Factory Farming - Benefit or Risk?

Is Factory Farming a benefit or a risk to our health? Is the cruelty on treating the animals ethic, or acceptable? Please read this page and decide.

Do you know what happens to the animals you are eating?

Factory Farming is a Nutrition Fact

Factory farming is a term referring to the process of raising livestock in confinement at high stocking density, where a farm operates as a factory - a practice typical in industrial farming by agribusinesses. The main product of this industry is meat, milk and eggs for human consumption. However, there have been issues regarding whether factory farming is sustainable and ethical.

Confinement at high stocking density is one part of a systematic effort to produce the highest output at the lowest cost by relying on economies of scale, modern machinery, biotechnology, and global trade. Confinement at high stocking density requires antibiotics and pesticides to mitigate the spread of disease and pestilence exacerbated by these crowded living conditions. In addition, antibiotics are used to stimulate livestock growth by killing intestinal bacteria.

There are differences in the way factory farming techniques are practiced around the world.

There is a continuing debate over the benefits and risks of factory farming. The issues include the efficiency of food production; animal welfare; whether it is essential for feeding the growing global human population; the environmental impact and the health risks. - Source: Wikipedia

Factory Farming Cruelty:

Factory farming is greatly debated throughout Australia, with several people disagreeing with the methods and ways in which the animals in factory farms are treated. Often animals are under stress from being kept in confined spaces, so will attack each other. This results in them having beaks, tails and teeth removed. Many piglets will die of shock after having their teeth and tails removed. This is due to the fact that painkilling medicines are not used in these operations. Others say that factory farms are a great way to gain space, with animals such as chickens being kept in spaces smaller than an A4 page.

From its American and West European heartland factory farming became globalized in the later years of the twentieth century and is still expanding and replacing traditional practices of stock rearing in an increasing number of countries. In 1990 factory farming accounted for 30% of world meat production. By 2005 this had risen to 40%. - Source: Wikipedia

Factory Farming ethics

Factory farming is one of the worst forms of animal abuse in these day's society. Every year millions of animals live and die in miserable circumstances. These animals are being abused, to make as much profit as possible, against as low as possible costs.

Chickens who are only allowed 1 hour rest, the rest of the day they need to eat to get fat, so they can by sold as quickly as possible.
Many pigs see sunlight for the first time when they are loaded into trucks to go to the slaughterhouse.
In spite of the fact that their stables have windows, also many cows have to spent their entire lives in a stable till it is time to transport them.
The housing of these animals is often so cramped that they can nearly not lie down or move.

Besides that, as a nutrition fact, these animals are also stuffed with all kinds of chemical drugs, which will get into your body when you eat this meat.

Watch the journey into The Matrix , for an animated look at animal life and what that means for human health in the world of factory farming.

- Just think about...

AViva! investigation reveals most pigs are crammed in disease-ridden, indoor units where they live in their own filth. A cocktail of drugs keeps them alive and forces fast growth.

... The smell of excrement is overwhelming. The pigs - who have an acute sense of smell - can never escape. Ammonia fumes damage their lungs and, not surprisingly, many die of respiratory diseases.

Almost all mother pigs - the breeding sows - are kept in what are termed 'total confinement facilities'. This innocuous term actually means imprisonment - indoors and confined in metal crates just inches wider than their bodies. These desperate creatures can never walk or turn around for their entire lives. Total confinement is the fate of 83% of mother pigs, according to the USDA.

Slaughterhouses

If they survive the farms and transport, the animals are slaughtered.

Animals in slaughterhouses can smell, hear, and often see the slaughter of those before them.

As the animals struggle, the human workers, who are pressured to keep the lines moving quickly, often react with impatience towards the animals.

... On May 24, 2000, King5.com new service in Seattle, WA, broke a story about undercover footage taken at a nearby IBP slaughterhouse. According to their report, The video shows fallen cows being trampled and dragged, others are tortured with electric prods. One cow has fallen and workers stick an electric prod on its head, then place the prod down its mouth. Still other cows are hung on chains, fully conscious, blinking and kicking. The worker who shot the tape said one cow was already at a station where legs are removed. ‘It would be horrible if someone were to cut off your leg without anesthesia.

Do animals have a soul?

- Well, have you ever looked in their eyes?

The question is not wheatear they can reason or talk,
but: - Can they suffer?

Animals are God's creatures, not human property, nor utilities, nor resources, nor commodities, but precious beings in God's sight. - Rev. Andrew Linzey, Oxford, Animal Theology, 1995

... The federal law requiring slaughterhouses to kill animals humanely has been increasingly ignored as meat plants grow bigger. Cockerham said that he often saw plant workers cut the feet, ears, and udders off cattle that were conscious on the production line after stun guns failed to work properly. "They were still blinking and moving. It's a sickening thing to see," he said. Read more