Factory farming is a broken system: torturing animals, destroying the planet and putting our lives at risk.

Despite this, it remains the dominant system for producing meat, dairy, and eggs. In the USA, 99% of the meat we eat is factory farmed;¹ while in the UK roughly 73 - 85% of farmed animals live in factory farms.²

In this series, we explore the many harms of factory farming and some of the ways that we can, together, make farming kinder to people, the planet and animals.

In the first two articles, we explored the little-known impacts of factory farming on people and the planet. In this third article, we look at some of the ways that animals suffer in factory farms and what we can do about it.

Pigs: Smart and Loving, Yet Tormented

Pigs are amazing animals. They have individual personalities and a level of intelligence similar to dogs, making them some of the smartest animals alongside dolphins and elephants. They form strong bonds with humans, like Lulu the pet pig who saved her owner’s life.

In studies, we’ve found that pigs can use tools like sticks to dig and can even teach these skills to their piglets.³ Pigs recognize themselves in mirrors and use the reflections to solve puzzles.⁴

But there is overwhelming scientific consensus that pigs can feel pain, as well as more complicated emotions like fear.⁵ Chillingly, surveys of abattoir workers show that they agree,⁶ giving a horrifying insight into what life and death in the slaughterhouse must be like for workers and animals.

Pigs also suffer terribly in factory farms. Mother pigs are stuck in tiny crates where they can barely move, let alone care for their babies.⁷ To stop pigs from biting their own tails in crowded spaces, piglets have their tails cut off without any pain relief.⁸ Also, piglets are taken away from their mothers at just three weeks old, causing great distress for both⁹ With 1.5 billion pigs slaughtered each year, the scale of their suffering is immense.¹⁰

Chickens: Talkative and Clever, Yet Cramped and Mutilated

We often think of chickens as a bit simple, but they're far smarter and more complex than we think. They even have a devious side (as Mrs Tweedy will attest), roosters sometimes trick hens by pretending there’s food to get their attention.¹¹

Chickens are social birds with 20 different sounds to communicate, from greetings to warnings about predators.¹² They also form strong bonds with humans and with one another and can remember the faces of large numbers of their flock mates¹³ and even the faces of their owners¹⁴.

Despite their smarts, chickens suffer in factory farms. Their beaks are often cut to stop them from pecking each other in overcrowded spaces,¹⁵ which is very painful.¹⁶ Chickens raised for meat have been genetically manipulated to grow so fast their legs can’t support them, causing pain and fractures.¹⁷ Egg-laying hens are kept in cages so small they can’t even spread their wings.¹⁸ Male chicks, considered ‘useless’ by the egg industry because they don’t lay eggs and aren’t suitable for chicken-meat production, are killed as soon as possible, often blended alive in a high-speed grinder and then sold as fertilizer or food for other animals.¹⁹ Sadly, culling of male chicks occurs on factory farms and free range farms alike. These practices lead to suffering on an unimaginable scale, with 75 billion chickens slaughtered each year.²⁰

Cows: Playful and Friendly, Yet Mutilated and Exported

Cows love to play and chase each other,²¹ and some even play fetch with humans. They form close friendships and get anxious when separated.²² They groom each other to build and maintain these bonds, which helps them feel calm.²³

But in addition to being capable of complicated positive emotions, cows can also feel pain.²⁴ In factory farms, cows endure painful procedures like dehorning and castration without enough pain relief.²⁵ Dehorning involves using hot irons, causing severe burns. Male cows are castrated to make them more manageable and improve meat quality.²⁶ Additionally, cows are often shipped overseas in harsh conditions, facing extreme heat, starvation, and filth.²⁷ Cows are also capable of emotional distress, and on factory farms, where baby calves are separated from their mothers just hours after birth, the distress starts straight away.²⁸ Over 300 million cows are slaughtered for meat each year,²⁹ with another 260 million kept for dairy production.³⁰

Fish: Diverse and Social, Yet Suffocated and Diseased

Fish come in an incredible variety, with over 32,000 species.³¹ Many are social creatures, willing to endure electric shocks to stay close to their friends.³² Some fish even team up with other species to hunt, like groupers and moray eels working together.³³

Despite this, fish suffer³⁴ greatly in farms. They’re often killed by being left to suffocate in air or ice slurry, which is slow and painful.³⁵ Fish farmed in sea cages suffer from sea lice that eat their skin and eyes, causing many deaths.³⁶ Poor water quality in crowded ponds leaves fish struggling to breath, in constant stress and poor health.³⁷ About 124 billion fish are farmed and killed each year.³⁸

Shrimp: Colorful and Symbiotic, Yet Abused and Infected

Shrimp are fascinating creatures with at least 3,000 different species.³⁹ For example, pistol shrimp create a sound so loud by snapping their claws that the shockwave stuns their prey.⁴⁰ It is one of the loudest sounds in the ocean. Others, like alpheid shrimp, team up with goby fish for protection and food.⁴¹ Given these sophisticated behaviors, it’s unsurprising that they are capable of feeling pain as well.⁴²

In farms, shrimp endure cruel practices like the crushing or cutting off of their eyestalks, to make them mature faster so that they will reproduce earlier.⁴³ Crowded conditions and poor water quality cause suffocation, poisoning and diseases that kill up to 40% of farmed shrimp each year.⁴⁴

About 440 billion shrimp are farmed and slaughtered annually.⁴⁵

Farming is broken, let’s fix it

Factory farming inflicts unimaginable suffering on animals every year.Factory farming is so cruel because mega companies put profits above the suffering of animals and governments refuse to protect these animals from the kind of cruelty that would be illegal if the same animal was kept as a pet.

But we can change this.

Organizations in the USA and around the world, like The Humane League and Sinergia Animal, are putting pressure on corporations like grocery stores and restaurants to stop buying from producers using the worst practices (like the solitary confinement of sow stalls for pigs and battery cages for egg-laying hens).

Collectively these organizations have convinced more than 300+ US companies to phase out the cruelest farming practices for egg-laying hens and 140+ to phase out the worst practices for chickens raised for meat. These companies and brands include household names like Walmart. PepsiCo, KFC, Aldi, Walgreens, Burger King, Dunkin’, HelloFresh, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Kellog’s, CVS, Hershey, Oreo, and Unilever. This has cut the proportion of laying hens confined in cages in the US from 40% to almost 5% over the past decade.⁴⁶ Internationally, the Open Wing Alliance (a global network of organizations which they launched and still lead) has achieved 2400+ corporate commitments to better welfare in 70+ countries across six continents.

By supporting these organizations in their work, through volunteering, signing petitions and donating via FarmKind, we can make farming kinder for animals and start to put an end to this mass suffering industry.