Worldwide
in 2001 the number of animals killed for food was 47.9 billion
according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation. There's
only 6 billion people in the world! All those food animals
would have suffered greatly to end up on tables all over the
world. Yet, we continue to cosset our pet animals. Can we
really defend this continuing arbitrary distinction between
"food" and "cute & cuddly"?
Approximately
357,300 pigs, 1,700,000 laying hens and 3,500,000 meat chickens
are reared intensively each year in Queensland alone.
Factory
farming is the way the vast majority of animals in Australia
are raised for food. Animals farmed this way include chickens
(both egg layers and broilers, or
meat chickens); turkeys; pigs and about
half a million of Australia's cattle are reared in the confined
space of feedlots. They are reared
intensively, ie. They are confined indoors the duration of
their unnaturally shortened lives.
This
system treats animals as machines to convert cheap into higher
priced meat and eggs. This is an extremely inefficient way
to produce protein.
Egg
-laying hens are crowded into wire cages with sloping wire
floors. Three or more birds may be crowded into these cages
so that each hen may have less floor space than the size of
a standard A4 page. They can never walk around, stretch their
wings freely. Broilers, or meat chickens, (the staple of fast
food stores) are kept in large sheds on groups of thousands
on the floor. They are fattened up so quickly that their legs
cannot often carry their own weight, their leg bones break
and they cannot drag themselves to the feeding stations and
so starve to death. Pigs are kept in sheds either singly in
narrow stalls so that they cannot even turn around or in groups
where they frequently have to lie and sleep in a build up
of their own excreta.
Severe
diseases are very common in these factory farms and in feedlots,
cattle frequently die from heat stroke for most feedlots do
not provide shade for the animals.
WHY
THIS SYSTEM MUST CEASE
1. It is cruel in the extreme
Animals never get used to this unnatural system of close confinement.
The crowding and restriction of movement forces them to live
under constant stress. The stress often means that they attack
each other. Factory farmers tacitly admit this, for, to prevent
their animals killing each other, they routinely mutilate
them. Hens are 'debeaked' - a euphemism for cutting off most
of a hen's beak with a red hot wire. This means they will
still peck each other, they cannot kill each other.
Pigs are housed in stalls on concrete or slat floors which
may cause foot and joint deformities. Piglets' tails are cut
off and their eye teeth pulled out because under stress they
bite each other's tails. Piglets often die from the shock
as no pain killing medication is provided for these procedures.
A British Government Committee back in the 1960s (The Bramble
Report) established that as a minimum, an animal should enjoy
FIVE FREEDOMS: freedom from fear and distress, freedom to
enjoy a natural diet, freedom to engage in natural behaviours,
freedom from pain and suffering.
ANIMALS
IN FACTORY FARMS ARE ROUTINELY DENIED THESE FREEDOMS. THEY
ARE NOT ADEQUATELY PROTECTED BY LAWS.
2.
It is wasteful
Factory farm animals are not permitted to graze. We have to
grow grains and soya beans for them to eat. Most of the food
value of what they eat is lost in the process, because the
animals must use it to live. As much as 90% of the food value
(nutrients) may be lost. Factory farming does not help to
feed hungry people; on the contrary, factory farm animals
are competing with people for food.
3. It is ecologically unsound
By wasting food, factory farming causes wasted land and water
by using it for growing grains to feed animals and putting
pressure on wildlife and water reserves. Factory farm animals
cannot recycle their wastes in a natural way. Factory farms
pollute nearby air, soil and water.
4.
It is unhealthy
Factory farm animals need drugs and antibiotics to keep them
surviving under the stressful conditions in which they live.
Traces of these drugs may remain in their flesh. Many diseases
are now becoming resistant to even the last line of defense
in antibiotics - vancymycin. More antibiotics are feed to
animals in Australia than are prescribed/sold to people!
FACTORY
FARMING: WHAT YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT......
