Five years ago my family moved into a house in Tonganoxie, KS. There is a pasture next door, and each Spring/Summer, that pasture is occupied by a herd of cattle. (Cow/calf operation.) As a lifelong animal lover, vegetarian, (now vegan), animal activist, I’d never really “met” a cow up close. My kids and I have so much fun watching them, but what I never knew was that they all have their own unique personalities. The hierarchy of the herd is really interesting, and they can be quite fun to watch. Shy 38 is named after one of those cows. Her tag said “38”. But like the rest, she was an individual. In 2015, Shy 38 Inc. was founded, with the mission to become a Kansas Farm Sanctuary.
Over the past several years, we’ve seen the cows come and go, some return year after year; others do not. Some of them are very friendly and curious, others are shy and keep their distance. We gave them names – did you know a cow can learn her name and come when called? Separated by a fence, we see the calves trying to play with our dogs. We see the cows nurse and love on their babies, and we see their babies get taken away. We hear the cows call for them day and night and search the field frantically with the same determination you or I would have if someone took our children from us.
While the cows next door are not factory-farmed animals, they will eventually suffer the same fate as those who are: the slaughterhouse, where they’ll be killed years before their time, and die frightened, stressed and fighting for their lives. But local farmers aren’t where most of our food comes from. Over 98% of the meat we purchase in grocery stores in the U.S. was raised and processed on factory farms.
Merriam-Webster gives this definition for “Factory Farm”:
“a large industrialized farm on which large numbers of livestock are raised indoors in conditions intended to maximize production at minimal cost.”
Animals on factory farms endure painful mutilation, unnatural reproduction, confinement, and are denied every basic natural instinct up to the point that they are killed. Factory farms account for 99.9% of chickens used for meat, 97% of laying hens used for eggs, 99% of turkeys, 95% of pigs, and 78% of cattle sold in the U.S. Over 56 Billion farmed animals are killed annually – excluding fish and other sea creatures which are caught by the billions each year to be suffocated or boiled alive.
A cow’s natural lifespan is 20+ years, but on a dairy farm, she barely reaches 2 or 3. She is repeatedly artificially inseminated (because to give milk, she has to have a calf), then her calves are taken away from her sometimes just hours after birth. The babies either end up on a veal farm, raised for the dairy industry, or thrown away like trash.
Male chicks within the egg industry are useless, and so they are suffocated, gassed or minced alive after hatching. Broiler chickens’ beaks are seared off without anesthetic, crammed into cages and are bred to grow so large so fast that their legs can no longer support the weight of their bodies. They often have broken bones or heart attacks.
Social, intelligent pigs are forced into cages so small that they can’t even perform the simple act of turning around. Most of them have respiratory illnesses when they are slaughtered and the only time factory farmed pigs get to see/feel sunlight is through the slatted walls inside the livestock transport trailer carrying them to their deaths.
Within the walls of a factory farm, animals are no longer animals with the ability to think and feel; they are reduced to ” livestock units”. They are victims of large corporations’ need to keep up with supply and demand.
Factory farms not only impact the welfare of the animals, but are wreaking havoc on our environment and public health as well. They are responsible for water and air pollution and the depletion of the rain forests which has resulted in many species’ extinction.
