Undercover footage taken by Farm Watch shows dozens of rats crawling over living and deceased pigs in wet, filthy and cramped enclosures.  The fact that the meat from this farm is certified under New Zealand’s pork care label demonstrates that these labels are meaningless.  A TV news station in New Zealand ran an excellent in depth story about the farm, the regulators and the broken system.

Factory farms, or concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), are inherently inhumane because the animals are treated like commodities.  In CAFOs, pigs, chickens and cows are mutilated, confined, kidnapped, beaten and deprived of the ability to do anything that comes naturally to them.  If you oppose animal cruelty, then please go vegan and educate others about the horrors of factory farming.

In response to ag gag laws which criminalize undercover photo and video from being taken in factory farms, animal rights activist Will Potter launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise money to buy drones to legally photograph factory farms from above:   “In my new project, I am going to use new investigative journalism tools to help expose what some corporations want to keep hidden.”

Agribusiness is moving mountains to stopping animal cruelty inherent in factory farming from being exposed, but Will Potter is staying one step ahead.  While the drones might not capture cruelty, they will show the destructive impact that factory farms have on the environment.  To learn more about and support his effort, please visit his Kickstarter page, Drone on the Farm: An Aerial Exposé

In a thorough story about the pork industry’s slow phase out of gestation crates, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports on many aspects of the change, including the vast financial resources of large companies like Cargill, Smithfield Foods and Hormel  that will enable them to make the switch from crates to group pens; the concern among small contract farmers that the added expense won’t translate into added revenue; the risks and benefits of having pigs in group pens; and the growing demand from the public to eliminate the most intensive forms of confinement.  According to the National Pork Producers Association, about 20 percent of U.S. sows are in group sow housing; the rest are kept in crates.  “Gestation stalls became common in the 1970s and early 1980s, as hog producers got bigger and moved their animals indoors. The stalls generally measure 2 feet by 7 feet.  Canada recently banned the continuous housing of sows in gestation crates, following the European Union.” Dallas Hockman, industry relations VP at the National Pork Producers Council, defends the intensive confinement of sows, stating, “It’s not about right or wrong, it’s about choice. The type of housing does not dictate animal welfare.”

Gestation Crates

Thanks to undercover footage taken in concentrated animal feeding operations (aka factory farms), consumers largely oppose the intense confinement of the animals who they eat.  Of course, animal rights activists oppose it too.  The challenge we face as a community is whether or not we advocate for incremental reform, such as the change from crates to shared pens, or to push for the only humane option, which is the abolition of all forms of animal farming and slaughter.  Shared pens might be better, but they are still cruel, as they deprive the pigs from the opportunity to roam freely in the outdoors.   And the shift to pens from crates doesn’t change the fact that the piglets have their tails sliced off without anesthesia and that sick piglets are killed by slamming them against the floor. While we might disagree on strategy, we can agree on our message when consumers are listening — the eating animals in modern day times is inherently inhumane.

Undercover video taken by a Mercy For Animals (MFA) investigator exposes the torture of baby turkeys on Butterball factory farms. MFA has turned over this evidence to local law enforcement, which is currently considering criminal animal cruelty charges. Butterball, which is the nation’s largest turkey producer, is responsible for 20 percent of the 252 million turkeys killed each year.

Factory farms are inherently abusive because the animals are mutilated, ground up alive, confined, torn from their mothers and stripped of the ability to do anything that comes naturally to them. Abuses that are not built into the system, such as the ones mentioned above but are pervasive nonetheless are the beatings — the “kicking and stomping on turkeys and bashing in their heads with metal pipes.” Please share this Butterball video so that people who think that eating a turkey sandwich is a benign activity are exposed to the truth.

After investigating 70 rabbit farms and four slaughterhouses in Spain, Igualidad Animal (translated: Animal Equality) released undercover footage of workers slicing the throats of conscious rabbits; dead animals in cages with live ones; injured and sick animals being left untreated and others eating their own feces. According to Spanish media, “farmers were observed killing sick animals by hitting them over the head with iron bars, smashing their skulls against concrete floors or punching them.” Igualidad Animal has filed 72 official complaints, which, if proven, could result in heavy fines and prison sentences.

As expected, Spain’s rabbit farming industry association has criticized the video and says it is “creating a new code of practice which goes ‘beyond what is required by law.'” Undercover investigations like this that expose abuse in animal factories are the most powerful tool we have to affect change, which is why industry is backing “ag gag” laws criminalizing them. Please use these videos as a tool to educate people about factory farms.