Animals
Most children are born with an innate compassion for animals and many of us continue with this compassion through adulthood. When surveyed, the majority of people do not want to see farmed animals suffer.
The food industry is aware of this and promotes pictures of happy barnyard animals with plenty of room, roaming freely outside, and enjoying the sunshine. This is just marketing or “humane-washing,” and not the reality for the vast majority of farmed animals who suffer tremendously.
pigs like belly rubs too!Factory farming is a relatively new development that has taken over the agriculture industry to lower costs and produce a large number of animals in small spaces, essentially treating animals as if they are machines or non-feeling beings. Small family farms cannot compete and either need to conform or go out of business.
Factory farms deprive animals of all of their innate needs. Farmed animals, like our companion animals, suffer pain and mourn loss, and experience emotions like pleasure, boredom, fear and loneliness. Yet, they have been bred to grow so quickly they live in pain and sometimes their legs cannot even hold their weight. Some are confined in cages and not even given enough room to turn around. Most are kept indoors with so many other animals that the air is toxic and burns their lungs. They are artificially inseminated and have their young taken away at birth or soon after. They are dehorned, debeaked, castrated and pigs’ tails are cut off, all without anesthesia, to make it easier to “care” for them. There are far too many problems with factory farming to list them all.