1. Thumping
Piglets who are too sick or not growing fast enough are killed by being slammed headfirst onto concrete floors.
2. Force-Feeding
Ducks raised for foie gras undergo routine force-feedings. Farm workers shove metal pipes down their throats multiple times a day to induce a diseased, fatty liver.
3. Tail Docking
Although outlawed in a few states, tail docking is a relatively common practice. It involves cutting through the sensitive skin, nerves, and bones of calves’ tails without any painkillers.
4. Teeth Clipping
Factory farmers rip out piglets’ sharp incisor teeth without the use of painkillers.
5. Dehorning
Farmers burn or saw off the horns of cattle without anesthetics. This cruel practice, which often leads to infection, is 100 percent legal.
6. Castration
Shortly after birth, male piglets are castrated without painkillers. Farmers use a blade or scalpel to pull out the testicles.
7. Debeaking
Perpetrated by the egg and poultry industries, debeaking is painfully cutting off the tip of a bird’s beak, usually with a hot blade.
8. Macerators
Since male chicks will never lay eggs and don’t grow quickly enough to be raised profitably for meat, they’re killed within hours of hatching. These young animals are often ground up alive in macerators.
9. Extreme Confinement
In an effort to maximize profit, factory farmers keep animals in cramped, disease-ridden conditions. Many animals won’t see the sun until they’re on their way to the slaughterhouse.
10. Breaking Up Families
On modern-day farms babies are often ripped away from their mothers, leading to severe distress for both mothers and their young.
11. Cannibalism
To cut production costs, chicken and hog farmers sometimes use the carcasses of dead animals as feed.
12. Flame Clipping
Once a year dairy farmers use a propane torch to singe the hair around cows’ udders.
These are the things we have nightmares about, yet animals on factory farms are forced to live through them. We can all help end this unnecessary torture by switching to a compassionate vegan diet.
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