitis, a painful udder infection. Mastitis is exacerbated by bovine somatotrophin injections, which are banned in Europe but are routine in the U.S.24 Between 15% and 30% of feedlot cows develop abscessed livers. In some pens, it’s as high as 70%.25
Sometimes the cows die prematurely. A woman who runs a “dead-stock removal” company in Nebraska said that her company had hauled off 1,250 dead cattle during a recent heat wave and couldn’t handle all the calls it got.26 Cows normally live about twenty years, but the typical dairy cow is considered “spent” around age four.27 Before dying, the cow’s ride to the slaughterhouse may be long, cramped, and stressful. There are, in practice, no legal limits on how long calves can be trucked without food, water or rest.28
Part of a report on how most animals are raised. The full thing is worth reading.