Factory Farms: Unveiling The Cruelties and Suffering
- Krista Ducharme
- Jun 1
- 6 min read
99% of livestock in the United States are confined in factory farms. In 2022, this was over 10 billion animals, which is more than the global human population. The sentience institute also approximates that almost 75% of all land animals worldwide are factory farmed, which means that “at any given time, around 23 billion animals” are in these facilities (OurWorldinData).
What is a Factory Farm?
Factory farms are also known as Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs). They are large factories where animals are placed to be exploited. Animals in these unsanitary factories are indoors, often never see the light of day, and are in constant fear and desperation for warmth and safety. They are unnaturally confined in such tight quarters that they can barely move, let alone behave normally. These factory farms are used to “maximize profits by treating animals not as sentient creatures, but as production units.” (Animal Welfare Institute)
There are dozens of ways animals suffer in factory farms... It is heartbreaking that humankind has decided to treat them in this way. We will take a look at cows, pigs, and chickens.
Factory-Farmed Cows and Pigs
Both cows and pigs have been scientifically proven to be intelligent beings. They understand emotional surroundings and experience distress when they see something bad happen to their babies or animal companions.
Cows and pigs have both been genetically manipulated for human convenience. Their bodies are pushed far beyond what is natural in order to maximize profits, regardless of the suffering it causes.
Filth and Extreme Confinement
In factory farms, cows and pigs are both subjected to extreme confinement. As a result, many of them spend their lives standing, sleeping, and eating in areas contaminated with their own waste.
Cows live in cramped tie stalls where they are chained in place. These conditions are so restrictive that, for much of their lives, cows are unable to walk, turn around, groom themselves, look to the side, or interact any other other herd members. Pigs are kept in cages for much of their lives, and female pigs that are used for reproducing more pigs are kept in gestation crates. Then the piglets are taken away from their mothers and put into their own cages with other piglets for feeding and meat production. See PETA's investigation on pig farms to see the horrid conditions they are subjected to (PETA).
Artificial Insemination and Baby Separation
Pigs and cows are both forcefully artificially inseminated.
Against their will, semen is injected into their uterus so they can produce more babies for people to eat. Female pigs and cows are made pregnant over and over again until they are no longer deemed useful for this practice and are then slaughtered for meat themselves.
In the dairy industry, cows are repeatedly artificially inseminated and after giving birth, their calves are taken away within hours or days. Many cows cry out for their calves for days afterwards, showing clear signs of distress (Animal Equality).
After giving birth, female pigs are kept in small cages called farrowing crates, which are used to prevent the mother from rolling over or moving while nurturing the babies. To maximize efficiency, the mother and her piglets are kept in this tiny cage, which is around 2 metres long and 1 metre wide. Piglets are separated from their mothers when they are as young as 10 days old.
Painful Mutilations
Animals in factory farms are physically exploited and mutilated. The industry has integrated methods to make the "efficient" turnaround of animal products possible without considering the harm the animals go through in the process.
Dehorning is done to cows by cutting off or burning their horns and horn tissue to prevent the cows from injuring themselves or others in overcrowded facilities. For calves, another method that is used is disbudding, which involves burning or chemically removing the horn-producing tissue before the horns fully develop.
Branding is also common in cattle farming and involves pressing searing hot irons into the flesh of young cattle for identification, leaving third-degree burns that are prone to infection.
Piglets are routinely subjected to painful procedures without anesthesia, including tail docking, thumping, and teeth clipping.
Additionally, especially in the United States, castration of baby piglets and calves is often done within the first week of their lives without anesthesia. The Animal Welfare Institute explains that: "Methods of castration vary between species and include surgical removal of the testicles with a scalpel or knife, application of a tight rubber band to cut off testicular blood supply, or the crushing of testicular blood vessels. When deprived of blood, the testicles eventually die and slough off after several weeks. All of these methods cause pain."
All of these sad ways we inflict pain on these animals don't even mention how the workers in these factories will often yell and hit the animals who don't behave with large metal sticks and other weapons so that they listen to them.
Bred for Excessive Production
Humans have developed ways to modify the way in which animals grow, so they are the most economically beneficial to their sales. This is done through animal testing, selective breeding, and genetically modified food/crops that they feed the animals.
"Pigs are genetically manipulated to grow so quickly that they reach “market weight” (250 pounds) when they are only 6 months old. Due to their unnaturally large size and lack of space to move around, factory farmed pigs often develop arthritis and become unable to walk or stand on their own" (Humane League).
Female cows are bred and fed to produce the maximum amount of milk possible. While she would naturally produce about 8 litres of milk for her calf per day, now, a dairy cow on a factory farm will produce over 20 litres daily. Her body is under constant strain and often struggles to support the weight and demands placed upon it. On top of this, "In order to produce a single litre of milk, a cow’s body must pump half a tonne of blood through her udder" (ProVeg). It is an unnatural, stressful environment and completely draining for the cows to be used as thought they are not a living being and only a means of production.
Factory-Farmed Chickens
Chickens make up the overwhelming majority of deaths in animal agriculture. They're so widely abused and they're overlooked. There are many routine unethical abuses done to them while in these CAFOs:
Genetic Manipulation
There have been dozens of studies examining the changes in chickens from the 1950s compared to today. Chickens have grown up to five times larger than they were then. Through decades of what the USDA calls “selective breeding,” companies have created hybrid birds designed solely for maximum production.
Broiler chickens (meat chickens) are also fed genetically modified feed and bred to grow as quickly and as large as possible. As a result, many become so heavy that their legs break beneath them, leaving them unable to stand or walk properly. They are also more prone to disease and weakened immune systems (FarmForward).
In factory farms, laying hens are producing over double the amount of eggs they would normally lay per year, reaching over 300 eggs annually.
Suffocation and Overcrowding
One of the most common causes of death in factory farms (other than slaughter and infection) is suffocation due to overcrowding. Chickens are packed so tightly together that weaker birds are often crushed beneath others or unable to access food, water, or fresh air (Humane League).
Forced Molting and Debeaking
Forced molting is a practice that manipulates the natural molting cycle of chickens. Companies do this by starving the egg-laying hens for five to twenty-one days. “At any given time, over 6 million hens in the U.S. are being systematically starved in their cages, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.” And once feeding resumes, hens are overfed to rapidly stimulate egg production again (UnitedPoultryConcerns).
To add, when they are only a few hours old, many laying hens have part of their beaks removed without anesthesia. This painful procedure is done because chickens living under extreme stress and overcrowded conditions often become aggressive and peck at one another.
Factory Farming is Never Ethical
The industry tries hard to prevent the public from knowing what happens behind closed doors. Animals rights groups are the only ones with the courage to document the conditions inside these facilities with video evidence to show the public what animals experience. Some states and countries have laws designed to protect and hide the animal industry from exposure, knowing that what is being done is wrong.
Cows, pigs, chickens… They are all intelligent beings, with emotions, and they react to pain and fear. They have no voice and are put into a system in which they cannot defend themselves. They are placed indoors in cages all their lives and re put into horrible misery until they are slaughtered. The only solution is to stop this completely.
There is never an ethical way of abusing, exploiting, and using animals.
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This is heartbreaking.