Animal Farm Chickens Quotes

Do you eat chicken because you are familiar with the scientific literature on them and have decided that their suffering doesn't matter, or do you do it because it tastes good?

As far as food is concerned, the great extravagance is not caviar or truffles, but beef, pork and poultry. Some 38 percent of the world's grain crop is now fed to animals, as well as large quantities of soybeans. There are three times as many domestic animals on this planet as there are human beings. The combined weight of the world's 1.28 billion cattle alone exceeds that of the human population. While we look darkly at the number of babies being born in poorer parts of the world, we ignore the over-population of farm animals, to which we ourselves contribute...[t]hat, however, is only part of the damage done by the animals we deliberately breed. The energy intensive factory farming methods of the industrialised nations are responsible for the consumption of huge amounts of fossil fuels. Chemical fertilizers, used to grow the feed crops for cattle in feedlots and pigs and chickens kept indoors in sheds, produce nitrous oxide, another greenhouse gas. Then there is the loss of forests. Everywhere, forest-dwellers, both human and non-human, can be pushed out. Since 1960, 25 percent of the forests of Central America have been cleared for cattle. Once cleared, the poor soils will support grazing for a few years; then the graziers must move on. Shrub takes over the abandoned pasture, but the forest does not return. When the forests are cleared so the cattle can graze, billions of tons of carbon dioxide are released into the atmosphere. Finally, the world's cattle are thought to produce about 20 percent of the methane released into the atmosphere, and methane traps twenty-five times as much heat from the sun as carbon dioxide. Factory farm manure also produces methane because, unlike manured dropped naturally in the fields, it dies not decompose in the presence of oxygen. All of this amounts to a compelling reason...for a plant based diet.

I am a battery hen. I live in a cage so small I cannot stretch my wings. I am forced to stand night and day on a sloping wire mesh floor that painfully cuts into my feet. The cage walls tear my feathers, forming blood blisters that never heal. The air is so full of ammonia that my lungs hurt and my eyes burn and I think I am going blind. As soon as I was born, a man grabbed me and sheared off part of my beak with a hot iron, and my little brothers were thrown into trash bags as useless alive. My mind is alert and my body is sensitive and I should have been richly feathered. In nature or even a farmyard I would have had sociable, cleansing dust baths with my flock mates, a need so strong that I perform 'vacuum' dust bathing on the wire floor of my cage. Free, I would have ranged my ancestral jungles and fields with my mates, devouring plants, earthworms, and insects from sunrise to dusk. I would have exercised my body and expressed my nature, and I would have given, and received, pleasure as a whole being. I am only a year old, but I am already a 'spent hen.' Humans, I wish I were dead, and soon I will be dead. Look for pieces of my wounded flesh wherever chicken pies and soups are sold.

Scientific studies and government records suggest that virtually all (upwards of 95 percent of) chickens become infected with E. coli (an indicator of fecal contamination) and between 39 and 75 percent of chickens in retail stores are still infected. Around 8 percent of birds become infected with salmonella (down from several years ago, when at least one in four birds was infected, which still occurs on some farms). Seventy to 90 percent are infected with another potentially deadly pathogen, campylobacter. Chlorine baths are commonly used to remove slime, odor, and bacteria. Of course, consumers might notice that their chickens don't taste quite right - how good could a drug-stuffed, disease-ridden, shit-contaminated animal possibly taste? - but the birds will be injected (or otherwise pumped up) with "broths" and salty solutions to give them what we have come to think of as the chicken look, smell, and taste. (A recent study by Consumer Reports found that chicken and turkey products, many labeled as natural, "ballooned with 10 to 30 percent of their weight as broth, flavoring, or water.

Animal agriculture is now dominated by the factory farm- 99.9% of chickens raised for meat, 97% of laying hens, 99% of turkeys, 95% of pigs, and 78% of cattle.

The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) calculated 24.6 million pounds of antibiotics were fed to chickens, pigs, and other farmed animals, only counting nontherapeutic uses.

The reality is that if we took the legally sanctioned practices from the animal farming industries and then applied them to other situations, we would think those practices horrendous. For example, if dog owners were cutting off their pets' tails and chopping their teeth out, we would condemn that as being horrific animal abuse. But we do it to pigs and call it high welfare. If someone was killing puppies by thumping their heads against a wall or dislocating their necks, we would call that evil, yet that happens to animals such as piglets and chickens and we call it humane. But the experience is the same for the individual animal, regardless of what species they are.

Many people who think nothing of buying factory-farmed ham or chicken from a supermarket are quick to condemn hunting; yet hunting is more defensible than factory farming.

[from an entry by her daughter Camille] ...research published fifteen years ago in the New England Journal of Medicine: eggs from chickens that ranged freely on grass have about half the cholesterol of factory-farmed eggs, and it's mostly HDL, the cholesterol that's good for you. They also have more vitamin E, beta-carotene and omega-3 fatty acids than their cooped-up counterparts.

An old tradition holds that at the Last Judgment, the non-human creatures of the earth will be called by God to "give evidence" against each human being. The idea pops up in books and stories about the Creation, deemed a myth, but a persistent, imposing, even haunting one: We will be judged by the very creatures so dependent on us. So I treat, and will continue to treat, my animals - the dogs, cats, sheep, donkeys, chickens, and cows - with that in mind. They will give evidence. What would I want them to say?

And the nature of UPF means that the manufacturing process typically cannot allow for concern for the environment or high standards of animal care. It encourages excess consumption of food and necessarily diminishes our knowledge about its origins. If you buy fresh beef or chicken, it will often say on the pack grass-fed’ or ‘corn-fed’. People often want to know which farm it came from. But very few people ask about what the chicken in their prepacked UPF sandwich was fed on, although this is, it turns out, an important question to ask.

We drove out of New Paltz heading due north. Squeezed into my tiny hatchback, among our boxes and bags, were my dog, Nico, the hens, and the humming hive of bees, its openings covered over with tape. The dog eyed the hive, the chickens eyed the dog, and if the bees weren't nervous they were the only ones.

What’s really strange is that memory works the same way: by area-restricted search. If I ask you to list all the animals you can think of, you are likely to begin with the category of “pets” and list cats, dogs, goldfish, parakeets. Once you run out of items in that category, you’ll move on (like the pigeon who can find no more crumbs) to another category: farm animals such as cows, chickens, pigs, goats, and horses.

We’ve created mass production at low prices, a system that operates under duress. There are stressed-out pigs who can’t mate, who bite one another’s tails because they’re so confined, or who are so heavy their legs can no longer support their bodies; turkeys who can’t reproduce naturally; chickens who have to be debeaked because they peck at each other in densely packed cages; roosters bred for growth who’ve become so aggressive that they injure or kill their mates; and cows who eat other cows as part of their feed and go mad. All of this is presided over by stressed-out farmers, many of whom have come to accept the industry’s bigger-is-better mantra, though it’s clearly unsustainable for them and the earth. In the process they have become almost as trapped as the animals they “farm.” Farmers, industry, and consumers have created a treadmill that runs ever more rapidly, fueled by all kinds of suffering animals—including us. It’s a system that only takes and doesn’t give back; it extracts and doesn’t replenish, until the creatures and the earth that sustain its existence have nothing more to give.

I needed to talk to Vargina, to straighten this out, but felt suddenly faint, headed for the deli across the street. Just standing in the vicinity of comfort food was comfort. The schizophrenic glee with which you cold load your plastic shell with spinach salad, pork fried rice, turkey with cranberry, chicken with pesto, curried yams, clams casino, breadsticks, and yogurt, pay for it by the pound, this farm feed for human animals in black chinos and pleated chinos, animals whose enclosure included the entire island of Manhattan, this sensation I treasured deeply.

No set of numbers can tell the whole story, but when it comes to the annual slaughter of farmed animals, the numbers have such an oppressive weight that they can easily overwhelm the stories behind them: 69 billion chickens, 1.5 billion pigs, 656 million turkeys, 574 million sheep, 479 million goats and 302 million cows. In total, 72.5 billion farmed animals were killed for human consumption in 2018. Ten times the global human population, slaughtered every year. Nor does this number include the ducks, rabbits, horses, geese, kangaroos, bison and other land animals killed so that we can eat their meat, And what about the fishes?

Other evidence suggests that the 1918 virus might have mutated within pigs (which are uniquely susceptible to both human and bird viruses) or even in human populations for a time before reaching the deadly virtuosity of its final version. We cannot be sure. What we can be sure of is that there is scientific consensus that new viruses, which move between farmed animals and humans, will be a major global health threat into the foreseeable future. The concern is not only bird flu or swine flu or whatever-comes-next, but the entire class of “zoonotic” (animal-to-human or vice versa) pathogens — especially viruses that move between humans, chickens, turkeys, and pigs.

A farmer, as one of his farmer correspondents once wrote to Liberty Hyde Bailey, is “a dispenser of the ‘Mysteries of God.’” The mothering instinct of animals, for example, is a mystery that husbandry must use and trust mostly without understanding. The husband, unlike the “manager” or the would-be objective scientist, belongs inherently to the complexity and the mystery that is to be husbanded, and so the husbanding mind is both careful and humble. Husbandry originates precautionary sayings like “Don’t put all your eggs into one basket” and “Don’t count your chickens before they hatch.” It does not boast of technological feats that will “feed the world.” Husbandry,

When you see that you're making other things feel good, it gives you a good feeling, too. The feeling inside sort of just happens, and you can't say this did it or that did it. It's the many little things. It doesn't seem that taking sweat-soaked harnesses off tired, hot horses would be something that would make you notice. Opening a barn door for the sheep standing out in a cold rain, or throwing a few grains of corn to the chickens are small things, but these little things begin to add up in you, and you can begin to understand that you're important. You may not be real important like people who do great things that you read about in the newspaper, but you begin to feel that you're important to all the life around you. Nobody else knows or cares too much about what you do, but if you get a good feeling inside about what you do, then it doesn't matter if nobody else knows. I do think about myself a lot when I'm alone way back on the place bringing in the cows or sitting on a mowing machine all day. But when I start thinking about how our animals and crops and fields and woods and gardens sort of all fit together, I then get that good feeling inside and don't worry much about what will happen to me.

The sex trade is also flourishing under the patriarchal objectification of women, paid for by men who are willing and able to own or rent a girl (or sometimes a woman) for sex. Those who are exploited are comparatively powerless, and cannot refuse sexual advances or deny the wishes of those who pay (someone else) for their services. In these situations and many others, men own and control the bodies of women as they own and control the bodies of sows and cows and hens. Sexual exploitation of human females for the benefit of males is mirrored in contemporary animal industries. Men who control animal industries exploit females for their reproductive abilities as if nonhuman animals were objects devoid of will and sensation. Sows are treated as if they were bacon factories and cows are treated as if they were milk machines. Sows, cows, hens, turkeys, and horses are artificially inseminated to bring profits to the men who control their bodies and their lives. Women in the sex trade are similar to factory farmed females . . . . Even comparatively privileged women in relatively fortunate marriages can readily be likened to sows and cows. . . . The reproductive abilities of women and other female animals are controlled and exploited by those in power (usually men) and both are devalued as they age and wear out—when they no longer reproduce. Cows, hens, and women are routinely treated as if they were objects to be manipulated in order to satisfy the desires of powerful men, without regard to female's wishes or feelings.

When I was first called as a General Authority, we lived on a very small plot of ground in Utah Valley that we called our farm. We had a cow and a horse and chickens and lots of children. One Saturday, I was to drive to the airport for a flight to a stake conference in California. But the cow was expecting a calf and in trouble. The calf was born, but the cow could not get up. We called the veterinarian, who soon came. He said the cow had swallowed a wire and would not live through the day. I copied the telephone number of the animal by-products company so my wife could call them to come and get the cow as soon as she died. Before I left, we had our family prayer. Our little boy said our prayer. After he had asked Heavenly Father to “bless Daddy in his travels and bless us all,” he then started an earnest plea. He said, “Heavenly Father, please bless Bossy cow so that she will get to be all right.” In California, I told of the incident and said, “He must learn that we do not get everything we pray for just that easily.” There was a lesson to be learned, but it was I who learned it, not my son. When I returned Sunday night, Bossy had “got to be all right.” This process is not reserved for the prophets alone. The gift of the Holy Ghost operates equally with men, women, and even little children. It is within this wondrous gift and power that the spiritual remedy to any problem can be found. “And now, he imparteth his word by angels unto men, yea, not only men but women also. Now this is not all; little children do have words given unto them many times, which confound the wise and the learned” (Alma 32:23).

propose that we consider our farmers on a spectrum, let’s say, of agrarianism. On one end of the spectrum we have farmers like James, interested in producing the finest foodstuffs that they can, given the soil, the climate, the water, the budget, and their talent. They observe how efficacious or not their efforts are proving, and they adapt accordingly. Variety is one of the keys to this technique, eschewing the corporate monocultures for a revolving set of plants and animals, again, to mimic what was already happening on the land before we showed up with our earth-shaving machinery. It’s tough as hell, and in many cases impossible, to farm this way and earn enough profit to keep your bills paid and your family fed, but these farmers do exist. On the other end of the spectrum is full-speed-ahead robo-farming, in which the farmer is following the instructions of the corporation to produce not food but commodities in such a way that the corporation sits poised to make the maximum financial profit. Now, this is the part that has always fascinated me about us as a population: This kind of farmer is doing all they can to make their factory quota for the company, of grain, or meat, or what have you, despite their soil, climate, water, budget, or talent. It only stands to reason that this methodology is the very definition of unsustainable. Clearly, this is an oversimplification of an issue that requires as much of my refrain (nuance!) as any other human endeavor, but the broad strokes are hard to refute. The first farmer is doing their best to work with nature. The second farmer is doing their best despite nature. In order for the second farmer to prosper, they must defeat nature. A great example of this is the factory farming of beef/pork/chicken/eggs/turkey/salmon/etc. The manufacturers of these products have done everything they can to take the process out of nature entirely and hide it in a shed, where every step of the production has been engineered to make a profit; to excel at quantity. I know you’re a little bit ahead of me here, but I’ll go ahead and ask the obvious question: What of quality? If you’re willing to degrade these many lives with impunity—the lives of the animals themselves, the workers “growing” them, the neighbors having to suffer the voluminous poisons being pumped into the ecosystem/watershed, and the humans consuming your products—then what are you about? Can that even be considered farming? Again, I’m asking this of us. Of you and me, because what I have just described is the way a lot of our food is produced right now, in the system that we all support with our dollars. How did we get here, in both the US and the UK? How can we change our national stance toward agriculture to accommodate more middle-size farmers and less factory farms? How would Aldo Leopold feel about it?

Meat from grass-fed and pasture-raised animals tends to be more nutrient-dense than conventional meat. Although the exact nutrient content will vary from species to species and from farm to farm (and by time of year and the quality of supplemental feed, if any), grass-fed and pasture-raised meat tends to be higher (sometimes much higher) in many minerals and vitamins while also having a better omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acid ratio. For example, grass-fed beef contains up to ten times more beta-carotene (a carotenoid—that is, an antioxidant and precursor of vitamin A; see here) as grain-fed beef and up to four times more vitamin E (see here). Grass-fed beef is also higher in B vitamins, zinc, iron, phosphorus, and potassium. And because pasture-raised animals hang out in the sun, their fat is a source of vitamin D (which is practically nonexistent in factory-farmed animals). Free-range chickens also have more vitamin E content and iron than conventional chickens. Grass-fed and pasture-raised meat tends to have a much lower water content than conventional meat and is much leaner overall (which means it has more protein!). Plus, its fats are much healthier. Grass-fed meat contains approximately four times more omega-3 fatty acids (in the very useful DHA and EPA forms; see here) as compared with grain-fed meat. It also contains far fewer omega-6 fatty acids, so the ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids in grass-fed meat is typically within the optimal range at 3:1 (but can be as low as 4:1 and as high as 20:1 in grain-fed meat, varying by the exact diet of the cow but also the cut of meat). Meat (and dairy) from grass-fed cows is the best-known source of conjugated linoleic acid (CLA; see here). Grass-fed and pasture-raised meat also tends to be higher in oleic acid (see here). What About Bacon?

Of all the animals raised for food, broiler chickens, layer hens, and pigs are kept in the worst conditions by a considerable margin. The only quantitative estimates of farmed animal welfare I’ve been able to find come from Bailey Norwood, an economist and agricultural expert. He rated the welfare of different animals on a scale of –10 to 10, where negative numbers indicate that it would be better, from the animal’s perspective, to be dead rather than alive. He rates beef cattle at 6 and dairy cows at 4. In contrast his average rating for broiler chickens is –1, and for pigs and caged hens is –5. In other words, cows raised for food live better lives than chicken, hens, or pigs, which suffer terribly.

Children should have as much exposure as possible to animals. In all animals, including domestic, farm, and wild, are entire curricula. There are biology, sociology, genetics, economics, history, cultures, communication, language, hierarchies, governance, relationships sweeping story arcs, morality, even nutrition, just to name a few. Animals are the perfect microcosms. They are life. But it doesn’t count if the animals are just images or characters in a book. A poster of a kitten clinging to a branch with the words “Hang in there!” doesn’t count either. There is no greater example of the “flattening of content” that classes achieve than a “unit study” that examines, even purports to love, animals but does not actually engage any on a regular basis. Worse still, the more removed a culture is from animals, the more stylized and inaccurately the animals are inevitably represented. Tribes in Africa portray hippos as the deadly, fierce creatures they are. By the time most schoolchildren see them in the United States, they have morphed into “Mr. Hippo gets in his car to drive to work,” complete with his bright pink skin and marshmallow-shaped teeth. Dogs and cats, chickens and cows, songbirds and frogs are all there, waiting to be engaged. They have so much to teach us that any attempt to segregate environments of learning from them should never be accepted. In

Dashing by Maisie Aletha Smikle On my farm I keep a firearm The deer I charm And then disarm To feed my family venison And stay away from medicine Sheep so sweet We love to eat Young lambs we chop To get lamb chops Pigs in wigs Dished their wigs to do a jig Pigs skinny dip Floated and strip So turkey chicken and rabbit May be covered with bacon strips Cows roaming in the valleys Cats left in the Alleys Bring the cows It's time to chow Beef for steak Make no mistake Mince it grind it chop it We must have it We plant dashene To cook and steam To feed the animals so they keep lean Fit and ready to consume Eat we must Or we'd be dust Knead the dough for the pie crust Get the pan it will not rust We will dine Without wine We will roast eat then toast Thanking God that He is our Host

To prevent the 1997 Hong Kong virus, which killed six of eighteen people infected, from adapting to people, public health authorities had every single chicken then in Hong Kong, 1.2 million of them, slaughtered. An even greater slaughter of animals occurred in the spring of 2003 when a new H7N7 virus appeared in poultry farms in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany. This virus infected eighty-two people and killed one, and it also infected pigs. So public health authorities killed nearly thirty million poultry and some swine. In 2004, H5N1, which had never fully disappeared, returned with a vengeance.

All human beings are systematically socialized to oppress cattle, chickens, snakes, mice, dogs, and all other nonhuman individuals. After the fashion of Sojouner Truth, might cows and chickens ask: “Ain’t I a female, too?” And would not dogs and snakes ask, "Ain't I a living being, too?

What on earth are you eating?” “Chicken, bacon, both pig and turkey, and sausage patty in the middle,” Goade said, almost proudly. “Does it taste like you’re running around a farm and biting a bunch of different animals in a row?

Even if you think you’re eating a super-healthy diet of grilled chicken breast, egg whites, “fresh” (but farm-raised) salmon, and nonfat Greek yogurt, your brain is being undermined by the invisible changes in your food supply. Just a few generations ago, almost all farms were family owned and operated. They’re now predominantly gigantic factory farms that pump their cows and chickens full of cheap feed that doesn’t just change the animals’ health—it changes yours as well. Environmental pollutants like mercury and BPAs can also affect the health of our brains, and fundamental changes in our lifestyle and environment play a vital role as well.

Charles, a footman who had once worked on his father's farm and who loved animals, appeared and came over to help her prepare dishes of boiled chicken and brown rice for the cats and dogs waiting eagerly at their feet. When guests were staying, Charles often assisted with the care of her furry brood. Without asking, he set to work, even taking a few moments to gather fresh meat scraps for Aeolus, her wounded hawk, and cut-up apple and beetroots for Poppy, a convalescing rabbit who had an injured leg. He gave her several more apple quarters for the horses, who got jealous if she didn't bring them treats as well. Once all her cats and dogs were fed, Esme set off for the stables, laden pail in hand, Burr trotting at her heels. She stopped along the way to chat with the gardener and his assistant, who gave her some timothy grass, comfrey and lavender to supplement the hay she regularly fed Poppy.

Cheap relies on one other essential factor--a carefully constructed cover-up. In 1991, three golden-fried chicken fillets made at Imperial Food Products along with an order of fries cost $1.99 at Shoney's. This price, however, hid the real costs of the social system that allowed a company like Shoney's to charge so little for heaping plates of calorie-dense foods. Covered up were the costs incurred in farm subsidies and the piles of debt taken on by the chicken growers, some of whom had been turned into "modern-day serfs." The price didn't include the cost of food stamps for the underpaid, road building for transport, the cleanup of waterways polluted by animal factories, or the health care outlays needed in order to address the myriad issues linked to obesity and the litany of other ills associated with chronic overexposure to sugary, salty, and fatty foods. At the same time, the system of cheap never paid a dime for the wanton cruelty it imposed on animals or the injuries suffered by workers while killing ... and processing industrially produced chickens.

If the world’s 1 billion cows were a country, they’d rank third in greenhouse gases after China and the United States. Accounting for nearly two thirds of total livestock emissions, beef and dairy cattle dwarf the climate threat from all other farm animals combined, including pigs, chickens, lambs, goats, and ducks.

Man is the lone animal that devours without delivering. He doesn't give milk, he doesn't lay eggs, he is too powerless to even consider pulling the furrow, he can't run quick enough to get bunnies. Yet he is lord of all the animals. He sets them to work, he gives back to them the bare minimum that will prevent them from starving, and the rest he keeps for himself. Our labour tills the soil, our dung fertilises it, and yet there is not one of us that owns more than his bare skin. You cows that I see before me, how many thousands of gallons of milk have you given during this last year? And what has happened to that milk which should have been breeding up sturdy calves? Every drop of it has gone down the throats of our enemies. And you hens, how many eggs have you laid in this last year, and how many of those eggs ever hatched into chickens? The rest have all gone to market to bring in money for Jones and his men. And you, Clover, where are those four foals you bore, who should have been the support and pleasure of your old age? Each was sold at a year old−you will never see one of them again. In return for your four confinements and all your labour in the fields, what have you ever had except your bare rations and a stall?

Josie got to the final bunker and started pouring in the grain when a putrid odor filled her nose. She covered her face with her hand. Goats had a strong scent, especially the billy goats, but that wasn't what she smelled. It was a distinctive odor. Animals were always dying on the farm. Whether it be a goat, chicken, or a nighttime visitor like a possum or raccoon, animals died, and their stink was unmistakable. Josie knew that she couldn't let the goats feed from bunks that contained a carcass. She was carefully pawing through the three feet of hay that lined the bottom of the bunk in search of the animal when she saw it. The deep indigo of denim. Josie paused. It was so out of place, so foreign a sight, it took a moment for her to register what she was seeing.

There are ways of farming beef and chicken that may even help to sequester carbon, and many agroecological systems that farm without chemical inputs and in which grazing and browsing animals help to build soil health and natural capital in a way that supports the local and global ecosystem. But it’s doubtful that these methods can produce enough meat to match our current and growing appetite.# If we keep eating more meat, it will require the destruction of more tropical forest, which in turn will drive pandemic disease and climate change.

Alternatively, hunters may have caught and ‘adopted’ a lamb, fattening it during the months of plenty and slaughtering it in the leaner season. At some stage they began keeping a greater number of such lambs. Some of these reached puberty and began to procreate. The most aggressive and unruly lambs were first to the slaughter. The most submissive, most appealing lambs were allowed to live longer and procreate. The result was a herd of domesticated and submissive sheep. Such domesticated animals – sheep, chickens, donkeys and others – supplied food (meat, milk, eggs), raw materials (skins, wool), and muscle power. Transportation, ploughing, grinding and other tasks, hitherto performed by human sinew, were increasingly carried out by animals. In most farming societies people focused on plant cultivation; raising animals was a secondary activity. But a new kind of society also appeared in some places, based primarily on the exploitation of animals: tribes of pastoralist herders.

Exploring sacred teachings from around the world demonstrates that nature, including anymals, is sacred, that anymals are central to our spiritual landscape, and that we owe them respect, justice, and compassion. Religious texts remind us that we share a fundamental kinship with tabby cats, rose-ringed parakeets, and slender pygmy swordtails, and that anymals are understood to be remarkable and marvelous—superior to humans in many ways—in the world’s religious traditions. Sacred literature indicates that nonhumans and humans share the same fate after death; faiths that have a Creator teach human beings that the divine is personally invested in the life of every anymal, from the large flightless common rhea to each critically endangered Jenkin’s shrew, from a factory-farmed chicken to each bovine trucked to slaughter. Religious exemplars remind us that all species have personality and intellect—other creatures, whether insects, fish, reptiles, mammals, or birds, can offer much-needed spiritual wisdom for the betterment of humanity. Religions teach of a deep and fundamental unity on planet Earth. Interestingly, consistent with Darwin, the world’s dominant religions teach people that there is much more continuity than separation across species.

Do the religious texts and exemplars support anymal welfare or anymal liberation? What do religions teach us to be with regard to anymals? A concise formal argument, using deductive logic, rooted in three well-established premises, can help us to answer these questions about rightful relations between human beings and anymals: Premise 1 : The world’s dominant religious traditions teach human beings to avoid causing harm to anymals. Premise 2 : Contemporary industries that exploit anymals—including food, clothing, pharmaceutical, and/or entertainment industries—harm anymals. Premise 3 : Supporting industries that exploit anymals (most obviously by purchasing their products) perpetuates these industries and their harm to anymals. Conclusion : Th e world’s dominant religious traditions indicate that human beings should avoid supporting industries that harm anymals, including food, clothing, pharmaceutical, and/or entertainment industries. It is instructive to consider an additional deductive argument rooted in two well-established premises: Premise 1 : The world’s dominant religious traditions teach people to assist and defend anymals who are suffering. Premise 2 : Anymals suffer when they are exploited in laboratories and the entertainment, food, or clothing industries. Conclusion : The world’s dominant religious traditions teach people to assist and defend anymals when they are exploited in laboratories, entertainment, food, and clothing industries. If these premises are correct—and they are supported by abundant evidence—the world’s dominant religions teach adherents • to avoid purchasing products fr om industries that exploit anymals, and • to assist and defend anymals who are exploited in laboratories and the entertainment, food, and clothing industries. Such industries include, but are not limited to, those that overtly sell or use products that include chicken’s reproductive eggs, cow’s nursing milk, or anymal flesh or hides (fur and leather), as well as industries that engage in or are linked with anymal experimentation of any kind, and entertainment industries such as zoos, circuses, and aquariums.

Anymal liberationists who release fox or chinchillas from fur farms, free veal calves from chains in abysmal crates, destroy transport trucks that haul terrified turkeys and sheep to their premature deaths, burn slaughterhouses that dismember pigs and chickens, or destroy computers in research facilities are not dangerous terrorists. Anymal liberationists simply believe that life is precious, and that an industry designed to manipulate and destroy life for the sake of profits is ethically and spiritually unacceptable. They do not target the lives of random citizens—or the lives of any citizens. Anymal liberationists do not target life—they target industries (and profits) that flourish at the expense of life—and they attempt to rescue the exploited. Terrorists kill randomly; anymal liberationists have never killed anyone. Anymal liberationists exemplify what it is to live into the core teachings of every major religion concerning rightful relations between human beings and anymals.

For most women (as for most men) links between sexism and speciesism are not readily apparent. We have been conditioned not to see exploitation. For example, men generally have no idea how patriarchy affects women—unless they go out of their way to learn. The same is true for women with regard to cows and pigs and chickens and turkeys. Both women and nonhuman animals have traditionally been viewed as property—"things” to be owned and controlled by those in power. While the plight of women is linked with that of nonhuman animals through a single system of oppression, through their comparative powerlessness and invisibility, and through sexual exploitation, it is important to elucidate these similarities through concrete examples. Links between women and nonhuman animals are nowhere more apparent than through the vulnerabilities of mothers and their young, and the control of pregnancies and offspring; this particular form of oppression is nowhere more blatant than on factory farms.

Even with the onset of contemporary animal advocacy, and the unavoidability of at least some knowledge of what goes on in slaughterhouses and on factory farms, most of us choose to look away—even feminists. Collectively, feminists remain largely unaware of the well-documented links between the exploitation of women and girls, and the exploitation of cows, sows, and hens.

Even with the onset of contemporary animal advocacy, and the unavoidability of at least some knowledge of what goes on in slaughterhouses and on factory farms, most of us choose to look away—even feminists. Collectively, feminists remain largely unaware of the well-documented links between the exploitation of women and girls, and the exploitation of cows, sows, and hens.

Religious people tend to be unaware that chewing on a chicken’s body purchased at a grocery store contradicts the core religious ideals of every major religious tradition. Still other religious people do not take their religious commitment seriously and therefore do not care one way or the other about anymal suffering and slaughter.

Anymal liberationists who release fox or chinchillas from fur farms, free veal calves from chains in abysmal crates, destroy transport trucks that haul terrified turkeys and sheep to their premature deaths, burn slaughterhouses that dismember pigs and chickens, or destroy computers in research facilities are not dangerous terrorists. Anymal liberationists simply believe that life is precious, and that an industry designed to manipulate and destroy life for the sake of profits is ethically and spiritually unacceptable.

Not only do we harbor patriarchal indifference to uniquely female suffering, but additionally, most of us are ignorant of the horrible cruelty inherent in factory farming. It is easy to buy a bucket of chicken or a carton of vanilla yogurt without even knowing about the females whose sad lives lie behind these unnecessary products. It is easy to forget that mozzarella and cream come from a mother’s munificence—mothers who would have desperately preferred to tend their young, and to live out their lives with a measure of freedom and comfort—or not to be born at all. Most consumers are unaware of the ongoing, intense suffering and billions of premature deaths that lurk behind mayonnaise and cream, cold cuts and egg sandwiches. Even with the onset of contemporary animal advocacy, and the unavoidability of at least some knowledge of what goes on in slaughterhouses and on factory farms, most of us choose to look away—even feminists. Collectively, feminists remain largely unaware of the well-documented links between the exploitation of women and girls, and the exploitation of cows, sows, and hens.

The only quantitative estimates of farmed animal welfare I’ve been able to find come from Bailey Norwood, an economist and agricultural expert. He rated the welfare of different animals on a scale of –10 to 10, where negative numbers indicate that it would be better, from the animal’s perspective, to be dead rather than alive. He rates beef cattle at 6 and dairy cows at 4. In contrast his average rating for broiler chickens is –1, and for pigs and caged hens is –5. In other words, cows raised for food live better lives than chicken, hens, or pigs, which suffer terribly.

The unfortunate animals raised for food are forced to eat large quantities of fish meal and rendered animal flesh and organs, which is totally unnatural for them, in order to fatten them quickly. Manure is also used to “enrich” their feed, and these additives concentrate toxins to an even higher extent than the plant foods the animals are fed. The toxins in the animal foods we eat include carcinogenic heavy metals, deadly PCBs, chemical residues, antibiotics, and the human-created nightmare we now call the prion. Prions are thought to cause mad cow disease and the other transmissible spongiform encephalopathies that have raged through both human cannibal populations (such as the cannibalistic Fore people of Papua New Guinea where a type of human spongiform encephalopathy, called by them “kuru,” was first documented in the 1950s) and animal cannibal populations (such as the farmed sheep and mink populations that developed scrapie and transmissible mink encephalopathy after being fed rendered animal flesh). Similar diseases such as Creutzfeld-Jacob disease (the human equivalent of mad cow) and, according to some researchers, certain forms of Alzheimer’s disease, now threaten human omnivore populations as well because of perverse industry standards that have dictated feeding cows to other cows, and that still feed pigs to other pigs, chickens to other chickens, and pigs and chickens to cows.30

My first thought was that a tornado had somehow picked me up and carried me off, like in the Wizard of Oz. No old witches pedaled by, and I didn't see any flying farm animals or chicken coops, and after a few agonizing minutes, I fell deep into unconsciousness again.

feces. If a wild bird infects a chicken on a poultry farm, the virus may get opportunities to interact with a range of additional viruses through close contact with pigs and other animals. This is indeed what has happened in the live animal markets and backyard farms of China and southern Asia. Influenza viruses are notorious for their ability to change, through a combination of mutation and “reassortment”—a borrowing of genes from other viruses. An open farm acts like a virus convention, where different strains swap genetic material like conventioneers swap business cards.

What Dr. Price's work teaches us is that the absolute fundamental requirement of healthy diets cannot be found in pasta, nor vegetable juices, nor oat bran, nor olive oil, but only in certain types of animal fats. These fats come from animals who consume green, growing organisms (such as grass and plankton), or who consume other animals that have consumed green, growing organisms (such as insects). What is tragic is the difficulty in finding such foods today. Most of our dairy cows spend their entire lives in confinement and never see green grass; chickens are kept in pens and fed mostly grains; pigs are raised in factories and never see sunlight; even fish are now raised in fish farms and given inappropriate feed, like soy pellets. Even worse, most people avoid these foods today because medical spokesmen claim they cause cancer, heart disease or weight gain, even though a number of highly qualified scientists have admirably refuted these charges. Suffice it to say that the patient who is afraid of consuming foods containing animal fats and cholesterol will make no headway in his efforts to improve his diet as these foods are absolutely vital for good health.

Most of the ingredients she cooked with came from the tiny farm immediately behind the restaurant. It was so small that the Pertinis could shout from one end of it to another, but the richness of the soil meant that it supported a wealth of vegetables, including tomatoes, zucchini, black cabbage, eggplant and several species that were unique to the region, including bitter friarielli and fragrant asfodelo. There was also a small black boar called Garibaldi, who despite his diminutive size impregnated his harem of four larger wives with extraordinary diligence; an ancient olive tree through which a couple of vines meandered; a chicken or two; and the Pertinis' pride and joy, Priscilla and Pupetta, the two water buffalo, who grazed on a patch of terraced pasture no bigger than a tennis court. The milk they produced was porcelain white, and after hours of work each day it produced just two or three mozzarelle, each one weighing around two pounds- but what mozzarelle: soft and faintly grassy, like the sweet steamy breath of the bufale themselves. As well as mozzarella, the buffalo milk was crafted into various other specialties. Ciliègine were small cherry-shaped balls for salads, while bocconcini were droplet-shaped, for wrapping in slices of soft prosciutto ham. Trecce, tresses, were woven into plaits, served with Amalfi lemons and tender sprouting broccoli. Mozzarella affumicata was lightly smoked and brown in color, while scamorza was smoked over a smoldering layer of pecan shells until it was as dark and rich as a cup of strong espresso. When there was surplus milk they even made a hard cheese, ricotta salata di bufala, which was salted and slightly fruity, perfect for grating over roasted vegetables. But the cheese the Pertinis were best known for was their burrata, a tiny sack of the finest, freshest mozzarella, filled with thick buffalo cream and wrapped in asphodel leaves.

century ago, the typical Iowa farm raised more than a dozen different plant and animal species: cattle, chickens, corn, hogs, apples, hay, oats, potatoes, cherries, wheat, plums, grapes, and pears. Now it raises only two: corn and soybeans.

Of the entire terrestrial vertebrate biomass on earth, wild animals constitute only about three percent, humans one-quarter, and livestock almost three-quarters! On old-fashioned farms, animals had names, pastures to graze in, mud to wallow in, or sand to dust-bathe in. Life was far from idyllic, but it was appreciably better than it is nowadays when we lock up calves and pigs in narrow crates of stainless steel, cram chickens by the thousands into sunless sheds, and don’t even let cows graze outside anymore. Instead, we keep them standing in their own waste. Since these animals are mostly kept out of sight, people rarely get to see their miserable conditions. All we see is cuts of meat without feet, heads, or tails attached. This way we don’t need to ponder the meat’s existence prior to packaging. And here I am not even talking about the fact that we eat animals, only about how we treat them, which is my main concern. I am too much of a biologist to question the natural circle of life. Every animal plays its role by eating or being eaten, and we are involved at both ends of the equation. Our ancestors were part of a vast ecosystem of carnivores, herbivores, and omnivores, ingesting other organisms and also serving as meals for predators. Even if nowadays we rarely fall prey anymore, we still let hordes of critters devour our rotting corpses. It’s all dust to dust.

Although this major incident shows the dangers of feeding animals to other animals, it is often still considered an economically viable practice for industrial operations. Many feedlots in the United States, for instance, feed their cows chicken meat, while some companies even consider it “sustainable” to feed chicken to farmed fish.21

The cost-savings from factory farming are slowing down, but Tyson’s control over the marketplace has not loosened. Once the broad-based meat industry was traded away for a vertically integrated one, the deal could not be easily undone. The economies of scale now make it almost impossible for new competitors to enter the field and compete head-to-head with Tyson and its imitators. The tallest ramparts that protect Tyson’s rule are its network of meat factories in places like Waldron. To compete against those facilities, a new company would need to invest hundreds of millions of dollars up front, before the first day of business. It would need animals, of course, and Tyson has much of that supply locked down with its contracts. And a competitor would surely know that even if it built a plant and secured supplies of chickens or hogs, Tyson and its few competitors have the ability to flood the market with product and make prices collapse in the short term, a hardship they could surely endure while an upstart struggled.

By industrializing animal production, Tyson’s system rewrote the stubborn biological equations that once constrained the meat industry. Between 1955 and 1982, the amount of time it took to raise a full-grown chicken fell from 73 days to 52 days. And the chickens got bigger during that time, expanding from an average 3.1 pounds to 4 pounds. Perhaps most impressive of all, it took less and less chicken feed each year to accomplish this feat. In 1955 it took about 285 pounds of feed to grow 100 pounds of chicken. By 1982 it took less than 208 pounds. A similar trend held for pigs and, to a lesser degree, cattle during that time. The benefits of this transformation were passed from the farms to the consumers as Tyson aggressively competed to win a bigger share of the U.S. market.

Under Tyson, all these businesses have been drawn onto one property. The company controls every step of meat production, with each aspect being centrally directed from the company’s headquarters in Springdale. The company’s control spans the lifetime of the animals it raises. Before there is a chicken or an egg, there is Tyson. The company’s geneticists select which kinds of birds will be grown. They breed and crossbreed the avian bloodlines to engineer meaty breasts and rapid metabolism in the same way automobiles are first cut from clay, then engineered on a drafting board before they’re built. The birds begin their brief life at the Tyson plant, within the heated hive of its industrial hatchery. The company produces more than two billion eggs a year, but none of them are sold to consumers. They are all hatched inside the company’s buildings and the chicks are transported in Tyson trucks to Tyson farms. The Tyson trucks retrieve the birds six weeks later, bringing them back to the plant, where the chickens are funneled into chutes in the side of the slaughterhouses