Welcome to

The Cage Age

In 2018, scientists made it official: 60% of all mammals on the planet are farmed animals. And a staggering 70% of all birds on the planet are farmed for food.

And over 66% of them—about 50 billion—spend their entire lives in cages.

What are factory farms?

Factory farms are also known as “CAFOs” or Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations. In short, they are an industrial form of agriculture intended to produce the greatest number of animals, with the smallest investment in space, time, and money, for the most profit.

How are factory farms different from most farms?

Actually, most farms today are factory farms. And they’re not the bucolic settings from which people like to imagine their food comes. In truth, animals in factory farms never see the outdoors until they are packed into a truck for the slaughterhouse. Those images of happy cows and chickens on packages you buy? They’re just marketing—but that’s another article. Let’s get into it.

Why are factory farms considered inhumane?

Many people mistakenly believe that the United States has higher standards of animal welfare than most other countries for “livestock.” But that couldn’t be farther from the truth.

And so, with little oversight, and profit in mind, animals in factory farms are treated like products. They are crammed in so tightly they become sick and aggressive from stress. They can’t even engage in natural behaviors to soothe themselves, providing some relief in a life full of fear and pain. They may never experience the outdoors. No fresh air, no rolls in spring grass or mud, no pecking for grubs, no first snowfall of the year. No leaping and playing, no snuggling each other on a sunny fall day. Instead, they will spend their lives overcrowded in horrific conditions. Yet they still cannot even form strong social bonds as they would naturally. Mother cows and babies are separated within hours of birth. Pigs get 10 days to nurse before they’re impregnated again. Eggs are snatched and hatched in an incubator, rather than allowing a hen the joy of nesting and hatching her own eggs.

The air inside these sheds is toxic due to unsanitary living conditions. Workers should wear masks to avoid breathing it in, but don’t always do so. Illnesses spread quickly between animals in such extreme confinement. Medical care is often considered an unnecessary expense, so animals that fall sick may suffer or be killed. In one factory farm in Iowa, 3 million birds were killed because they were at risk for the avian flu.

The cages humans created for farmed animal species are too small. The overcrowding creates competition for food and space—and fresh air—and can result in aggression. To curb aggressive behavior, pigs have their teeth removed. Birds are debeaked. Horned animals have their horns removed. All of this, and more, is done without anesthesia.

Corporations adopted these emotionally and physically abusive practices with more regard for profit than any sort of welfare.

If you’d like to see and read about what goes on behind the shuttered doors of factory farms, click here. Some images, while not depicting direct violence, are nonetheless disturbing...and heartbreaking.

How do factory farms affect our environment?

Factory farms are incredibly detrimental to all aspects of the environment: air, water, land, and climate. Methane, hydrogen sulfide, ammonia, and nitrous oxide are all known pollutants that increase global warming. Factory farms release all of these into the air. At the same time, huge swaths of forest are cut to graze animals and to grow feed for them. These forests, such as the Amazon rainforest, would have helped combat global warming.

Lagoons have leaked into groundwater, leading to algal blooms, polluted groundwater, rivers, and ultimately, oceans. When a manure pit is full, its contents are sprayed—untreated—onto nearby fields as “fertilizer.” Manure has over 150 pathogens in it—including those that cause anthrax and tetanus.

This is to say nothing about the resources used. Almost 30% of the entire planet’s freshwater use goes towards animal agriculture. Half of all habitable land on the planet is used for farming, and 77% of that is being used to farm animals.

Is food from factory farms safe?

Bottom line? No. In another article, we describe why animal products, in general, are not good for your health. Meat and dairy from factory farms are the worst offenders. And if you’re okay with the way we raise livestock in this country, keep in mind that, as of September, the United States had imported 1,736,912 metric tons of animal meat from other countries in 2022.

Zoonotic diseases travel between animals—including humans. From the Spanish Flu, to AIDS, to Ebola, to COVID, to the Black Plague, some of the deadliest diseases the world has seen transmitted to humans from other animals. Due to how deeply humans have modified the genetics of farmed animals, their DNA is very similar. When thousands are crammed together in unclean conditions, a viral or bacterial illness can spread like wildfire. To survive, pathogens need to keep hosts alive until they find a new one. But when there are so many to choose from, as is the situation in a factory farm, they can move between hosts and mutate faster. They can infect more animals and humans. They can grow virulent.

At the same time, animals are preemptively medicated to withstand the foul conditions in which they must spend their entire lives. This allows strains of bacterial and viral illnesses to develop resistance to the antibiotics we’ve discovered, giving rise to the real possibility that if a meat-eater gets an infection, they may be defenseless to the source.

Currently, the avian flu is ravaging bird populations across the globe. So far in 2022, over 37 million farmed birds have been killed to contain the spread. It can be transmitted to humans from birds—and the mortality rate is 60%. However, the virus has not yet mutated to be transmittable between humans. There is scientific proof that consuming factory farmed animals puts the health of the entire world in danger. And the next zoonotic pandemic? It may just be resistant to our antibiotics.

How do factory farms exploit people?

Farmed animals aren’t designed to live long, but even still, must be medicated to survive their environments for their short lives. Under wooden slats, the fecal matter, urine, and decaying animals build up. Insects, rodents, bacteria, viruses, toxic pollutants, and dust from feathers and feces are just some of the very real risks workers face daily—for much longer than each batch of animals. Workers spend long hours, day after day, year after year in these sheds. They suffer lung, skin, and eye infections.

At the factory-style slaughterhouses where farmed animals end their lives, nothing stops “the line.” Tyson, Perdue, and other big brands were famously exposed for refusing workers bathroom breaks. Some reported that they chose to wear diapers, rather than ask for a break and risk their jobs. Slaughterhouse workers have a 50% chance of facing serious injury—as in the loss of body parts in machinery. It isn’t safe to lift and wrangle terrified animals that can bite, kick, and stomp in their panicked state. The work itself also cause long-term physical damage: In one processing plant alone, 62% of workers were found to have carpal tunnel syndrome from the repetitive actions they perform, sometimes up to 10 hour a day.

How can they get away with this? The incredibly profitable animal ag. industry has a history of preying on disenfranchised people—like immigrants, many of which are not authorized to legally work in the USA. It’s hard to complain about long hours, little pay, and unsafe working conditions when you’re afraid of being deported. In 2021, full-time workers at factory farms and their slaughterhouses made about $11.42 an hour. It’s no accident that such facilities tend to open in areas with few job opportunities.

Even workers that manage to escape to a better life aren’t safe. Read our article about PITS, a type of PTSD specific to these workers. You can Google many interviews with former animal ag. workers. Factory farming has no problem exploiting human animals as well as non-human animals. There is as little regard for humans as for non-human animals.

How is all this legal?

Not only is it legal, but it’s protected. Large-scale animal farming is very profitable—buy only for those running these conglomerates. Their wealth affords them power and political influence. Just how much becomes clear when you learn about a series of laws commonly referred to as “Ag Gag" laws.

In most industries, whistleblowers who report violations are praised. But the animal agriculture industry is so powerful, that several states have laws criminalizing the reporting of anything seen, heard, or recorded in factory farms. Other states have passed laws that require any abuses be reported within 24 to 48 hours. This makes it impossible to confirm a pattern of abuse, which is often necessary for prosecution.

Factory farming is the least sustainable system on the planet.

You can do your part for a better, kinder future by opting out of it.