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Thursday, April 6, 2017


Factory Farming? Animal Harming!
(The Vegans Are Looking Pretty Smart…)
By Gracie Cameron, EarthScope Intern (Tam High)
March 30, 2017


Many people never think about what they eat, and if they do, never really think about where their food is coming from. This especially occurs in animal products, these products are food sources that come especially from cows, pigs, chickens, and more. Even if some people know about how most animals are treated on factory farms, many people don’t want to know the real details. But it is really important for people to know the truth of what happens in the factory farms. The definition of a factory farm was: “a system of rearing livestock using intensive methods, by which poultry, pigs, or cattle are confined indoors under strictly controlled conditions.” The definition is much more gentle than what really happens on these farms.

What happens on these farms, in my opinion, is absolutely disgusting. Horrible things happen to these farm factory animal victims every single day. For example, pigs are kept in cages in which they can barely move. Once the mother pigs give birth to their piglets, they are immediately taken away, castrated, and have their tails cut off right after without any pain killers. With chickens, the chickens used for making eggs, are kept in cages in which they can’t even open their wings. They end up getting sores and bruises on their skin and have severe feather loss. The female chickens have most of their beaks seared off as chicks. Beaks have many nerves in them and can cause chronic pain when seared off. And, finally, for dairy cows, the calves are taken away immediately after birth, causing stress for both the mother and the calve, especially on the calve. Furthermore, their tails are cut off by either getting them cut off, or having a tight rubber ring put around it until it falls off. Both cows that are harvested for milk and meat are given growth hormones which can cause health problems for the cow. The weaker cows are tossed aside, left to die. All of these poor animals’ lives are shortened immensely as well, only used to harvest their meat/other product. There are so many other problems and horrible things that are done to these animals but Farm Sanctuary is trying to help.

Gene Baur was first introduced to this process during a journalism job. For his job, Baur was meant to try and expose what these factory farms were doing. After seeing the horrible conditions of the animals, Baur continued to try and expose the factory farms. Furthermore, after seeing live animals thrown onto piles of dead animals, just left to rot, Baur decided to do something. And with that, Farm Sanctuary was born, meant to rescue as many animals subject to the horrors of factory farming as possible.

One of Bauer’s main purposes was to make people more aware of the problem at hand. The majority of farms in the US are factory farms, in fact, about 99% of farms are. But, not only are these conditions bad for the animals’ health, it is also bad for our health and the environment as well. By having so many animals in a condensed space, not only does it cause stress, painful mutilations (since they are bred to grow unnaturally fast), and painful conditions and deformities for them, it strains our natural resources, and with all of the waste that they produce, it pollutes our land, air and water. Residents surrounding the factory farms also suffer consequences of higher risk of illness, stress, and live more unsanitary lives. On top of everything, the antibiotics given to these poor animals can transfer into their products and can cause antibiotic resistant bacteria.  

Overall, though so many awful things are being done to these animals, Gene Baur and Farm Sanctuary are doing everything they can to help these poor animals. For more information on Farm Sanctuary, go to https://www.farmsanctuary.org .

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