The Horrors of Broiler Chicken Factory Farms

If you get a moment, please - please - read Leah Graces' troubling article "Why We Haven't Seen Inside a Broiler Chicken Farm in a Decade" in Food Safety News. It is a must-read for those of us who are concerned about the fate of factory-farmed animals, especially chickens, who live in the worst conditions imaginable and are killed by the billions around the world each year. Early in the article, Graces quotes New Yorker writer Michael Spencer, who visited a broiler chicken factory farm back in 2003. At the time Spencer wrote:

I was almost knocked to the ground by the overpowering smell of feces and ammonia. My eyes burned and so did my lungs, and I could neither see nor breathe….There must have been thirty thousand chickens sitting silently on the floor in front of me. They didn’t move, didn’t cluck. They were almost like statues of chickens, living in nearly total darkness, and they would spend every minute of their six-week lives that way.

According to Graces, ever since Spencer's article, animal rights activists not been able to penetrate the dark and secretive world of broiler chicken factory farms. As Graces notes:

Most photos and video from factory farms come from undercover investigators who manage to get hired to work within the farm and then secretly gather images for an external organization.  This is next to impossible in a broiler factory farm.   There is hardly a ‘job’ involved in raising broilers in factory farms anymore. Often there are only one or two people, usually the farm owners, overseeing multiple houses, each house filled with tens of thousands of birds.

This article is essential reading because it sheds light on a world we so seldom see. Broiler hens live short lives full of despair, horror and anxiety. With states across America toughening Ag-Gag laws, and with laws such as the Orwellian-esque Animal Facilities Protection Act and the Federal Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act making it a felony (and act of terrorism) for a person to enter an "animal facility" (read: slaughterhouse, factory farm, fur farm, etc. etc.) under false pretenses, the Animal Murdering Machine has moved into high gear to prevent the public from seeing what happens inside of these ultra-violent charnel houses.

The way to combat such abuses is to increase our awareness, to bring these institutions out of the darkness, and to shed light on the horrors that exist within the walls. This is what Leah Graces has done, and she is to be commended.

Tragedy in Georgia

On January 13, there was another devastating factory farm fire, this one in Norman Park, Georgia. Death tolls vary, but most sources pin the death toll at approximately 12,100 chickens perishing in the horrible flames that swept through a facility owned by International Poultry Breeders. Most of the chickens who were burned alive were still young chicks. Firefighters believe the fire started due to a faulty heating system in the building.

These sorts of incidents have become far too common in factory farms. They generate puny headlines in newspapers (if at all), and the stories often focus on the challenges the farmers have to confront after losing so many animals, rather than the horrors experienced by these sentient beings in the last moments of their short and violent lives.

See what I mean in the following passage, from the report by local news station, WALB Channel 10:

Firefighters... say the deaths of the chicks is a substantial loss to the company, and the cost to build a replacement house is around $100,000. But they have full confidence they'll recover, despite the economic blow. International Poultry Breeders has five other chicken houses on the site.

The online source Claims Journal.com, a prominent website of the insurance industry in the United States, echoed the tone of WALB's coverage, only it placed the death toll at 17,000. As Claims Journal.com noted:

Rockingham County Fire and Rescue assistant fire marshal Mike Armstrong says most of the 4-week-old chickens died from smoke inhalation. Armstrong says the fire inside the steel-framed structure was mostly out when firefighters arrived.

And what of the 12,000 - or was it 17,000? - precious beings whose lives were cut short in the most excruciatingly painful way imaginable? Where are their obituaries? How will their truly fleeting drop from the egg to the inferno be remembered, if at all? Are they to be reduced to statistics? Figures in profit and loss statements? Who is going to remember their lives? Why did they have to be robbed of the opportunity to live their lives; to run outside on a warm spring day; get to know each other; to savour a pleasant Sunday with other chickens? Hell, we don't even know if 12,000 died, or 12,100 died, or 17,000 died. All three figures were used in the press coverage of the tragedy. Sadly, these figures have been reduced to meaningless number crunching. Stats. Miles to Pluto.

The time has come for us to stop viewing animals as commodities. It is this same mindset that has led to the construction of factory farms, which are nothing more than efficient mass-killing machines. Imagine how you would feel if these were your children who died the searing hot flames.

Morbid though it may seem, it is only by thinking in those terms that we are able to feel the sorrow of this event and develop a real, heartfelt empathy toward these chickens. For so long, I was one of these types who devoured chicken without even contemplating these matters. I can't bring back those lives I destroyed, and I'll regret that until the day I die. What I can do - what we can all do - is learn the truth about how horribly these chickens suffer. And we can vow that we will do everything we can to transform these "miles to Pluto" - 12,000, 12,100, 17,000 - into individual beings with a purpose and a life and dignity.

This is the key to achieving a more compassionate society, one that does not tolerate the mass murder of animals.

So Far, 2011 is Not Getting Off to a Promising Start...

For those of us who support animals and animal rights, 2011 has not gotten off to a very promising start.

First, there have been the numerous mystery animal deaths, which have defied any explanation. "Dead Birds Fall From the Sky in Italy," said a headline in the Huffington Post. The Discovery News website (affiliated with the Discovery Channel) echoed the Huffington Post: "'Aflockalypse' Hits California." Animals have been falling over dead or washing up on shores in huge numbers in Chicago and Arkansas, in Louisiana and Sweden, in England and Brazil.

Nobody really knows why it's happening. Some scientists have talked about changing magnetic fields. Others emphasize global warming. Toxins have been blamed in certain circles. And the born-again Christian actor Kirk Cameron insists that these mass deaths are the fault of "pagan mythology." (Source)

To make matters worse, the treatment of factory farm animals around the world continues to be deplorable. Just before Christmas, 1,000 pigs were burned alive in a fire in Rostock, Ontario. (Source) In Quebec this past weekend, 20,000 rabbits and 4,000 piglets perished in two separate factory farm fires. (Source) In Germany, large numbers of pigs and chickens were recently given contaminated feed that contained, among other things, dioxin. (Source) Across Europe, countless pigs and chickens have been slaughtered.

But the worst slaughter is going on in South Korea, where an astonishing one million pigs have been buried alive due to an epidemic of Foot-and-Mouth Disease that broke out in November. To quote one report from South Korea (Source):

The South Korean government has so far refused to vaccinate pigs against the disease and is now slaughtering them in record numbers despite appeals to stop. On January 4 in one area of Gangwon-Do, 33,900 pigs alone were destroyed, according to the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE).

It turns out that Foot-and-Mouth Disease does not infect human beings, even if they eat the meat of animals infected by the disease. The situation in South Korea has been nothing short of catastrophic, as the Straits Times reports:

Nationwide, more than 1.3 million pigs, cattle and other cloven-hoofed animals have been slaughtered or will soon be culled, the agriculture ministry said, as the outbreak showed no sign of abating.

The situation has been so horrific in South Korea that the government is providing therapy for workers who have been traumatized from having to slaughter so many poor, innocent animals. "We've heard reports of people suffering from insomnia, fearfulness, hallucinating sounds and a lack of appetite." (Source)

The horrors occurring in South Korea are unquestionably the most insane example of what happens when we turn animals - sentient beings with thoughts, feelings and emotions - into commodities, whose value is to be measured in profit and loss columns.

Those of us who love animals have a mission in 2011. Our goal is to fight for them. And I don't mean fight for "reforms" and "tinkering" - such as cameras in slaughterhouses or regulations that reduce animal pain in factory farms, or stricter laws that govern fur production. I mean we need to advocate for the total and immediate liberation of all animals, based on the fact that they are not ours to exploit, bury alive, place inside of highly flammable and unsafe factory farms, or murder for their meat or other parts.

Let 2011 be the year that animal liberation becomes a more mainstream goal. We may not be able to control the mystery animal deaths, but we can guarantee that animals are no longer exploited and slaughtered. Animals are not ours to use in any way. This is the message of a truly civilized society.

More reasons to go vegan...

If you can make it through this Animal Acres video without getting choked up, you're a stronger person than I am. It shows how animals are meant to live - in freedom, with fresh air and wide pastures and lots of trees - and it shows how so many of them end up living: Short, awful lives in the factory farm system and in other industries that manufacture animal products.

We can only hope the day will come when animals are no longer treated as commodities, as so many "things" that are factored into the bottom line of profit and loss statements of big businesses. Each one of these creatures, whether they're the tiny minority who end up at animal sanctuaries and spared from slaughter, or the ones who have their throats severed and the lifeblood drained out of their terrified, kicking bodies, is a precious creature that deserves to live a long, full life.

I will soon mark the one year anniversary of going vegan. Why did I go vegan? Because of animals like the ones in this video. They are beautiful. Each one is a poem. Each one is a living, breathing example of the sacredness and tenuousness of life. We humans have no right to kill them, perform tests on them, turn them into clothing, separate them from their loved ones, or eat their flesh or secretions or any other part of them.

I am not always convinced that the day will come when human beings wise up. But I am convinced that only the hard-hearted can look at a video like this one and not feel some sorrow, or flutterings of compassion, or perhaps even a sense of empathic rapport with the living, breathing, beautiful beings captured in these scenes.

Factory farms: Monstrously immoral institutions

For those who have any doubts about how monstrously immoral factory farms really are, I invite you to read the Erik Marcus's brilliant analysis on the Vegan. com. Marcus was prompted to write this analysis by reports from a North Carolina factory farm that a failure in the ventilation unit resulted in the deaths of 60,000 chickens. He also notes a similar equipment failure that took the lives of 3,800 pigs last year. Marcus refers to these gargantuan charnel houses very appropriately as "Factory Farm Ghost Ships."

A highlight from Marcus's column:

At issue is the fact that, by their very design, factory farms are intended to run on autopilot. Between water pumps, feed conveyors, ventilation fans, and so forth, everything is in place to keep tens of thousands of animals alive unattended for weeks or even months at a time. There’s often consequently no financial reason to keep a single employee on the premises, for the sake of guarding against something going catastrophically wrong. It makes no financial sense, since it’s cheaper to simply purchase insurance that would cover the cost of dead animals, in the event of a catastrophic equipment failure.

I am sick to death - absolutely sick to death - of reading about another factory farm that caught on fire (there have been so many that have burned down this year, I've lost track); or another factory farm where equipment failure led to thousands of deaths; or stories of trucks hauling factory farm animals to their deaths that overturn on freeways and the animals - already overcrowded in the backs of these trucks - are crushed to death or released onto the highways and hit by oncoming motorists. At the end of September, a transportation truck carrying 729 pigs across Ontario crashed (allegedly due to the driver going too fast) and 334 pigs were killed in the accident, another 30 were later euthanized. (Source.)

This is the factory farm system in a nutshell. Pack 'em in, get them on the assembly line, move them through the murdering process line as fast as possible and get 'em out to market.

But suppose these kinds of accidents never happened. Suppose there were no equipment failures, no instances of animals getting scalded alive, no overpacked trucks turning over on the freeway, no animals being kicked and punched and beaten, no tragic tales of suffering and agony. Suppose every factory farm endeavored to treat their animals well, made sure each one was comfortable, and adhered to all of the proper laws and procedures involved in what some might dub "humane slaughter." Suppose all of these things were the case and the factory farm system were as ideal as it could be.

Even if there were an iota of humanity in this system, which there isn't, it would still be an immoral system - profoundly immoral - because its very foundation is the murder of sentient beings whom we - as humans - have no right to imprison, exploit and destroy. Let's not lose sight of the fact that tinkering and reforming the system is not going to work. Dismantling it completely is the only solution.

People Making a Difference: Kudos to our British Brothers & Sisters!

Our brothers and sisters are fighting the good fight in England. They're well organized, passionate about their cause and their efforts are bearing wonderful fruit. They are an inspiration to other animal rights activists around the world. They are waging a battle against the factory farm system. And it appears they are winning great victories. We should take note of their efforts. These men and women are truly making a difference for the better.

The New Zealand Herald notes the latest developments:

Plans for three large-scale units in England have encountered fierce resistance from campaigners who say they would cause extra noise, smell and disruption and cause more stress and disease for animals.

Animal welfare organisations fear the proposals are signs that a new intensive system of agriculture could soon replace the UK's patchwork of small livestock farms.

In the past three months, plans have been brought forward for an 8,000-cow dairy farm at Nocton in Lincolnshire and a 3,000-cow unit at South Witham, also Lincolnshire. Both have been withdrawn following fierce opposition.

There is also growing opposition to a 2,500-pig sow farm located at Foston in Derbyshire. The Foston pig farm, according to the animal welfare group Viva, will be the largest intensive factory farming pig farm in the UK. Like all huge factory farm operations, the Foston farm will place pigs in dark, disorienting and cramped places, where they have barely enough room for their piglets.

But the struggle against factory farms in the UK has been a resounding success. And animal rights activists are keeping their marching shoes on to protest the future creation of such gargantuan enterprises. Groups like Viva, Compassion in World Farming and the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) are at the forefront of the struggle. Most of these activists do not want to eliminate farming. As Suzi Morris, the director of WSPA, put it:

It's all being driven by economies of scale. We have been importing a lot of milk and the UK dairy industry has been undermined and conventional dairy farmers have been going out of business. We believe that animals should be farmed for food but we don't agree there can be any justification, economic or otherwise, for the commoditisation of animals and their housing in such large units. (Source)

In an ideal world, everybody would go vegan. But it's not an ideal world. And farming is a key part of most economies. I am elated to see so many of these huge factory farm enterprises stopped dead in their tracks before even having a chance to take off. The UK activists are offering a model to the rest of the world on how to resist these giant farming enterprises.

Part of their success has been using populist arguments to their advantage - siding with the small farmer over the impersonal giant factory farm. It's working in the UK. Here in North America, where we have many factory farms and they are fairly well entrenched, that argument is a harder sell. But it is important, nonetheless, that we learn lessons from the struggle in the UK and take heart. Our side is making gains. Each day, animal rights activists have something good to show for their efforts. We're gaining traction. Our ends are noble. Our fight won't end until the life of every animal is respected.

Horror in Manitoba

In Manitoba, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) is investigating a horrifying case of "severe neglect" at a farm (pictured above) in Notre Dame de Lourdes (southwest of Winnipeg).

The scene was straight out of a horror film. The owner of the farm, Martin Grenier, left 2,700 pigs in a barn without feed, water or proper ventilation.

Five hundred pigs died. Authorities were forced to euthanize another 160. The remaining 2,000 were placed in the custody of the chief veterinarian.

Grenier had plenty of food and water to provide for the pigs. Apparently, he simply couldn't be bothered to take proper care of his animals.

Even by factory farm standards, this is ghastly treatment. What is to be done to Grenier? Historically, these sorts of horrific cases of animal abuse have gone unpunished. At the most, the abusers get a slap on the wrist. Rarely are they banned from owning animals in the future. Most of the time, the Martin Greniers of the world get away with it.

Twyla Francois, the wonderful head of Canadians for the Ethical Treatment of Food Animals, spoke out forcefully against the horrible treatment of these pigs. And farmers in the area are troubled by the terrible discovery on the Grenier farm. As a farmer who lives nearby put it, "We are all wondering how this could be? We don't even know how a person could ever think of doing that." (Source: See the Video of the Story here.)

The real test comes when authorities decide how to punish Grenier. Is he going to get away with it, as so many animal abusers have in the past? Or, for once in the long and sorry history of human mistreatment of animals, is the perpetrator going to receive an appropriate punishment?

We shall see.

(Thanks to Twyla Francois for bringing this to my attention.)

Yet Another Reason to Just Say No to Dairy

I am a veteran of watching these animal abuse videos, but even this one is hard to take. The video consists of hidden camera shots of workers in Conklin Dairy Farms in Plain City, Ohio, brutalizing the cows in the facility. The images are deeply troubling. Workers punch calves in the face and kick them in the head. Pitchforks are used to jab various parts of cows. Cows in too much pain to stand (from the savage beating they've endured at the hands of these thugs) are kicked repeatedly. Workers whack cows with crowbars, snap their tails, and they joke about their ability to beat the shit out of (and sometimes kill) innocent, defenseless calves.

Conditions in dairy facilities often leave a lot to be desired, but the ones in Conklin Dairy Farms are particularly brutal. Dr. Bernard Rollin, distinguished professor of animal science at Colorado State University, had a difficult time watching the video and was horrified by what he saw. "This is probably the most gratuitous, sadistic, sustained animal abuse I have ever seen," he said. "The video depicts calculated, deliberate cruelty based not on momentary rage but on taking pleasure through causing pain to cows and calves who are defenseless." (Source.)

Dairy is as brutal as meat. This video shows the day-to-day violence of the factory farm system at its most extreme. In all likelihood, the workers who abused the cows and calves at Conklin are family men - loving husbands and fathers - who aren't earning much money and walking the tightrope to make ends meet. My purpose here is not to dehumanize them. No, my purpose is to show how the factory farm system dehumanizes good people. And make no mistake: It is a system that asks us, the consumers, to look the other way at the shocking treatment of animals.

Even in dairy facilities where workers do not abuse the cows and calves, these poor animals live lives in cold, sterile and unnatural conditions. And when they can no longer give milk, they're not handed a gold watch and allowed to go off and enjoy the sun in some lovely pasture. They meet the same end as all animals in the factory farm system.

So it's not just a matter of ending the abuse at Conklin Dairy Farms in Ohio, although that's a good start. The real goal is to bring a halt to the factory farm system and recognize that we human beings do not have the right to do what we are doing to farm animals.

Going vegan - thereby reducing demand - is a good place to start.

Book Alert: David Kirby's Animal Factory

Journalist David Kirby has written a book about the factory farm system called Animal Factory: The Looming Threat of Industrial Pig, Dairy and Poultry Farms to Humans and the Environment. I haven't read the book yet, but you can pretty much tell from the subtitle that this is going to be a damning indictment of the factory farm system. Kirby gave an OUTSTANDING interview to Time magazine about his new book.

PLEASE READ THE TIME MAGAZINE INTERVIEW AND PASS IT ON TO OTHERS!

The factory farm system is one of the most profoundly obscene institutions on the planet earth. The sooner these massive killing machines are declared illegal and promptly dismantled, brick by brick, machine by machine, cage by cage, the better. These immoral industrial plants should have been done away with long ago. Animals housed in these barbaric places need to be liberated right now and each factory farm should be promptly destroyed. This is capitalism at its worst - the free market run horribly, horribly amok. These are America's killing fields. They are what pushed me into veganism and I can never go back to being an omnivore. Sometimes you can say never - and must. And I knew that as long as I consumed animal products, I was perpetuating one of the most ghastly forms of human barbarism that exists in the world today.

Until every cage is smashed open, until every animal is liberated, there will never be peace.

That isn't hyperbole. Read what David Kirby has to say about the factory farm system. In particular, I was haunted by the closing paragraph of his interview with Time magazine. I'll let Kirby have the last word (note: when he uses the acronym CAFO, it means Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation, a 50-cent term for "factory farm"):

One time I visited a pig farm, a regular farm — not a factory farm — in Illinois. Right across the street was a hog CAFO. The owner didn't live there, of course. There's no farm house on a factory farm, just business offices. At night, all the workers would leave, and all I'd hear as I was trying to fall asleep was the sound of the pigs fighting each other, biting each other, squealing, screeching all night long. It was like nothing I've ever heard before in my life, and it just didn't stop. It sounded like kids being tortured over there. I'll never forget that sound. It was very sad.

In Praise of Lynn Henning: An Activist Who Has Made a Huge Difference

Kudos to Lynn Henning (right), who received a well-deserved Goldman Environmental Prize in San Francisco earlier this week. The prize was named after prominent Bay Area philanthropists Richard N. Goldman and his late wife Rhoda, and they honor people who have made a difference in the fight to protect the environment.

Henning's struggle is also related to animal rights. She spent years working to expose the horrible pollution caused by factory farm companies in Michigan. As a result of her actions, factory farms were exposed for being the horrible polluters that they are, and the biggest offenders were slapped with hefty fines for water quality violations. In awarding her the prize, Goldman Prize officials noted that Henning helped steer attention to the "runoff of animal excrement" that creates a "'toxic brew' of bacteria, antibiotics, chemicals, and sometimes carcasses." (Source)

Henning's story is fascinating. She's actually a farmer herself. And she's a member of the Sierra Club and dedicated environmentalist. She owns a farm near Hudson, Michigan, about 70 miles southwest of Detroit. Using a combination of aerial photographs, water samples, and thorough research of relevant documents, she fought a one-person crusade against the factory farm system. In the process, she endured a barrage of lawsuit threats, anonymous warnings and dead animals thrown on her porch. But she kept the good fight going. "I'm a redneck from Michigan," she proudly proclaimed. When asked about the Goldman Prize, she said, simply, "I'm humbled." (Source)

Henning's efforts have helped discredit the factory farm system. And a blow to that system is a victory for animals. As the Detroit Free Press notes: "Michigan has more than 200 concentrated animal feeding operations or CAFO's, defined as those with more than 700 cows, 2,500 hogs or 10,000 poultry..... Giant farms near Henning's farm in Lenawee County have been cited for more than 1,000 violations in the past decade." The same article goes on to say, "The farms are home to 20,000 cows and produce as much waste as a city of 200,000 people."

Nowadays, more people are waking up to the fact that not only are factory farms giant killing machines, they're also terrible polluters. Henning is a living, breathing example of a person who cared enough to make a difference. People like her are invaluable in democratic societies - people who stick their necks out for their beliefs, regardless of the consequences. Exposing the factory farm system, as she has done, has brought their harmful practices to the attention of millions and embarrassed the bigwigs.

That Goldman Prize couldn't have gone to a more deserving recipient.

More Victims of the Immoral Factory Farm System

A follow-up to my recent post on animals dying in factory farm fires: The Washington Post reported earlier this month that 100 cows perished in a factory farm in Frederick, Maryland. There were 170 cows and calves in the barn and 70 were rescued. According to the local fire marshal, the barn was incredibly flammable due to the dry "hay, hay dust and grain" within.

A more recent blog entry on the Washington Post's "Crime Scene" blog indicated that 114 cows perished in the fire.

Any comment I make on this tragedy is just stating the obvious. Not only are factory farms dark and cold and frightening gulags for animals, but they're also deadly firetraps. Even in farms like this one, where the cows were apparently cared for well and it is a family-run operation, tinderbox conditions exist.

Even the best factory farms - run by conscientious people - are prisons for animals. We can only hope a great change will come.

More Slaves of the Factory Farm System

Plans are underway in England to construct a factory farm that will house approximately 8,100 cows. It is apparently known as a "Supersize" cattle factory. The cows will have next to no room to move around and will seldom enjoy any sunlight or fresh air. The facility will operate 24 hours and produce 430,000 pints of milk per day. The company, Nocton Dairies, has assured the public that the cows will get to go outside from time to time and that a veterinarian will be on staff full time to monitor their health. Adds spokesman Peter Wiles: "We will have a visitor centre to show the public around. We are aiming to have exceptional standards." I'm sure these cows, if given the vote, would agree with Linda Wardale, spokeswoman for the group Vegan Lincs, who said: "Cows should be in the field, nibbling on grass, but here they're going to keep them in sheds." (Source)

Nocton Dairies will commence operations in September. Sadly, this state-of-the-art facility is about as good as conditions get in the factory farm system. It is a new facility, shiny and clean, where the cows will probably not be physically abused (unlike a lot of dairy farms in North America). But make no mistake: These cows are still treated as enslaved property. Like all dairy cows, these thousands will be kept perpetually pregnant to give milk. And guess what happens to their babies?

This is yet another reminder of why this system ought to be abolished.

Got Milk? Better Question: Got the Stomach for the Truth?

Kudos to the ABC television show Nightline, which aired footage showing the terrible treatment of cows at Willet Dairy, one of the largest dairy operations in New York state. (See the full story here.) I'm proud of ABC for having the courage to air this video. Those who insist the media are not doing their jobs when it comes to animal rights are not entirely correct. Two years ago, CBS featured a similar muckraking report on the harsh treatment of cows in the factory farm system (see the story here).

Do yourself a favour: Follow the link on the ABC News story. Watch the video. It's incredibly hard hitting. And hard to watch.

And while you're at it, consider the facts:

• Most cows imprisoned in the factory farm system are never allowed outside. Instead, they're forced to stay in dark, cramped, cold spaces.
• Factory farm cows routinely have their tails docked without painkillers, so the tail won't get caught in milking machines
• Many of the factory farm workers abuse the cows by hitting them, pushing them, dragging calves across the ground, etc.

If anyone is still under the impression that consuming dairy is somehow more humane than eating meat, then watch the video below.

Cows, like all other factory farm animals, are not ours to abuse, use, exploit, enslave, drag around, kill, etc. Simply improving conditions and making sure the cows are more comfortable is not the solution. And passing laws or enacting regulations to protect the welfare of the cows will not address the deeper issue.

To solve the problem, we must go to the root. The solution is to recognize that all animals have inherent worth and dignity, and all of them deserve to live in freedom and happiness with their families. Animals must be liberated. They've been butchered, scalded, mutilated, mistreated and separated from their families long enough. Time to put an end to such barbarism.

Not tomorrow. Not next year. Not ten years from now.

Now. The factory farm system must go.

The Possibility of a Huge Breakthrough in Ohio...

The following alert was sent out from the wonderful folks at Farm Sanctuary in New York. It's fantastic news and has the potential to be a huge breakthrough in animal rights!

If you get a chance, please visit Farm Sanctuary's Website. These people are absolute saints.

Dear friend of farm animals,



For years, Farm Sanctuary has worked with dedicated members like you to help pass some of the most important reforms in the history of the farm animal protection movement. With you by our side, we helped ban gestation crates in Florida, gestation crates and veal crates in Arizona, and, for the first time in U.S. history, gestation crates, veal crates and battery cages with the recent landslide victory of Proposition 2 in California – the nation’s largest agricultural state.

Standing together with you, we continued to build on the momentum gained from these successes as anti-confinement legislation was enacted in more states across the U.S., including Oregon, Colorado, Maine, and Michigan. Now, we have our sights set on passing the most sweeping initiative yet in Ohio, and we need your support to make it happen.

Over the next five months, we will be working to collect 600,000 signatures in the Buckeye State for a ballot initiative that will:

End the use of cruel factory farm confinement systems for tens of thousands of veal calves, 170,000 breeding sows and roughly 27 million egg-laying hens who are denied even the ability to turn around or stretch their limbs.

Stop the slaughter of downed cattle for human consumption, and consequently bring an end to the practice of dragging, prodding, pushing, and beating these sick, weak or injured non-ambulatory animals to move them to slaughterhouse kill floors.

Ban the use of inhumane euthanasia practices that cause tremendous suffering for sick and injured animals prior to their deaths.

Never before has one ballot initiative proposed to do so much to end cruelty to farm animals. But the road ahead will not be easy. Factory farm interests will use every means available to them to maintain the status quo and continue engaging in these egregiously cruel practices. Ohio farm animals are counting on us to stop them, so we must win this fight!

Please find out what you can do now to help us with efforts on the ground. If you live elsewhere, please send this alert on our Ohio initiative to any friends, family and colleagues you have in the state and help us build the network and team we need for a successful campaign to pass this measure.

It is only through your support that we are able to create meaningful change and bring relief to suffering farm animals state by state. Thank you for your dedication and compassion. We look forward to making history with you once again!

Yours for farm animals,



Gene Baur


Co-Founder and President
Farm Sanctuary