Choose to end animal suffering...Be Vegan!

The Animals

As farms have become more industrialized, farm animals have become more of a commodity, looked at as a unit of production, rather than a living, breathing being. Intensive animal production farms are known as factory farms, and the animals in them are treated exactly like mechanical parts on a factory assembly line. The goals of mass production and profit are met at the expense of the most basic needs of the animals.

Most people imagine farms as peaceful places where animals roam in sunny, green pastures. Unfortunately, this couldn’t be further from the reality of modern factory farms, where hogs and chickens often spend their entire lives indoors, crammed together in unsanitary conditions. They live in wire cages or on slatted cement floors where their feet never touch the earth, and they only see sunlight on the day they are shipped off to slaughter. These animals are not free to behave as they would naturally outdoors and are constantly stressed and uncomfortable.

Stressed animals get sick faster, and conditions on factory farms are nothing but stressful. Industry spokespeople estimate that as many as 20% of breeding sows die prematurely from exhaustion and stress caused by restrictive confinement and accelerated breeding schedules on factory farms.¹ Ammonia and other gases from manure irritate animals' lungs, to the point where over 80% of US pigs have pneumonia upon slaughter.² Due to genetic manipulation, 90% of broiler chickens can’t even walk without difficulty.³

If you have compassion and respect for animals, you will agree that we can’t support meat and dairy companies that abuse and kill animals, failing to recognize their existence as living and feeling beings. Choose a vegan diet and refuse to support an industry that raises animals to know only suffering and death.

References

1. Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. The Price We Pay for Corporate Hogs. IATP. March 2001.

2. Horrigan, Leo, Lawrence, Robert S., Walker, Polly, "How Sustainable Agriculture Can Address the Environmental and Human Health Harms of Industrial Agriculture," Johns Hopkins University 's Center for a Livable Future, July 9, 1999.

3. Marcus, Erik. Vegan: The New Ethics of Eating. McBooks Press, New York 1998.