For example, when someone buys
eggs labeled “cage-free” or “free-range,” although they likely came from hens who aren’t in battery cages, these birds nevertheless are still overcrowded in miserable, windowless warehouses where the stench of ammonia is overwhelming. They are still painfully
debeaked, brutally handled, and they still go to a terrifying slaughter at a young age. It is not cost effective for any egg operation to hatch their own chicks, so the babies still come from the harsh and heartless
hatcheries where all male chicks are cruelly killed by the millions soon after hatching, as they are considered a waste product of the
egg industry.
When someone buys
dairy products with an “organic” or “humane” label, the cows were perhaps able to go outside for some of their life, but they were still artificially inseminated, kept pregnant their entire short lives, and were milked well beyond what was ever intended for their bodies naturally.
Their calves were still taken away soon after birth, never to nuzzle their mothers or drink from their udders, or to frolic in a field. If the calves born to dairy cows are male, they are worthless to the dairy industry, and are sold at auction to be killed for veal, or perhaps for meat. If the operation is organic, sick and diseased cows languish untreated so the milk is not “tainted” with needed medications.
Animals raised for meat with a feel-good label have a similar story, frequently subjected to overcrowding and painful bodily mutilations:
debeaking, tail cutting,
ear notching,
tooth filing or clipping,
castration, and de-horning, all without pain medications. And
they are all sent to a sickening slaughter in the very beginning of their lives.
No matter the label, no matter the scale, commercially “farming” an animal for her meat, milk or eggs is factory farming. If an animal is hatched into this world in a sterile metal drawer without the comfort of her mother and a soft nest – that is factory farming. If
a calf is ripped from his mother at birth, and is kept separate from her and other cows, alone and frightened, chained and unloved – that is factory farming. If an animal has her beak burned off, her tail cut off, his genitals ripped out – that is factory farming. If an animal is hung upside down with his throat slit open – that is factory farming.
Indeed, I would encourage the animal activist community not to use the term “factory farming” anymore because it implies that there is some
“humane” farming alterative somewhere that counters the large-scale, industrial operations. By using the term “factory farming” animal activists have inadvertently contributed to a demand for “alternative” animal products. This is what we have been hearing in the shifting rhetoric of apologists for the animal agricultural industry when they say “I only buy…”
There are
inherent cruelties in any kind of animal agriculture that cannot be eliminated with feel-good labels or descriptions of joyful animals who are supposedly happy till that “
one bad day.” It is an industry-wide lie. Small or large-scale, the animals are never happy to be killed. There is no such thing as “
happy meat.”
