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The Real Truth About Factory Farms

From the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) National Agricultural
Statistics Service, only 10% or 900 million of Americas farm animals
actually reach the slaughter house. The rest die on the farm, from
terrible living condition, stress, injury and disease. The animals are
routinely sprayed and fed with enormous amounts of pesticides and

antibiotics which continue to survive long after the animal has been
slaughtered and processed as meat to the consumer. This happens because of
such cramped living conditions where bacteria and disease run
rampant. This factory farming system only strives to produce the largest
quantity of meat, eggs and dairy at the fastest rate possible. The
majority of the time, the conditions are so bad that the animals are unable
to turn around in their cage and stalls. They are deprived of exercise in
order to have them continually producing fat and flesh. They are also fed
drugs to fatten them faster than necessary. Laying hens live in "battery
cages" (about the size of a newspaper) crowded seven to eight per cage
while a conveyer belt brings their food. With their cages stacked upon
each other to the top of the warehouse, often times with feces and food
raining down upon the hen below. Forced molting is induced for speedier
egg production. Hens are denied food or light for days and are kept in
semi-darkness to produce this forced molting. Their beaks are cut off to
prevent the fighting that would naturally take place when so many animals
are confined to such a space amount of space. About nine billion boiler
chickens are kept in sheds where artificial lighting is introduced to keep
them eating as fast and often as possible. When it is time for slaughter,
the birds are hung upside down with metal shackles while their throats are
slit and put into boiling water to remove their feathers. Beef cattle are
usually raised in one state and then moved to another to be fattened and
moved again to be slaughtered. They are fed an unnatural diet which
consists of expired dog and cat food, poultry feces, and leftover
restaurant food. They are often branded, castrated, and have their horns
removed from their heads without any form of pain relief. On the way to
slaughter they are crammed into metal trucks, lacking any food, water, vet
care, and temperature in the extremes. Often at the slaughter house they
are hoisted upside down by their hind feet and dismembered while fully
conscious. The kill rate in a typical slaughterhouse is four-hundred
animals per hour, and the line is never stopped simply because an animal is
alive. Calves raised for veal are taken from their mothers with days of
their birth, chained into a stall two by six feet with a slatted
floor. They are feed a special milk subsitute formula that makes them gain
at least two pounds a day. Most pork pigs are transported in any form of
weather conditions including extremes while dying from lack of food and
water while during transport to another colder state where they are put
into boiling water alive to remove hair and soften their skin. Factory
farms contribute about billions of pounds of manure a day which is dumped
into streams and rivers. An estimated one out of every four cattle who
enters a slaughterhouse may have E. coli virus. A Consumer Reports study
of nearly 500 supermarket chickens found campylobacter in forty-two percent
and salmonella in twelve percent with up to ninety percent of the bacteria
resistant to antibiotics. Eggs pose a salmonella threat to one out of
every 50 people each year. In total, the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention estimates that there are 76 million instances of food borne
illness each year, and more than 5,000 deaths.

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