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Factory farming is a disaster for animals, it is highly intensive, and the most amount of animals possible are crammed into the smallest space so as to maximize profit. The animals are treated as little more than worthless commodities. Life on the factory farm is painful, cruel and short. Animals are regularly covered in flies and blood, often giving birth into their own excretion. Disease and injury is common place, bedding is not. Dead animals are often left strewn among the living. Many suffer mental destruction due to their barren surroundings and from not being able to act upon their natural instincts

Cattle .

• Naturally would live for up to 20/25 years but are emaciated by 6 on the dairy farm. Many are slaughterer by 5 years old.
• Dairy cows are kept pregnant in order to keep them producing milk. (Eating lots of grass does not keep them lactating.)
• Calves are torn away from their mothers at around 2 days old. The mother will cry out for days for her lost baby. Female calves will be kept to replace the spent herd. Male calves will either be shot in the head or dispatched to the live export industry of the veal trade. They will be purposely diseased with anemia so their flesh appears pale.
• Dairy cows are forced to produce up to 60 litres of milk everyday. Six times more than is natural for them.
• 30% of the total UK milk yield comes from cows who are permanently confined and do not graze.
• Up to 1/3 of British cows suffer from foot and leg problems including laminitis.
• A further 1/3 will suffer from mastitis, a painful infection of the teat, causing them to swell and weep pus.
• Dairy cows and beef cows are artificially inseminated.
• Beef cows are usually bred with huge continental breeds to produce bigger calves and therefore bigger profits.
• Birthing the huge ‘beefy’ calves is extremely painful as natural the cow would not deliver a calf of such size.
• Male calves are often castrated with no anesthetic even though they will be sent to slaughter before they reach breeding age.

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Pigs

• Pigs are kept in barren sheds with no stimulation despite their highly intelligent and inquisitive nature.
• Breeding sows are forced to give birth in farrowing crates, which don’t allow room for turning around. This stops the sow from making proper contact and leaves mother and piglets extremely stressed.
• The stressed piglets often bite their mothers’ teats and each others tails. To prevent this, the piglets have their teeth removed, and the ends of their tails chopped off .
• The Stressed mother has nothing to do except chew the bars as she endures mental collapse.
• Naturally piglets would stay with their mothers for up to four months but are taken away at 3 weeks.
• Pigs are expected to live up to 15 years in domestic care (reportedly around 20-25 in the wild). On the farm most will be slaughtered at around 24 weeks old.
• When the breeding sow is spent at about 3 to 4 years old she will be slaughtered and end up in low grade products like pork pies.

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Sheep

• Britain produces more sheep than consumers want and the result is many are sold as live exports, sent on long journeys of up to 30 hours with no food or water.
• Ewes are fed special diets to make them produce twins and triplets when they would naturally only have a single lamb. This puts the ewe’s body under great demands.
• Up to 15% of lambs born every year will die within days from malnutrition, exposure and disease.
• Some farmers have now taken to shearing their sheep in winter; the sheep eat more when they are cold in order to survive, thus producing more meat on the carcass and bigger profits for farmers.
• Many sheep suffer from foot rot when kept in over the winter months. Urine and excretion underfoot is the cause and the infection is frequently passed amongst each other

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Chickens

• 5 hens are crammed into each cage on the battery farm. They can barely move or stretch their wings.
• Stressed hens are often debeaked, in a very painful process to stop them from stress-pecking each other and causing injury.
• There is constant lighting and protein rich food designed to force the hens to continually lay eggs, day after day after day. Their ancestors would lay only 20 a year.
• Some eggs are hatched to replace the dying flock. Male chicks. Too scrawny for meat are killed at just one day old, often crushed or gassed to death. There have also been reports of male chicks being sold to laboratories for vivisection experiments.
• Laying hens are slaughtered around 1-2 years old when they would naturally live for about 15 years. They will be made into low grade food like soups, pies and baby food.
• Broiler chickens (chickens bred for meat, not eggs) spend their lives in windowless sheds.
• Broilers are slaughtered whilst they are still chicks; selective breeding and diet have altered their natural body shape, so they actually appear the size of adults.
• Many cannot support their own body weight and suffer with crippling leg problems.
• Many die from not being able to walk to food or water and many from disease which is rife among such large numbers of 30,000 or more in one shed.
• Most suffer stress from the constant low level lighting which stops them from having a proper night period. Lighting is believed to encourage food intake. Dim lighting discourages any unnecessary activity and movement, thus increasing the meat yield and profits.
• Broilers are debeaked for the same reasons as laying hens.
• Their bedding is not changed for the whole of their lives; the result is painful foot rot and skin diseases.
• Millions of broilers die each year on the factory farm from heart attacks, fatty livers and kidneys, and blood poisoning.