People go to work on Factory Farms out of desperation. This includes meat packing plants, slaughter houses, and finally the row of thousands of cages, where animals are crammed into spaces so small they can’t even stretch their legs or turn around. The animals sleep in their own urine and feces. But even those who force themselves to do it eventually can’t stand it any longer. The industry has one of the highest turnover rates, sometimes up to a hundred percent. New workers are inexperienced, which makes things even worse.
Today I want to discuss the extensive impacts the industry has on humans. I’ve discussed the effects on animals in the article titled, ‘Factory Farming.’ Because animals are merely property, we have the power to extend what we do to them as much as we like, and abuse them forever. But in the process we will make our planet completely uninhabitable, and destroy all traces of human dignity. Today I want to focus on the negative effects on human beings – but first I need to review some details of what happens to animals. This is to paint a picture of what workers witness from day to day. I ask that readers be patient while waiting to see how workers, and society as a whole is impacted directly.
The average worker at a slaughterhouse has to butcher two hundred and fifty cows an hour. The process is painful, and as long as animals are property, corners will always be cut to save money. In order for the company to make a profit, workers have to kill the animals as quickly as possible. They’re supposed to be stunned first, but a large portion are stunned improperly. So, animals such as cows are fully conscious while being hung upside down. A blade is to then cut their throat, but blades often miss here, and animals like chickens and turkeys are boiled alive. These are nicknamed, redskins.
This is only the tip of the iceberg for the horrors workers witness. I don’t have time to describe them all today. Debeaking, toe removal, tail docking, cutting pieces of an animal’s flesh, ears or for identification, burning out horns, and castration; these are all regular practices. All these are done without painkillers. Castration either entails cutting open an animal’s scrotum and tearing the cord between the testicles, or tying up the scrotum with a rubber band, and waiting several weeks for the testicles to rot and fall off.
Animals are kept perpetually pregnant, tied down onto what the industry has nicknamed rape tables. Exposed to artificial lights and undergoing forced molting, chickens lay far more eggs than they would naturally, and become sick. Cows, goats, and sheep are milked so often their udders become infected. The machines and claws attached to their udders administer electric shocks. This leads to the presence of unwanted bacteria in milk. When their bodies can’t take it anymore, they’re slaughtered. Animals that are so sick they collapse are called ‘downed animals.’ They are stacked up in piles by forklifts and tractors, or made into meat. Animals experience so much stress and boredom that they become aggressive, pecking, clawing, and biting each other. They become frenzied by the taste of blood and their behavior gets worse. They aren’t allowed to form their natural social hierarchies. Some sows, piglets, and chickens end up resorting to cannibalism. This behavior is highly unnatural. Pigs are naturally friendly, sociable animals, and when left in natural environments, pigs and chickens form social groups.
When producing wool, workers are required to shave animals like sheep, goats, and llamas so fast they accidentally cut or injure themselves and the animals. The rates of injury in this line of work are higher than any others. They have to step on screaming struggling animals, forcibly pin them to the ground, or tie them to stretchers to stop them from resisting. Sheep are completely deprived of food and water before their shaving so they don’t resist. Goats, kept in the cold mountains of Mongolia and China, are shaved during the winter to keep up with demand and often freeze to death. Sheep are kept in the thousands, living in their own feces. They’re selectively bred to grow hundreds of pounds of wool, which often grows mold or fungus. They become susceptible to fly strike, an infection caused by maggots in the skin, so pieces of their backsides are sliced off with no painkillers. Their tails are removed by tying a rubber band and waiting for it to rot and fall off. This increases the animals risk of suffering from anal prolapse.
Male animals are generally considered to not be profitable. Chickens are hatched on a conveyor belt by the thousands, and workers sort the males from the females. The males are killed as soon as they are born. They’re gassed, crushed, suffocated, or sometimes fall out of view; into the belt or on the floor, where they will also suffocate or die. Male animals are made into veal, lamb, and baby goat, so the industry can make an extra quick buck.
Animals are forced to live in rows of thousands of cages, stalls, and crates, and live in their own urine and feces. A fourteen inch cage is used to house eight chickens. The metal wires chafe and tear their skin. Animals have their legs crippled from the slatted floors made of hard concrete. Smaller animals are crushed on the downward incline of the ground. Unlike other animals, with pigs, some attempt is made to pump the feces out of their stalls since they produce so much of it. The ground is slatted so the feces will fall out. But when it’s pumped out, it comes in contact with workers, residents, and contaminates our water supply. Usually, animals have to sleep in tiny cages full of urine and feces.
Speaking of which, let’s talk about ammonia. Ammonia is a toxic gas which forms when large amounts of urine and feces are allowed to sit for a long time. It burns the workers lungs, mouths, and eyes, and they have to wear special masks for protection. Yet, this poison still seeps in. The animals live in this gas. One person working at such a place noted, ‘at least we go home at night, the animals here don’t.’ Another gas is formed – called hydrogen sulfide. This causes workers to die of asphyxiation. These things pollute our air and rivers. So many countless diseases show up in the animals and the workers can become sick. Waste and pesticides are pumped away. They contaminate the water supply. Hog waste is especially dangerous, and the hog waste gets left untreated.
Many places won’t allow these farms in their area because of the pollution they cause, so they build their facilities next to minority neighborhoods knowing they will have a harder time fighting back. Bullying and discrimination are a common part of the workplace culture. Ethnicity and citizenship status is heavily emphasized. This is to sow dissent and infighting between workers. It is a common thing for people in this line of work to say, “These companies care more about these cows here than they do about us,” and the workers DO get treated like shit. To make matters worse, infighting between workers not only exists, but is actively encouraged. Farmworkers are the least unionized out of any industry in the country.
Workers are denied basic rights, like the right to organize and seek overtime pay. People work 12 hours at a time, with only short five minute breaks, and no rest days. Farm Workers are excluded from U.S Labor Protection Laws. This isn’t a mere oversight. The meat industry is wasteful and uses up more energy than it produces. It’s an industry that causes massive amounts of suffering but doesn’t need to exist. Yet it creates a product which people are dead set against giving up, so we will always provide exceptions and loopholes in any area it requires to keep running at top speed.
We also need to talk about the environmental and health impacts of factory farming. Almost every major disease outbreak, or plague in human history has been caused by mistreating animals. Because different species have different immune systems, the chances of catching a disease from a typical herd animal is astronomically low; unless we do something to massively increase the odds. Like a European city street in the middle ages, where there were no sewers, and there were thousands of bustling animals which were openly butchered on the market square. Disease is one of the single most important shapers of human history. But we don’t like to think that because disease outbreaks seem random, and indifferent to us. We mistakenly believe that major disease outbreaks are something that can only happen in ancient times or the past. But actually we are at much higher risk now more than ever with our growing population of eight billion people, and our hundreds of billions of animals we overbreed, who are forced to sleep in their own urine and feces.
Due to contact with fecal matter, raw chicken meat has residues of e coli and salmonella. Eighty percent of antibiotics sold in America, and half of the antibiotics sold in the world are used on animals, not humans. Antibiotics are used to stop diseases from ripping through animals, and to meet minimal animal welfare standards. But these drugs are used too freely, even when it’s not medically necessary. This can be done if an animal is merely deemed ill, without checking why the animal is sick. This is like when people take antibiotics for a cold, even though colds are caused by viruses and not bacteria. Excessive use of antibiotics, leads to AMR, Antimicrobial resistance, or superbugs. These are stronger bacteria that can resist antibiotics. AMR kills about 700,000 people worldwide each year. The UN estimates AMR will kill 10 million people and force 24 million into poverty by 2050. Residues of this antibiotic resistant bacteria can be found in meat and factory farmed products sold in the supermarket. Residues can be found in waste sold as fertilizer. The waste also contains antibiotic drugs and pollutes our soil, water, and air. Ever since 2017, the U.S no longer allows people to give animals antibiotics if it’s not medically necessary, but there are still many countries around the world that do this.
The animal industry pollutes air, water, and degrades land, and the effects are felt most directly by the minority neighborhoods it builds its factories next to. Animal waste, antibiotics, fertilizers and pesticides contaminate waterways and groundwater, and runoff contributes to dead zones in the ocean. Hog’s produce the most waste. A single hog produces a ton and a half a year. All the hog farms in America produce 167 million pounds of it. Hog waste is especially dangerous because it is left untreated. When released into the environment, untreated pig feces contaminate our water. Hydrogen sulfide, and ammonia is released into the air. Ammonia likely causes 12,400 deaths a year. Air pollution as a whole kills 17,900. Environmentalists are increasingly aware that the meat industry is responsible for 1/5 to thirty seven percent of all greenhouse gas emissions. Animal farming uses up eighty percent of farmland. We overbreed animals to keep up with consumer demand. This uses up land, plants, and water, which can be used to feed humans.
People who work in Factory Farms typically live in lower income rural areas and come from immigrant backgrounds. Many people in Factory Farming are Latino, and the majority of workers in the dairy industry are undocumented Latino Immigrants. Bosses can use this fact to blackmail them and deny them access to healthcare, workers compensation, or the ability to report workplace injuries and harassment. They can deny them pay, or pay them far below minimum wage.
To combat Factory Farming, there are several attainable steps and solutions we can employ. Some people have the luxury to take this opportunity to add some excitement to their lives. Others are affected in the more immediate sense, whether they realize it or not.
The first thing we need to do is extend basic labor protections and drivers licenses, not ONLY to farm workers in general, but also to undocumented Latino Immigrants specifically. This may be controversial, but this is yet another issue that is unable to be solved because we have othered a group of people and made them into a scapegoat. We do this even if our society freely accepts and uses their labor.
The most important thing you can do as an individual is to become vegan or vegetarian. I recommend becoming vegetarian first, as it’s better to take some action now, rather than to be overwhelmed with every possible detail, cop out, and do nothing at all. This isn’t such a huge sacrifice. You could try it for a week or a month. Even if you don’t succeed the first time, you can always try it again. Instead of trying to replace the meat on your plate, you could rearrange the whole plate completely with foods like curries, stews, soups, pasta, rice, beans, stir fries etc. Try something interesting to keep yourself occupied. Even when the novelty wears off after a couple weeks, keep going, and after a month, you’ll find that it’s actually not that bad.
Not everyone will quit eating meat, but something that is easy to do is to quit using clothes made of wool and leather. These industries heavily exploit animals, and provide a lot of money to the Factory Farming Industry. You don’t have to dump all your old clothes overnight, but you can avoid buying these materials in the future. Alternatives like cotton and polyester exist. Plant leather is better because it doesn’t peel or flake. In addition, it’s pretty easy to buy belts and shoes that aren’t made of leather. If you want to start replacing your old wardrobe, you can donate your old clothes to thrift stores, shelters, or to people who are poor and desperately need them.
Remember, even if everyone on Earth absolutely hated the practices of Factory Farming, it won’t matter if people continue to financially support them. They don’t need your love, they need your money.
The next thing that’s important is awareness, and informing others. People can’t solve a problem they don’t know exists, and luckily, so many more people at least have a vague idea nowadays as to how harmful factory farming is than they used to. You can either share this article, The Factory Farming article, or the video forms of these. The videos can be found on ‘The Jungle YouTube Channel,’ the link to that is on the contact information page of this website. You can also have conversations with your classmates or coworkers. I’m not advocating going around being a general nuisance to the community. But if it comes up during conversation, you could say, ‘hey, did you know how fucked up this thing is?’
Make sure to support legislation that protects downed animals, and abolishes battery cages, force feeding, veal crates, and intensive confinement for animals.
Ask for more vegan options at the supermarket, and request that restaurants remove veal from their menus.
Anyways, I hope everyone got something out of this. That’s all for now. Have a good day.