Profit Above All else

Corporate animal agriculture must prioritize production efficiency above all else – this system creates significant welfare concerns for the animals involved. Examples include confinement practices such that animals are not able to express their natural behaviors. Gestation crates, farrowing crates, indoor housing, and cages are all examples of confinement practices that disallow animals to express their natural behaviors.

Even with the passage of California’s prop 12–which faced significant resistance from the animal agriculture industry, only requires sows to have 24 sq ft of space. While this is an improvement over how 99% are raised it is not enough space for an emotionally complex and curious animal to have a life worth living. Additionally prop 12 only requires egg laying hens to have 1 sq ft of space, and veal calves to have 6.6 sq ft of space which is equivalent to a king size mattress for an average sized human.

Motherhood denied

Mothers face emotional distress when their babies are taken from them abruptly so their mother’s milk can be sold for profit. Further physical and emotional suffering occurs as they are loaded into trailers, or packed into cages and onto trucks to be transported hundreds of miles in extreme heat or cold without food or water with little regulatory oversight and enforcement.

In addition to mental suffering experienced, animals also suffer from physical pain. Surgical procedures such as castration, tail docking, dehorning, beak trimming, needle teeth clipping are routinely performed without anesthesia. Genetic selection of animals to prioritize meat, milk and egg production has led to animals who experience high rates of lameness, mastitis, cardiac disease in poultry, among other concerns.

Unimaginable Horror

During animal disease outbreaks and supply chain disruptions like we saw with the COVID-19 pandemic, animals are ‘depopulated’ using horrifying inhumane methods such as ventilation shutdown plus (VSD+) where barns are sealed up, steam is pumped in and the animals die of heat stroke after prolonged suffering. Other methods are suffocation with foam, and using CO2. This causes extreme emotional distress for the workers involved as well.

Even without supply chain disruptions, the industry often times has to deploy these grisly methods. In 2022, H5N1 bird flu began spreading across Europe and the United States. Half a million birds were killed in Israel alone. In 2015, a bird flu outbreak led to the killing of 33 million hens in Iowa and 9 million birds in Minnesota. Smaller outbreaks occurred in Nebraska, South Dakota and Wisconsin.