:: Sentenced for Life ::

Factory Farms: A Veil Over Our Plates

"Fish are more intelligent than they appear. In many areas, such as memory, their cognitive powers match or exceed those of 'higher' vertebrates, including non-human primates."

- Culum Brown, Biologist: University of Edinburgh

Chew on this...

Did you know that animals raised in factory farms for food are bred and drugged to grow large and fat very quickly? As a result, many become too heavy to support themselves and some die because they cannot get themselves to their water source. Some animals grow in size too quickly that their vital organs cannot keep up with the growth.
Every year in the U.S., more than 27 billion animals are slaughtered for food.
All factory farmed animals are housed in filthy jam-packed cages with not enough room for the animals to move around or lie down comfortably.
In a battery cage, barely the size of a file drawer, six to seven hens are crammed in. Thousands of these cages are stacked up in dirty warehouses.
Did you know that humans routinely pull out the horns, castrate, and brand (third-degree burns to mark them) cattle without given them any pain relief?
Cows bred for milk are fed drugs to make them produce unnatural amounts of milk; their calves are stolen and sent to veal farms for slaughter.
It is estimated that 300 million turkeys and the same number of chicken are raised and killed for human food just in the United States alone.
Fish crammed in tiny tanks for human needs go insane due to the lack of space in fish farms.
Fish slaughter plants in many countries do not stun the animals before they slaughter the fish; the fish are fully conscious when they go down the slaughter line.

"If anyone wants to save the planet, all they have to do is just stop eating meat. That's the single most important thing you can do. It's staggering when you think about it. Vegetarianism takes care of so many things
in one shot: ecology, famine, cruelty."

- Paul McCartney

References

Wayne Pacelle, "Mercy, Mercy: Chickens Deserve Same Humane End as Pigs and Cattle," Humane Society of the United States, 2005.
Animal Place, "Cattle: Not So Free on the Range," Animal Place Online, 2005.
Feedstuffs, "Research Looks at Transport Losses," 17 Apr. 2006.
The Humane Society of the United States, "A First Look at Farm Animals: Turkeys," 2004.
H. Steinfeld, P. Gerber, T. Wassenaar, V. Castel, M. Rosales, and C. de Haan, "Livestock's Long Shadow: Environmental Issues and Options," Livestock, Environment and Development (2006).