Factory Farming 411
Factory farming has thrived for decades for one simple reason: they have done an excellent job at hiding the realities from consumers… until now. Factory farming is the LEADING CAUSE of pollution, animal cruelty, and our poor diet. It is compromising our ecosystem by contributing to pollution and climate change, wasting our environment’s resources, deteriorating our nation’s health, and causing unimaginable pain and suffering to millions of animals.
Knowledge is the single greatest threat to factory farming.
So that’s why we have created this page; we are committed to helping spread the word and giving a percentage of our profits to groups who are effecting change.
“We know, at least, that this decision (ending factory farming) will help prevent deforestation, curb global warming, reduce pollution, save oil reserves, lessen the burden on rural America, decrease human rights abuses, improve public health, and help eliminate the most systematic animal abuse in history.”
What is factory farming?
Factory farming is a far cry from popular barnyard images of frolicking pigs, grazing cows, and roaming chickens; it is an empire built around treating animals like machines in a factory (hence the name), where they are engineered to squeeze out every last ounce of milk, meat, and eggs they can possibly offer. Factory farming has no regard for animal life, our environment, and our health, causing a record amount of destruction, cruelty, waste, and pollution.
Does it even make sense?
The reality is, factory farms use more food than they produce, which leaves less food for everyone else. At a time when globally, nearly 1 billion people are suffering from malnutrition, 1/3 of the world’s edible cereal harvest is being fed to animals. Animals are fed about 13 lbs of plant protein to produce 1 lb of animal protein. The numbers just don’t add up.
“[Factory farming] is inefficient, unhealthy and unsustainable, and costs our nation hundreds of billions of dollars every year.”
The REAL cost of factory farming. So it’s obvious how we ended up here. Big agri-businesses figured out how to make meat products cheaper, but there’s a still a huge cost: to your health, to the animal’s quality of life, and to the environment.
The Cost to Your Health:
The average American eats about 3 hamburgers per week, leading to our nation’s failing health and in particular, obesity, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, an even some cancer. One research group figured that the hidden costs of water, pollution, and health expenses is about $1.51 for every burger, multiplied by the 48 billion burgers American eat annually and that’s a whopping $72 billion. Not to mention the increasingly poor quality of the meat—In an attempt to battle the poor living conditions, factory farm animals are pumped high with antibiotics, leading to super-strains of disease-causing bacteria. That’s a high price to pay for your meat.
“When we overcrowd thousands of animals into cramped filthy football-field sized sheds to lie beak-to-beak, or snout-to-snout atop their own waste it can present a breeding ground for disease, a perfect storm environment for the emergence of new strains of influenza and other animal-to-human diseases. These so-called factory farms are a public health menace.”
The Cost to the Animal’s Quality of Life:
Cheaper means crueler and factory farming is the No. 1 source of animal cruelty today. As a society, we have failed in our basic ethical duty towards animals and all living creatures. Millions of pigs, cows, and chickens are living in abhorrent conditions—crammed into boxes so small they can’t even turn around, de-beaked, tails snipped off and teeth torn out while fully conscious, denied sunshine and air, screaming in pain and living in filth—before being shipped to the slaughterhouse where an excruciating and inhumane death awaits.
The Cost to the Environment: According to the UN, raising animals for food contributes more to climate change than all the world’s planes, trains, and automobiles combined. Valuable cropland is cleared to make way for raising livestock. Not to mention factory farming’s contributing to water pollution, species extinction, and every other major environmental threat.
Don’t despair! Consumer choice is driving change.
How do we want our time on this planet to be remembered?
Do we want to be remembered as cruel or kind? Selfish or selfless? Merciless or merciful?
This is our time on this planet. Let’s create history.
THREE SMALL THINGS THAT WILL MAKE A HUGE DIFFERENCE:
Here are three things you can do – today – that will take a BITE out of factory farming:
- Watch the seminal video TheMeatrix. It’s the best video on the topic ever, done in a cleverly animated format.
- Buy humanely treated meat from small producers if you aren’t ready to go veg.
- Tell your friends about this page, and about this website. You see, at JenBTV.com we are committed to giving a percentage of our earnings to groups that fight factory farming. After working directly with these groups and understanding how they spend their time and money, we can strongly recommend the following nonprofits:
We encourage you to explore the above links to learn more.
Knowledge is the single greatest threat to factory farming.
Spread the word.
