Avoid Mass Confinement Factory Farming at all Costs
 by Mike Jaynes

I have recently been researching and publishing articles on various aspects of the Animal Rights movement which I believe is one of the few instances one can truly be proud to be an American. Our country was the first to pass animal welfare laws to prevent cruelty to animals, and the active above ground and direct action animal rights and welfare organizations are doing amazing work. We have a long way to go before we are a humane country, but I would like to offer a practical way you can help animals. While wishing everyone would make the commitment to adopt a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle, I realize the sociocultural normative traditions of most Americans classifies this as extreme or even a little psychotic. Your choice to eat meat perhaps saddens me, but I appreciate individuality and wish very fervently to be acquainted with vegans and meat eaters alike. However, I do offer all you carnivores a challenge. Please look into what “mass confinement factory farming” means if you continue to consume meat. Virtually all of the meat you buy at Wal-Mart and other large chain stores is factory farmed.

Restaurants mostly offer factory farmed meat as well. The days of the kindly farmer raising pigs and chickens in natural conditions is mostly a thing of the past. Now it is “mass confinement factory farming,” and this is a nightmare. There are few family farmers anymore who walk their land, care for their animal charges, and treat the Earth with respect: now there are only corporations, billion dollar corporations committed to making the most amount of money in the shortest and most efficient way. And money they do make; mass confinement factory farming operations bring in billions of dollars in profit annually while the vast majority of their customers have no idea what goes on behind their closed doors. Quickly, let me draw upon chapter six of Matthew Scully’s haunting, important, and beautiful book Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy and tell you what mass confinement factory farming is.

Mass confinement "farming" practices of the corporate factory farms are responsible for slaughtering 130,000 cattle, 82,000 pigs, and 24 million chickens a day (conservative estimates). Mass confinement farming operations keep pigs and chickens in dimly lit cement and metal corrals their entire lives.

Pigs have been proven to be intelligent as a three year old human child and more so than the average dog. Factory farmed Pigs never leave the confines of the dim cement floored indoor pens in which they are crammed like trash. Chickens either. They never see the sun, never feel the grass, never raise their young, never experience even the least shred of human kindness and compassion. Their hooves never touch earth. Often up to 250,000 animals are kept enclosed in one building.

The largest producer of pork, Smithfield Farms, has driven almost every family farm out of existence. Breeding sows are forced to live in metal stalls seven feet long by 22 inches wide (see pictures of gestation crates at the end of this article). They weigh 400-500 pounds and break their legs trying to turn around. They live in their own filth and are denied the straw they use to make their beds in free range farms. However, they still paw the dank cement floor, slatted so that their excrement runs into vast waste tanks, trying to make piles they can lay upon.

They birth their young and nurse for a fraction of the time they do in the wild unable to turn and see their piglets. Then the piglets are taken away from them, an artificial insemination device is crammed inside them, and the dark nightmare begins again. This is the entirety of their brief and sad life. In the pictures at the end of this, the crates you see them confined in is there existence. They never leave them; they never walk. If a dog was confined this way his entire life, his guardian would be charged with a felony.

Chickens fare no better, but these pigs need socialization and care. In the wild, pigs never urinate or defecate within twenty feet of where they sleep, so one can imagine their revulsion at being forced to nurse their young in such horrid conditions. Mass confinement factory farms treat them as economic items (“production units” is the industry euphemism) and it’s entirely legal for them to do so.

If you love dogs or cats and have them in your home, please consider these pigs that are just as loving and intelligent. Eating chicken, ham, bacon, sausage, pork chops, and ribs comes at a terrible moral price to humanity. Smithfield Farms’ largest hog production facility is in Utah and it houses approximately 1.3 million pigs in its 50,000 acre facility kept indoors away from their natural needs from piglet birth until brutal mechanized robotic slaughtering and dismemberment. Eighty thousand pigs a day, just less than one per second, endure this so we can have pork. Matthew Scully feels in the divine tally of things “he was kind to animals and sacrificed for them” will carry much more weight than “he ate well.” I am in agreement.

So, I challenge you to look into the practices of factory farming and be educated as to what you are supporting. Animals depend on us to do the right thing; they trust us to provide for them. Scully also says, “As industrial farming spreads, mankind has broken that trust.” If you are not ready to go vegetarian, you can still avoid supporting factory farms by growing from local farms with “free range” pigs, cows, and chickens. Yes, the animals are still butchered and deprived of the rights they deserve- you should know this- but they spend their lives in their natural habitats, rooting, playing, running, and raising their young in the manner in which they have evolved. This life may not seem like much to us, but as it has been pointed out before, it’s all they have. It’s everything to them and we cannot take it from them. We do not have that right.

Keep in mind you must research these free ranging farms because many of them are playing on consumer sympathy to make increased profits by labeling certain products as "Animal Friendly" "Environmentally conscious" or other terms while maintaining operations of cruelty not much different from the factory farms. In truth, family farms are still taking the animals’ rights to their flesh, their offspring, and their productions. You, the consumer, must be educated and vigilantly committed to significantly reducing cruelty to farm animals to make a difference with your purchasing power. After all, the only language factory farms speak is economics. Common sense, sympathy for animals, and revulsion to inhumane treatment of animals has not and will not move them. All they know is money; therefore, the only way we have to battle them and help the animals is to choose wisely where we spend our money. And if you will not make the commitment to go vegetarian, I would rather you buy from a true free range family farm than a factory farm nightmare.

Smithfield is only one of the four major pork producers in the U.S. These billion dollar companies are driving the smaller family free range farms into the ground. Most of us imagine kindly farmers raising pigs and chickens and cows on ranches with huge blue skies and old red barns. As I have said, this is not true. I want to reemphasize: There are few farmers left; there are only corporations-- mechanized, efficient, terrible places with offices as glossy and high tech as any Manhattan economic firm. People support these businesses and make their owners billionaires in complete ignorance of their standard production practices. Most people can’t even bear to witness the activities that happen inside these walls. I can send you links to videos of slaughterhouses, but most people violently tell me not to. “I don’t want to know,” they tell me. They recoil from even the thought of seeing the truth. They can’t bear to witness this crushing cruelty and human induced suffering. Yet they consume and consume factory farmed meats thereby causing the terror they can’t bear to see.

But you can avoid these farms if you will spend a little more be that rare and vanishing thing: the educated consumer. As far as the pork brands under the Smithfield Farms umbrella corporation, if you buy Lean Generation Pork, Gwaltney, Valleydale, Dinner Bell, Sunnyland, ReaLEan, Patrick’s Pride, Ember Farms, or Circle Four, you are supporting the mass confinement torture of Smithfield Farms. Keep in mind Jimmy Dean and other big pork plants are no better, Smithfield is just one of them.

And as for the equally nightmarish chicken operations, Perdue and Tyson are the industry leaders and the names they control are numerous. Tyson supplies all Yum! brands chains that use chicken. This includes KFC and Taco Bell. Also they supply McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, Wal-Mart, Kroger, Costco, IGA, Beef O'Brady's, small restaurant businesses, and prisons. Also, according to our good friend and contributor to Wikipedia, Tyson acquired Tyson has also acquired such companies as Hudson Foods Company, Garrett poultry, Washington Creamery, Franz Foods, Prospect Farms, Krispy Chickens, Ocoma Foods, Cassady Broiler, Vantress Pedigree, Wilson Foods, Honeybear Foods, Mexican Original, Valmac Industies, Heritage Valley, Lane Processing, Cobb-Vantress, Holly Farms, and Wright Brand Foods, Inc. This means about the only way not to support mass confinement factory farming is buying from free ranging organic family run farms.

If you have any questions regarding going vegetarian or the sources used in this piece, please do not hesitate to contact me. Finally, please consider going vegetarian or vegan, and if you can’t, then please buy family owned free range farms and help us send the message to the mass confinement factory farms that we think this if wrong, we think they are horrific, we think they are cruel. Those who know me will not chuckle because they know I am sincere when I say pigs chickens cows and humans are all animals, we all feel pain, we all dream, and we all seek pleasure. Even though this short article focuses on the plight of pigs, I believe all animals deserve our mercy and compassion. Pigs, chickens, minks, foxes, skunks, elephants, chinchillas, birds, turkeys, and all animals look to us for protection and care. Being far from perfect, I have earned people’s trust and lost people’s trust from my past actions. As a result, I truly believe trust is a sacred thing and animals look to us helplessly and in total trust. How can we lead them trustingly down the chute to be torn to pieces and ground up and profited from? We really don’t deserve the animals; they deserve better than what we have given them. Please help me save the pigs.

The following are some pictures from Smithfield Farms and other mass confinement factory farming operations. If you eat pork, please view the pictures and read the captions, especially if you do not think you can’t handle it. The pictures depict what your money supports and what you can send a message against by going vegetarian or buying from family farms. Following the pictures is a list of family farms I sincerely hope you will patronize if you continue eating pork. Thanks to PETA for allowing me to use and distribute these pictures and captions. And finally, please go vegetarian after you consider the following animals’ fates.

Gestation Crates

In factory farms, mother pigs are intensively confined and forcibly impregnated. A mother pig (sow) spends her entire adult life confined to a metal crate so small that she can't even turn around or lie down comfortably. Forced to live lying in her own feces and urine, she and millions of other pigs like her will not be allowed to step outdoors until they are forced onto trucks headed for slaughter. After their young is taken away, artificial insemination devices are inserted into them, pregnancy is achieved, and the cycle begins again. They never leave these crates. What you see here is their entire existence.

Crippled Pigs

Unable to move or stand on her own, this pig has been left to die. Her gaunt body indicates that she is starving to death. When pigs who are unable to walk (called "downers") arrive at the slaughterhouse, they have no protection from the most unthinkable cruelty: These sick and injured animals will be kicked, shocked with electric prods, and finally dragged off the trucks to their deaths.

Factory Farms

This picture shows two of the 100 million pigs killed in the U.S. for their flesh each year. They will be castrated and will have their ears notched without the use of painkillers, and they will be drugged to keep them alive and growing in conditions that would otherwise kill them. Deprived of everything that is natural to them, pigs in today's factory farms will spend their lives in cramped metal pens inside filthy sheds.

Factory Farms

The majority of the 100 million pigs killed in the U.S. for their flesh each year spend their lives in cramped metal pens inside filthy sheds. The animals are given almost no room to move because, as one pork-industry journal put it, "Overcrowding [p]igs [p]ays." They are deprived of everything that is natural to them—they won't be allowed to step outdoors or breathe fresh air until the day that they are loaded onto trucks bound for slaughter. They are pumped full of drugs to make them grow faster, and many become crippled under their own artificially massive weight.

Dead Pigs

"Dead piles" are a constant presence in factory farms. While pigs are fed massive amounts of antibiotics to keep them alive in conditions that would otherwise kill them, hundreds of thousands succumb to the stress of violent mutilations and intensive confinement. Dead pigs are sent to rendering plants, where they are made into dog and cat food or into feed that will be given to pigs, chickens, and other farmed animals.

Slaughter

A worker cuts the pigs' throats and drains their blood. In many slaughterhouses, other terrified animals watch as the pigs further up in the line have their throats slit and are dunked into tanks of scalding-hot water. One slaughterhouse worker explains, "Bad-sticks [pigs whose necks weren't cut deep enough to open the veins] usually don't have enough time to bleed out. They end up drowning in the scalding tank before they ever bleed to death."

Transport Accidents

In 2004, a transport truck owned by Smithfield Foods and loaded with 180 pigs flipped over in Virginia. Many pigs were killed in the accident, while others lay along the roadside, injured and dying. PETA officials arrived on the scene and offered to humanely euthanize the injured animals, but Smithfield refused to allow the suffering animals a humane death because the company could not legally sell the flesh of animals who had been euthanized. Similar accidents involving animal transport trucks occur almost every day. After an accident in April 2005, Smithfield spokesperson Jerry Hostetter told one reporter, "I hate to admit it, but it happens all the time."

[Editor's note: We recommend avoiding all meat consumption regardless of where it originates!  It's the #1 best thing to help animals, the environment, and your health.]