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Factory Farming

Factory farms deny animals many of their basic behavioral and physical needs. Whether virtually immobilized in crates or cages, or overcrowded in feedlots and buildings, factory-farmed animals are denied normal social interactions. Such artificial conditions cause animals to suffer from boredom, frustration, and stress, which often leads to abnormal behavior, including unnatural aggression.

The livestock industry claims that productive animals are by nature healthy animals. The reality is that drugs, hormones, and other chemicals are routinely administered to animals in intensive confinement systems to mask stress and disease and to speed growth. In addition, farm animals have been selectively bred for productivity at the expense of their well-being, and are worn out in a fraction of their natural life spans.

Hundreds of thousands of these animals die every day. Physical disorders brought on by exhaustive production demands are common. Dust and toxic gases accumulate in crowded, enclosed systems, causing respiratory diseases and death. Losses are high, yet the industry considers this acceptable because factory-farm profits depend on the optimal use of space and equipment, not on the well-being of individual animals.

The Chicken Factory Farm

Chickens raised primarily for their meat are referred to as "broilers." Life for these chickens begins at a hatchery, without any contact with their mothers. Newly-hatched chicks are moved to a broiler house where they are thrown from a crate onto the floor of a building averaging 40 feet wide and 500 feet long. Twenty to thirty thousand birds are crowded together in each of these buildings, allowing only 1/2 to 1 square foot of space per bird.

Such extreme overcrowding leads to problems such as restriction of movement and birds climbing over each other, scratching with their sharp claws. Heat stress is another problem; in hot weather, adequate ventilation to prevent it is virtually impossible. During heat waves, millions of birds have suffocated in these buildings. Labor, expense, and litter disposal problems result in many of the buildings being cleaned out only every two to three years, causing excrement to build up year after year. Ammonia and other gases also build up, creating an extremely unhealthy and stressful environment for these sensitive birds.

The Dairy Cow Factory Farm

Fewer dairy farms yet more dairy cows producing more milk and more unwanted calves can mean just one thing: the dairy cow and her calves have become victims of the factory farming industry.

Factory farmed dairy cows are typically kept in indoor stalls or on drylots. A drylot is an outdoor enclosure devoid of grass. Cows raised on drylots usually have no protection from inclement weather, nor are they provided with any bedding or a clean place to rest. Drylots can hold thousands of cows at one time. Because these lots are only completely cleaned out once—or at the most, twice—a year, the filth just keeps building up. Such conditions are not only extremely stressful for the cows, they also facilitate the spread of disease.

The Hen Factory Farm

Chickens raised primarily for egg production are referred to as laying hens. Life for these chickens begins in an incubator at a pullet farm. However, 50% of new-hatched chicks are males who are killed a day or two after hatching because they are not needed. Their deaths number in the millions annually. When the female chicks reach egg-laying age, at about 16 to 18 weeks, they are moved to a laying hen facility.

These facilities typically consist of several buildings, each of which may be the length of a football field. Each building has row upon row of stacked wire cages, often as high as eight tiers. The wire floor of each cage is sloped. Each hen lays her eggs on this floor, and the eggs roll down onto a conveyor belt, where they move on to processing.

To maximize the overall production of a building, as many hens as possible are packed into each cage— although this practice will soon be changing, if only slightly. For the first time ever, the majority of laying hen facilities will be phasing in a requirement of 67 square inches per bird. This move, while an improvement, still provides less space than three-quarters of a letter-sized piece of paper per hen. The conditions are still cramped and barren, preventing the animal from expressing normal behaviors such as nesting and dustbathing, which are important to a hen's welfare.

Individual buildings can house 200,000 or more birds, each producing more than 260 eggs per year. In 1940, an average laying hen produced just 134 eggs per year. Genetic and environmental manipulations have caused this number to double. Such intensive egg production is highly unnatural and causes extreme stress on hen bodies.

The extreme overcrowding and unnatural conditions lead to a multitude of problems, including foot and feather damage from the wire cages. In addition, the complete lack of exercise, coupled with the demands of high egg production, causes osteoporosis, predisposing hens to broken bones.

One way hens react to the stress of these conditions is to peck each other constantly. To limit the damage from excessive pecking, the industry removes a part of the hen's beak, a practice termed "debeaking" or "beak trimming". The severed nerve endings in the beak can develop into abnormal nerve tissue, and the beak never heals properly. Many debeaked hens demonstrate behaviors that suggest both short- and long-term pain.

Overcrowding can also lead to heat stress since adequate ventilation is virtually impossible to provide in these facilities during hot weather. During heat waves, millions of birds can suffocate. What's more, excrement and dust builds up, creating an unhealthy and stressful environment for these sensitive birds.

By comparison, laying hens raised uncaged on smaller, family-run farms are often able to live a more normal life. They have enough space to move around and spread their wings. They can socialize and perform such natural behaviors as scratching at the ground and taking dustbaths.

The Pig Factory Farm

Sows on factory farms spend their entire lives crammed into tiny crates, virtually reduced to machines that produce an assembly line of piglets. Their environments are not unlike those of veal calves. The sows spend their lives in giant sheds void of the warm sun, fresh air, straw bedding, soft ground in which to root, or a pasture in which to feed.

At a tender age, and without anesthesia, they can be castrated, have their teeth clipped, their ears notched, and their tails docked. Thousands of intelligent pigs can live in just one of these factory barns.

Frequently Asked Questions about Pig Factory Farms

What's so bad about factory farming?

Factory farms deny animals many of their most basic behavioral and physical needs. Whether virtually immobilized in crates and cages or overcrowded in feedlots and buildings, all factory-farmed animals are denied normal social interactions, including the avoidance of aggression from those with whom they may be confined. Such artificial conditions cause animals to suffer from boredom, frustration and stress, which often leads to abnormal behavior, including unnatural aggression.

The livestock industry's claim that a productive animal is, by nature, a healthy one is extremely deceptive. The reality is that drugs, hormones, and other chemicals are routinely administered to animals in intensive confinement systems to mask stress and disease and to speed growth. In addition, farm animals have been selectively bred for productivity at the expense of their well-being, and they quickly become worn out. Hundreds of thousands of these animals die every day. Physical disorders brought on by exhaustive production demands are common. What's more, dust and toxic gases accumulate in crowded, enclosed systems, causing respiratory diseases and death.

Can pigs really be raised more humanely?

Yes. Crates for sows and other confinement enclosures have been banned or are being phased out in other countries. As more people learn the facts about how these animals are being treated, they add their voices to the growing demand for change.

There are farmers who care about the well-being of their animals, the environment, and the quality of products they produce. They practice humane, sustainable agriculture, which consists of production systems and practices that meet pigs' physical and behavioral needs, while treating natural resources in ways that ensure continued productivity for generations to come.

How are pigs treated on factory farms?

On factory farms, pigs live in an unnatural environment, completely unsuited to their physical and behavioral needs. They are raised in intensive confinement in enclosed buildings, often longer than a football field, where as many as 12,000 pigs are born, fed and watered, medicated, and fattened for slaughter.

Gestation Crates: A Sow's Life

The inhumane treatment of pigs in animal factories begins with conception. Female pigs, called sows, spend their pregnancies in crates two feet wide and seven feet long. Breeding sows spend the majority of their reproductive lives confined in gestation crates barely larger than their bodies.

When her litter is born, the sow is moved to a farrowing crate with concrete slated floors. The industrial hog industry seeks to minimize the time between pregnancies by forcefully weaning young piglets as early as one week of age. Tightly confined, with no time to teach her piglets normal behavior patterns essential to their development, sows frequently develop neurotic behaviors, like gnawing on the bars of their crates.

Once separated from their mother, the piglets are crowded into barren pens or cages, sometimes stacked two levels high. Stress from overcrowding and the denial of instinctual behavior can produce abnormal behaviors in the piglets, including tail biting and aggression, from which victims cannot escape. Castration and tail docking are performed without anesthesia.

When the piglets reach about 55 pounds, they are shipped to a "finishing" facility where they are confined in industrial barns for four months until they reach an ideal slaughter weight of about 250 pounds. These finishing hogs live 100 to a metal pen with concrete slated floors, up to 2,500 per industrial barn, with as many as 20 barns per facility.

Gestation crates have been outlawed in Sweden and the United Kingdom. The European Union and other countries will be phasing out gestation crates over the next decade, and there are efforts to pass similar laws in the United States.

Alternatives to gestation crates exist that are more in tune with the natural behavior of sows. Farrowing (birthing) huts on pasture or in deep straw barns provide room and protection for a sow and her piglets. Grouped together, sows and their piglets form natural groups. These more humane conditions are better for the animals and are friendlier to the environment.