7 Times Animal Agriculture Made You Say, “Literally, WTF?

Across the world, animal agriculture profits from animal suffering. While we know killing animals for food is unnecessary and cruel, these eight facts will make you literally facepalm.

1. Polluting natural resources—including drinking water


The animal agriculture industry has a history of polluting natural resources. Recently, it’s even gone so far as writing a bill that, if passed by Congress, would end citizens’ ability to sue the dairy industry for polluting drinking water. The pollutant—nitrates in cow manure—is so dangerous it can kill infants even in small doses.

Just this month, lawmakers in North Carolina overrode the governor’s veto of a bill that limits the amount of money factory farms would have to pay for air and land pollution. This decision prioritizes the interests of animal agriculture while putting North Carolinians at risk. Polluting the environment is common practice throughout the industry, including farms hiding pollution from the EPA, violating clean water laws, leaking manure into Tillamook Bay, and devastating the Great Lakes.

2. Oppressing workers for profit

Tyson Foods, America’s largest meat producer, averages one human amputee per month. According to a recent nationwide report, an average of 27 poultry processing workers a day suffer work-related amputations or hospitalizations. One employee was even fired for helping her co-worker after an incident. As if amputation weren’t enough, workers have also suffered severe chemical burns and fractured hips from slipping on floors.

Workers are often denied bathroom breaks, and some have even resorted to wearing diapers throughout their workday. The chicken industry has also been caught depressing workers’ pay to keep them “debt-laden and subservient. Seriously messed up!

3. Bribing government officials and processing rotten meat

The world’s largest poultry exporter, JBS SA, and the world’s number one meatpacker, BRF SA, were part of a two-year investigation in Brazil called “Operation Weak Flesh, which culminated in police raids this March. Police noted more than 40 cases of meatpackers bribing politicians and inspectors to overlook unsanitary conditions, including rotten-meat processing and salmonella taint. Telephone recordings by federal police found that pigs’ heads were crushed and added to sausages, cardboard was mixed with chicken meat, and chemicals were injected into meat to hide the smell of rot. Authorities also found that companies were injecting water into their meat to increase its market weight. Some of this meat was even used in school lunches. Yikes!

4. Growing animals so large they can’t walk


To increase profits, animals on factory farms are bred to grow at alarming rates. Today, chickens grow to a staggering nine pounds, more than four times the weight they reached in the 1950s. This genetic manipulation of nature causes serious harm to the animals, who often suffer debilitating deformities and may die prematurely after collapsing under their own weight. Slaughtered at just 48 days old, broilers are bred to grow so large, so fast, that their organs cannot keep up with the birds’ rapid growth. This doesn’t matter to the animal agriculture industry, which continues to drive this change. Heartbreaking!

5. Promoting cannibalism in farming practices

For decades, factory farmers have fed rejected candy to animals to help fatten them up and cut costs. This became more frequent in 2012 when corn prices surged, but while oddly disturbing, this isn’t the worst of it. Footage from a 2014 undercover investigation by The Humane Society of the United States shows pigs being fed diarrhea and the ground-up intestines of their own piglets at a factory farm in Kentucky. That’s right: Factory farmers are turning these innocent animals into cannibals so they can make a quick buck. This is not only disgusting but also incredibly dangerous.

6. Trying to cover up animal abuse through ag-gag laws


What’s the best way to cover up animal abuse in factory farms? Make it illegal to film and expose it. Ag-gag laws have been introduced across the country for years, criminalizing the work of brave undercover investigators who document egregious wrongdoings and abuses in factory farms and slaughterhouses. So far, six states have passed ag-gag bills (including one in Idaho that was declared unconstitutional). Corporations have even gone so far as to demand the publication of personal information of the “political operatives who expose the abuse. Shameful.

7. Promoting products that give you cancer

Eating meat has serious consequences for our health. While meat and dairy industries tout their products as healthy and necessary, studies have linked meat consumption to cancer, heart disease, and diabetes. Factory farms are also breeding grounds for diseases, including superbugs that can make us resistant to antibiotics. Studies have estimated that antibiotic-resistant infections will kill approximately 10 million people each year by 2050, and factory farms will be the primary cause. Apart from being cruel, producing and consuming animal products is actually killing us.

We have just one thing to say: Literally, WTF?

Stop supporting an industry that profits from the suffering of millions of animals, exploits workers, pollutes the environment, and harms your health. To get started, click here.