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FACTORY ANIMAL FARMING

The family farm days are virtually over because, like the giant warehouse home improvement store industry, the corporate conglomerate factory farms have all but taken over or wiped out the mom and pop operations. The corporate conglomerates of agribusiness may even refuse to buy farm animals from the small family farms in order to raise their own meat producing farm animals on huge warehouse-like factory farms, which critics charge, may be operating under inhumane conditions for the animals.

For example, on a factory farm up to 50 hogs may die every hour due to hostile conditions, unlike the care and attention they would possibly be given on a smaller family farm. Like puppy mill breeders who supply pet stores, the factory farm breeding stock may spend their entire lives kept inside a tiny cage. They eat, sleep, defecate, give birth and nurse their young all inside confined areas!

Farm animals here may develop breathing problems from inhaling noxious factory farm animal fumes from the thousands of animals being warehoused in the same confined area. Factory farm animals may develop severe arthritis from being held in cages all their lives and if they collapse they may simply be dragged out and tossed into a dead and dying animal pile.

A hidden camera investigation caught factory farm workers beating, kicking, stomping and dragging farm animals around using rods, wrenches even cinder blocks. During the slaughtering process some animals may get their throats cut and have their legs removed while fully conscious and screaming and may even be skinned alive! Baby animals which do not meet product uniformity or do not make the grade in weight may be killed by picking them up by their hind legs and bashing their heads on the concrete floor. This is called thumping or pac, meaning pound against concrete! Any dead and rejected animals are picked up by the dead trucks and delivered to rendering plants where the dead animals are ground up and actually fed back to live factory farm animals, which is how mad cow disease is believed to have started in Britain and Europe!

SUPPLEMENTAL SOURCE: HUMANE FARMING ASSOCIATION MAGAZINE SPRING 2000

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