Animal Advocacy | Perpsective
Cruel Practices in Animal Farming
“The question is not, can they reason? Nor, can they talk? But, can they suffer?” — Jeremy Bentham
Ironically, humans, the most compassionate beings, are the most callous too. Because we’ve been accustomed to eat certain animals like pigs, cows and chickens, we fail to empathize them, and fail to give them the right treatment they deserve. We view them as if they can’t feel pain, as if they don’t have emotions and don’t suffer. We see them only as milking machines, egg machines, and meat machines. We have become too numb, and now we don’t even realize the cruelty we inflict to these animals.
Here are 10 cruel practices done in animal farms:
1. Chick shredding
In factory farms, specifically in the egg industry, it's a standard practice to shred the useless male chicks after hatching. They are said to be useless because first, they won't lay eggs, and second, they won't grow big enough to be used as chicken meat, and so raising them wouldn't be profitable.
In the United States alone, roughly 300 million male chicks are put into maceration machines each year. The innocent day-old chicks are thronged in a conveyor belt where they are slowly moved to the edge and dropped into the grinding machines. Globally, it estimated that about 7 billion male baby chicks suffer the same fate every year. The ground bodies of these chicks are used sometimes for pet foods.
2. Castration (without anesthesia)
Male pigs are castrated while young. Using an unsterile knife or a scalpel, a worker cuts the scrotum skin of the piglet then rip out its testicles. It is done without any use of anesthetics or analgesics as allowed by law. Male piglets aging up to 7 days old can be surgically castrated without anesthesia or analgesia. Pigs older than that may only be castrated given anesthesia and with prolonged analgesia, as per legislation on minimum standard (Directive 2008/120/EC).
Providing such drugs, too, causes the farms to incur more expense and add the burden of work. But fortunately, some countries have already required anesthetic before castration of young piglets, and a few completely abolished the practice.
Of course, it is extremely painful and still cruel even with anesthesia. But pork producers like Smithfield Foods insist that the procedure is necessary to avoid “boar taint,” the unpleasant odor and taste that can be compared to the smell of urine, feces, and perspiration. This foul smell is caused by the accumulation of the compounds androsterone and skatole. So, to elude the accumulation of these, and ultimately the offensive odor and bad taste of our cooked pork, castration is still widely allowed and practiced.
3. Debeaking chicks
Beak trimming of chicks is another terrifying common practice done in factory farms. The sharp upper and lower mandible tips of the chicks' beak are removed mostly by using a machine with a hot blade reaching a temperature of 650 degrees Celsius. This is performed mostly on red sex-link or leghorns that are raised for laying eggs. Although the female chicks, unlike the males, don't die from maceration, they still get to suffer through their lifetime starting from this debeaking.
The reason for this debeaking according to farms is to avoid feather pecking and cannibalism - which happen due to stress from having insufficient access to resources. Unfortunately, unlike human nail- trimming, debeaking is exceedingly painful. The chicken beak, like in all birds, are sensory organs. Once amputated, it affects the sensory capabilities and behavior of chickens, and also causes difficulty in eating.
This practice goes way back in the 1940s when an American farmer in San Diego, having the same problem with the chickens dying from injuries from pecking one another, discovered that if he burned away the upper part beak of the chickens with a blowtorch, they won't be able to pick and pull each other's feathers.
4. Chickens in gas chambers
After 18 months of age, layer hens become slower in producing eggs. Reaching that point, the industry considers them unprofitable. They are then disposed (killed) or "depopulated" as what they call it, to free up space and mouths to feed. Most common method of killing these hens are by gas chambers.
The chickens are transported to a slaughterhouse in crates. There, they are placed into a gas chamber which is sealed shut, and is slowly inflated with carbon dioxide. Sometimes the gassing is done in the farms itself. They are placed into airtight containers then pumped with carbon dioxide. The panicking chickens struggle to breathe, experiencing air hunger. In five minutes or less, the thousands of chickens die from suffocation and some die faster due to cardiac arrest. The dead bodies, most of the time, are composted on farms. Furthermore, it can’t be denied that these animals suffer while in gas chambers. However, the industry considers this as the most humane way to kill them.
5. Cattle hot-iron branding
Branding is another cruel practice that has been observed for along time. Most commonly, farmers use a red-hot iron pressing it against the castle's hide to leave a permanent scar. This method is done for identification and proof of ownership. But unlike human tattoos, cattle branding is a way more painful mark and can be considered as a third degree burn.
Ranchers, in defense, says that branding doesn't hurt the animals as the metal is applied only for a matter of second. But according to American Veterinary Medical Association, branding using hot iron are considered painful to ruminants. And obviously, a 650 to 700 Fahrenheit red-hot metal should surely hurt.
6. Sheep shearing
Shearing sheep may be necessary. However, these animals suffer abuse from their not-so-good-shepherds during the process. Usually, shearers are paid by quantity of wool shorn and not by hour of work. Because of that, shearers tend to work faster without concern of the well-being of the sheep.
Here's a statement of PETA describing their latest investigation: "In shearing sheds, workers race against the clock because they’re paid by volume, not by the hour. Rushed, aggressive shearing leaves many sheep cut up and bleeding. The investigator saw shearers cut off long strips of skin. One sheep was given no painkillers when a shearer attempted to stitch up her gaping wound with a needle that appeared to be blunt."
A footage documented in a British sheep farm, revealed workers beating, punching, and slamming sheep on the ground in an effort to control and make them still while shearing. (See, Horrific Footage Reveals Abuse at Sheep Farms in Britain)
7. Cow dehorning
Dehorning is another abuse suffered by cattles. Cows are born with nubbins or horn buds. However, cows' horns are removed while still young. It is said to be done in order reduce potential injury among the animals that may cause significant financial losses.
Dehorning can be done by burning the tissue with hot iron, applying chemicals that eats the tissue, using knives, using scoop dehorners and using cup dehorners. All these methods are extremely painful to calves and even worse to the mature ones. When the horn is established, it is already connected to the skull and so removing it becomes more bloody and painful. Tools used for the procedure include saws, sharp wires, and guillotine dehorners, which also damages the cow's head skin. All these dehorning by the way is operated without anesthesia.
8. Tail-docking pigs
Aside from castration, young piglets also suffer from another painful operation: tail-docking. In this practice, young piglets are restrained while their tails are cut off using mostly sharp scissors, scalpel blade or surgical knife. The young mammals scream in agony from the no-anesthesia operation.
Because of the anxiety and stress pigs undergo in factory farms, they tend to bite off each other's tail which causes severe infection to the animals. So, as a preventive measure, the practice of tail-docking is widely adopted by farmers to avoid the pigs in injuring each other that can subsequently cause substantial losses to producers.
A study, reviewing the consequences of tail-docking, showed that it result in both acute and chronic effects on pig welfare, and it's effectiveness in preventing tail biting is limited. It's been obviously proven too that it causes trauma and pain while the discomfort lasts for days. Nonetheless, this cruel procedure is still performed in the pork industry.
9. Sheep mulesing
Mulesing is another cruel and even more painful procedure done to sheep. In this practice, strips of wool bearing-skins from around the buttocks of a sheep is removed as a measure to parasitic infections or flystrike. It is when flies lay eggs on the sheep's buttocks, as it's the ideal place for flies to do so, being it's continuously wet from urine and feces. After the eggs hatch, it eats off the flesh of the sheep which causes infections.
To prevent such case, mulesing is applied to sheep, which however hurt the animals and sometimes even become the cause of infection. In a footage, mulesing was documented in an Australian sheep farm. Restrained lambs were seen lying on their backs in a metal cradle, and screaming while their skins get cut off. (See, PETA Latest Findings of Cruelty in the Australian Wool Industry)
10. Cramming of livestock
Space is an expensive thing. What factory farms do to minimize cost for space is to cram the animals, until they can't even move. Being too crowded, the animals become stressed which causes unwanted behavior causing animals to inflict injuries to one another that generate infections.
Because of this unhygienic situations, factory farms are prone to give rise zoonotic diseases like covid-19. Scientists have been warning factory farms that the next outbreak may start from these facilities. And aside from that, factory farms proliferate preexisting diseases.
“When we overcrowd animals by the thousands, in cramped football-field-size sheds, to lie beak to beak or snout to snout, and there’s stress crippling their immune systems, and there’s ammonia from the decomposing waste burning their lungs, and there’s a lack of fresh air and sunlight — put all these factors together and you have a perfect-storm environment for the emergence and spread of disease,“ said Michael Greger, the author of Bird Flu: A Virus of Our Own Hatching. However, profit being the main driver of these farms, it's doubtful if the producers will provide more and better space for the animals.
We can’t deny that these animals feel suffering, yet we continuously ignore that fact for our needs. However, we can’t wait until chickens rally on the streets, pigs stand with banners raised, and cows shout for their rights. Because they won’t. We, as more capable beings should be the one standing for them and shouting that their lives matter. Because they truly do.
