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People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is an organization that publicly claims to represent the best interest of animals -- indeed their "ethical treatment." Yet approximately 2,000 animals pass through PETA's front door every year and very few make it out alive. The vast majority -- 96 percent in 2011 -- exit the facility out the back door after they have been killed, when Pet Cremation Services of Tidewater stops by on their regular visits to pick up their remains. Between these visits, the bodies are stored in the giant walk-in freezer PETA installed for this very purpose. It is a freezer that cost $9,370 and, like the company which incinerates the bodies of PETA's victims, was paid for with the donations of animal lovers who could never have imagined that the money they donated to help animals would be used to end their lives instead. In fact, in the last 11 years, PETA has killed 29,426 dogs, cats, rabbits, and other domestic animals.

Most animal lovers find this hard to believe. But seeing is believing. And if it is true that a picture speaks a thousand words, the following images speak volumes about who and what PETA really stands for.

The PETA headquarters is on the aptly named Front Street. While claiming to be an animal rights organization, PETA does not believe animals have a right to live. Instead, it believes that people have a right to kill them, as long as the killing is done "humanely," which PETA interprets to mean poisoning them with an overdose of barbiturates, even if the animals are not suffering. In 2012, 733 dogs entered this building. They killed 602 of them. Only 12 were adopted. Also in 2012, they impounded 1,110 cats. 1,045 were put to death. Seven of them were adopted. They also took in 34 other companion animals, such as rabbits, of which 28 were put to death. Only four were adopted.

A supermarket dumpster full of garbage bags. When police officers looked inside, they found the bodies of dead animals -- animals killed by PETA. PETA described these animals as "adorable" and "perfect." A veterinarian who naively gave PETA some of the animals, thinking they would find them homes, and examined the dead bodies of others, testified that they were "healthy" and "adoptable."

A mother cat and her two kittens, all perfectly healthy and adoptable and none in danger of being killed until they were given to PETA by a veterinarian who was trying to find them homes and was told by PETA employees that they would have no problem adopting them out. After PETA lied to him and the mother and her kittens were entrusted to their care, they reportedly killed them, within minutes, in the back of a van.

The PETA field killing kit found by police in the back of the PETA death van in Ahoskie, North Carolina.

An Ahoskie Police Detective dressed in a hazmat suit prepares to bury a puppy killed by PETA. This puppy and dozens of other animals including cats and kittens were found by police throughout June of 2005 after PETA employees dumped them in a garbage bin in North Carolina.

Puppies killed by PETA in the back of a van -- a donor-funded slaughterhouse on wheels. Despite $35,000,000 in annual revenues and millions of "animal-loving" members, PETA does not even try to find them homes. PETA has no adoption hours, does no adoption promotion, has no adoption floor, but is registered with the State of Virginia as a "humane society" or "animal shelter."
Source: Virginia Department of Agriculture
According to inspection reports by the Virginia Department of Agriculture, the PETA facility "does not contain sufficient animal enclosures to routinely house the number of animals annually reported as taken into custody... The shelter is not accessible to the public, promoted, or engaged in efforts to facilitate the adoption of animals taken into custody."

Routine inspections often found "no animals to be housed in the facility" or, at best "few animals in custody," despite thousands of them impounded by PETA annually. Since they take in thousands per year, where were they? "90% [of the animals] were euthanized within the first 24 hours of custody," according to the Virginia Department of Agriculture inspector. How can people adopt animals from PETA when they kill the animals they acquire within minutes without ever making them available for adoption? How can people adopt animals when they have no adoption hours, do no adoption promotion, and do not show animals for adoption, choosing to kill them without doing so? In fact, when asked by a reporter what efforts they make to find animals homes, PETA had no comment.

A postcard written and signed by Ingrid Newkirk, PETA's founder, admitting that PETA does not believe animals have a right to live, despite its public perception of PETA as an "animal rights" organization. The right to life is the most fundamental of all rights. It is fundamental because without it, no other "rights" are possible. How can animals be guaranteed the right to food, water, shelter and protection, when those things can be taken away by killing them?

Many animal lovers who have publicly condemned PETA for their killing have received a letter from the PETA legal department, threatening a lawsuit. However, because a lawsuit would allow for subpoenas of PETA employees past and present -- leading to under-oath testimonies about the grisly reality of what has and is going on at PETA headquarters -- it is unlikely that PETA would ever follow-through with these empty threats.

Their donor-funded attorneys rattle their sabers, but know they have a lot more to fear from the public disclosure that would result from a lawsuit than the animal activists who are truthfully -- and, given PETA's threats and intimidation, bravely -- reporting on PETA's atrocities against animals in the hope of bringing them to an end. When you donate to PETA, you not only fund the killing of animals, you fund the intimidation of animal lovers.

Not only does PETA kill animals, they also defend the killing of animals by others. This is a dying kitten in a Houston shelter after staff "lost" the kitten. When he was found, he was near death. His last hours were ones of suffering. Houston officials put job applicants with a history of violence, a history of criminal behavior and those who scored the lowest on city aptitude tests in animal control. When I was hired by the Houston Health Department to assess the shelter, my advice regarding staff was to fire people who abuse animals; hire those who care about them. PETA defended this shelter, urging government officials not to listen to me.

A puppy dying of parvovirus in the Houston shelter is not given anything soft to lie on as she urinates all over herself. Here she sits, unable to keep her head up, alone in a cold, barren stainless steel cage without receiving necessary veterinary care. Other shelters have a better than 90% rate of saving dogs with parvovirus. In a letter to the editor of the Houston paper, PETA publicly defended this shelter, urging Houstonians to reject my advice on the need for reform and how to do so.

The PETA solution: dead "feral" cats in a Florida shelter. PETA successfully defeated SB 1320, a law that would have clarified that nonlethal programs to neuter and release feral cats, rather than killing them, are legal in Florida. As shelters and health departments nationwide embrace trap-neuter-release programs, PETA remains a stalwart opponent of this humane alternative to killing, arguing that healthy feral cats should continue to be killed, even urging their supporters to take them to shelters or veterinarians to do so. The PETA website states that, "the most compassionate choice is to euthanize feral cats. You can ask your veterinarian to do this or, if your local shelter uses an injection of sodium pentobarbital, take the cats there." This shelter used "an injection of sodium pentobarbital," killing the cats in front of other cats, catch-poling the cats as they tried to flee while they urinated and defecated all over the kennel in fear. That is how terrified feral cats behave in shelters. Apparently to PETA, this is as it should be.

A cat in the King County, Washington shelter begs for food and water. Cats in the infirmary were not fed or given water over a three-day holiday weekend and both their food bowls and water bowls are empty. Although staff was assigned to the shelter, supervisors and staff chose to socialize instead. I was hired by the King County Council to assess the shelter. My advice: Hire supervisors who are not part of the same union so as to eliminate conflicts of interest; all staff should be given a checklist of assigned duties; and supervisors should double check that those duties have been done. In a letter to the King County Council, PETA told officials not to listen to me because I was "radical."

If PETA had its way, this dog would be killed in every shelter in America because someone says he looks like a "pit bull." According to Ingrid Newkirk, a growing number of shelters are enacting policies banning the adoption of pit bulls and requiring their automatic destruction and PETA "supports the pit bull policy."
Source: Shelby County No Kill Mission
After finishing the year saving 98% of cats and 94% of dogs, the fourth-year Shelby County, Kentucky had 90+ percent save rates, they announced they were crowded and would begin killing animals. Once again, as they have done so many times before,the Shelby County No Kill Mission, a private organization both responsible for and dedicated to ensuring that Shelby County remains No Kill, went to work and the "crisis" was averted, bringing the population down through rescue, foster and adoption.

Unlike Shelby County No Kill Mission, PETA also reached out to officials, but not to help save the animals. PETA didn't ask what they could do with their $35,000,000 a year in revenues and millions of animal-loving members to help save animals being threatened with death, as donors intended and as supporters assumed. They didn't offer to help the Shelby County shelter find homes, build temporary kennels, board animals, foster animals, adopt animals or even just get the word out across Kentucky that animals need help. Instead, PETA sent Shelby County government and shelter officials a gift basket, with a note thanking them for their decision to start killing again after four years. "Thank you for doing the right thing" wrote PETA.

These pictures reveal the truth about PETA, a reality that is deeply at odds with the public's perception of that organization as a radical animal rights group. In practice, PETA is the functional equivalent of a slaughterhouse, while their efforts to undermine the lifesaving work of animal lovers throughout the country continually derail urgently needed reforms that would further the rights of our nation's homeless dogs and cats.

By defending regressive and cruel shelters and sheltering policies that mandate killing, by calling for the death of certain groups of animals entering shelters and by injecting thousands of animals with a fatal dose of poison every year, these actions are not only inconsistent with the mission of an animal rights organization, they are the antithesis of one. Only one question remains: Why is anyone still donating to PETA?

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Shocking Photos: PETA's Secret Slaughter of Kittens, Puppies

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People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is an organization that publicly claims to represent the best interest of animals -- indeed their "ethical treatment." Yet approximately 2,000 animals pass through PETA's front door every year and very few make it out alive.

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We attract 1,700+ leaders, activists, vegan vendors, and others who care about animals. We offer sessions on abuse, organizing, and outreach skills, as well as opportunities to discuss controversial issues, enjoy delicious food, network, and recharge your batteries.

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People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA): The animal rights organization

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The Humane Society of the United States released a scathing undercover report this week exposing unsanitary and cruel conditions at a Lancaster County poultry facility.

The investigator, filming inside a giant hen house at Kreider Farms documented tightly crammed cages, live birds housed with mummified carcasses, birds trapped in wire and automatic feeders, a "blanket" of dead flies on the floor, a barn so dark workers needed headlamps and ammonia so potent workers need masks.

The video report drew national attention, broadcast on ABC World News Tonight and the New York Times. The HSUS says the deplorable conditions and extreme animal cruelty is evidence for national standards at egg farms where birds are kept in so-called "battery cages" so small they cannot stretch their wings.

The HSUS report, conducted by an investigator who worked at the facility in February and March, also revealed that hundreds of thousands of birds died of dehydration after being left for days with no water after a water source malfunction and that the facility tested positive for salmonella.

Kreider Farms, one of the largest egg producers in Pennsylvania, struck back, calling the report's findings "unfounded" and at first suggesting the film wasn't taken at their Manheim facility.

When the company learned of the report ahead of its release on Wednesday, spokesman Dave Andrews told WGAL-TV they summoned state agriculture industry officials to come and inspect them.

The company said in its press release that the "Veterinary Medical Board" completed a "spontaneous" inspection and gave the facility a "clean bill of health." It provided no additional details.

Only it was not the Veterinary Medical Board that visited the facility. The board licenses veterinarians; it does not inspect poultry farms.

Rather it was representatives from the triumvirate of agricultural power in Pennsylvania who responded to the call: The University of Pennsylvania Veterinary Medical Center, Penn State and the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture. Attempts to reach Donna Kelly of Penn Vet, Gregory Martin, a poultry expert at Penn State to discuss their findings, and the apparent discrepancy with the HSUS report, were unsuccessful.

A Department of Agriculture spokeswoman said state veterinarian Craig Schultz would not comment on the disparity in the reports.

Kreider family members are supporters of Republican Gov. Corbett, contributing $15,000 to his gubernatorial campaign in 2010.

Andrews, who confirmed one building tested positive for salmonella but it had since been cleaned and none of the eggs tested positive, called the undercover operation false and taken out of context.

"They're taking select footage by going through a facility and finding a dead bird or something that may look unsavory and they're blowing that up on camera and making this look like a representation of how we treat 5 million birds," Andrews told WGAL.

Paul Shapiro, vice president of farm animal protection for HSUS, said he was not surprised at the Kreider Farms action and the response by the agriculture industry which protects its own.

"They are charged with protecting agriculture and defending Pennsylvania agriculture," said Shapiro. "The video is quite damning."

To be sure, Kreider Farms does in fact house some its animals in sparkling clean barns. How do I know? I toured the Manheim dairy barn last year for a story on the farm's state-of-the-art nutrient waste processing. Like other members of the public who take similar tours, I witnessed cows lounging the "cow palace." where residents enjoy mist showers in the summer and waste is whisked away so quickly you could picnic on the floors.

On its website - its Facebook page quickly scrubbed of post-expose criticism - the company boasts of being "eco-friendly" and says 80 percent of its chickens would be living in luxurious housing by the end of 2011 - many of them in cage-free enclosures.

But the video suggests the public face and the private side of the sprawling farm are two different things.

In a statement released on Friday the Department of Agriculture takes allegations related to animal health and food safety "very seriously."

It said the state veterinarian visited and inspected the entire Kreider Farms Manheim facility a second time on Friday and determined "all practices, procedures and conditions met industry best practices and Pennsylvania Egg Quality Assurance Program standards."

The state said the facility has passed every state inspection over the past five years, showing high and consistent standards of flock health management at this facility but no inspection reports were provided.

The statement said the department focuses "solely on animal health issues as it does not have jurisdiction over animal welfare issues in the commonwealth."

In fact, no regulator is watching out for animal welfare issues when it comes to livestock.

[A similar rationale was made by the Bureau of Dog Law Enforcement in the past when asked why dog wardens never issued veterinary care orders or turned over cruelty cases to human society police officers. That changed after the Rendell administration ramped up inspections of commercial dog kennels and tightened enforcement beginning in 2006.)

Shapiro says it's easy for a factory farm to say it is not in violation when there are no rules on animal welfare.

But, he points out there is a connection between animal cruelty and public health.

"Crowded conditions bring on salmonella," he said. "If the company was interested in improving animal welfare they would stop giving birds less space than the industry recommends."

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Report reveals cruelty at chicken farm, ag industry disputes claims - Philly

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The Humane Society of the United States released a scathing undercover report this week exposing unsanitary and cruel conditions at a Lancaster County poultry facility. The investigator, filming inside a giant hen house at Kreider Farms documented tightly crammed cages, live birds housed with mummified carcasses, birds trapped in wire and automatic feeders, a "blanket" of dead flies on the ground, a barn so dark workers needed headlamps and ammonia so potent workers need masks.

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A Closer Look at Animals on Factory Farms

Chickens

The United States raises and slaughters almost 10 times more birds than any other type of animal. Approximately 8.5 billion chickens are killed for their meat every year, while another 300 million chickens are used in egg production. All birds-egg-laying hens, meat chickens, turkeys, ducks, geese and others-are excluded from all federal animal protection laws. By the numbers, these are the animals most urgently in need of protection. The ASPCA is focused on raising public awareness about the plight of chickens raised for meat and is working actively with companies that buy or raise chickens toward the adoption of better practices.

Many people do not realize that the breed of chicken used for modern egg production is different than the breed used for meat production. If you put them next to each other, they look almost nothing alike! Each has been strategically bred for hyper-production: egg-laying hens for high egg volume, and "meat" chickens for maximum breast meat. Both types suffer from severe physical problems brought on by genetic manipulation. Read our report to learn more about the negative impacts of selective breeding in the chicken industry.
Chickens Raised for Meat ("Broiler" Chickens)
Nearly all meat chickens are raised indoors in large sheds containing 20,000 chickens or more. The chickens live crammed together on the shed floor. Because they live in their own waste, high ammonia levels irritate and burn their eyes, throats and skin.

Modern factory-farmed chickens look very little like their wild chicken ancestors. Thanks to selective breeding-combined with low-dose antibiotics, excessive feeding and inadequate exercise-factory-farmed meat chickens grow unnaturally quickly and disproportionately. While their breasts grow large to meet market demand, their skeletons and organs lag behind. Many suffer heart failure, trouble breathing, leg weakness and chronic pain. Some cannot support their own weight and become crippled, unable to reach food and water.

To keep them eating and growing, factory farms restrict chickens' sleep by keeping the lights on almost all the time. As they grow, meat chickens become crowded together, competing for space. This constant interaction makes sleep even harder. As chickens die, their bodies are sometimes left among the living, adding to the stress and unhygienic conditions. Learn much more about this issue in our paper, A Growing Problem.
Quick Facts Progress for Chickens

Some companies are developing policies and making commitments to address the effects of fast growth rate. Check out our video explaining the problem with broiler growth rates.

Welfare-conscious companies and consumers are committing to certification programs that address the effects of fast growth and also require adequate space, more natural lighting cycles and enrichment for birds. Learn more in our Meat, Eggs and Dairy Label Guide.

Because meat chickens represent the most numerous and some of the most abused animals in our food system, please demand change by pledging to Shop With Your Heart.

Egg-Laying Hens
Most egg-laying hens in the U.S. live on factory farms in long, windowless sheds containing rows of stacked "battery cages." Up to 10 hens are packed together in one wire cage roughly the size of a file drawer. The frustration of living in such tight quarters sometimes leads to fighting. To lessen this problem, factory farms burn or slice off a portion of each hen's beak (without painkillers). Hens who become sick often do not receive veterinary care or proper euthanasia, and are left to slowly die. This is not surprising given that a single shed may house tens of thousands of birds packed closely together, with many stacked in tiered cages that make them difficult to see and access.

Where do egg-laying hens come from? A side-industry exists solely for the purpose of hatching them. Only female chicks will grow up to lay eggs, but half of the chicks born in these hatcheries are male. There is no market for the male chicks, as they are the wrong breed to raise for meat-so shortly after they hatch, they are killed by grinding, gassing, crushing or suffocation.

When a hen's egg production drops due to age, some farms will withhold proper nutrition for up to two weeks to shock the bird's body into a final laying cycle. Once this "forced molting" phase is over, a hen is "worth" very little. Some are killed on-farm while others are sent to slaughter, their battered bodies used for food scraps.
Quick Facts Progress for Hens
Pigs

The U.S. raises some 100 million pigs for food each year, the vast majority of them on industrial-scale farms known for their crowded, inhumane conditions. At just two to three weeks old, piglets are removed from their mothers and placed in large, windowless sheds without fresh air, sunlight or outdoor access. Their pens are too small and crowded for adequate movement and exercise, and have hard slatted floors that prevent natural behaviors like rooting. Ammonia fumes rise to dangerous, uncomfortable levels due to the pigs' waste.

Pigs tend to be extremely curious and intelligent, so their barren surroundings cause them extreme frustration. The tail-biting that sometimes results leads farms to cut off the ends of pigs' tails, and their teeth, without painkillers.

Most female breeding pigs (called sows) in the U.S. spend their reproductive lives confined to a gestation crate. These crates are barely bigger than the sow's body and prohibit her from turning around. Sows are artificially inseminated and kept in their gestation stalls until a few days before birth; at which time they are moved to equally restrictive farrowing crates to give birth. They remain there while nursing their young, and then are placed back in their gestation crates and re-inseminated. This cycle continues for several years, until the sows are no longer as productive and are sent to slaughter.
Quick Facts Progress for Pigs

Cattle

Cattle are raised and processed across several distinct industries, all of which, in the U.S., rely heavily on inhumane factory farming.
Beef Cattle
Cattle raised for meat are the only factory farmed animals still raised largely outdoors. However, this does not mean they have pain-free lives. They are branded, castrated and may have their horns removed without painkillers.

Sometime between the ages of six months and one year, most beef cattle are sent to live their last few months in crowded feedlots with hundreds or thousands of others. Without pasture and often without shelter, the cattle must stand in mud, ice, and their own waste.
Quick Facts Progress for Beef Cattle
Welfare-conscious consumers and companies are committing to certifications that ban feed lots and require adequate space and better diets. Learn more in our Meat, Eggs and Dairy Label Guide.
Dairy Cows
Most cows used for dairy production are kept indoors, with some having access to outdoor concrete or dirt paddocks. Many are tethered by chains or other materials around their necks in what are called "tie stalls." Unnaturally high milk production leads to mastitis, a painful bacterial infection causing a cow's udder to swell. Dairy cows often have up to two-thirds of their tails removed without painkillers. Many producers believe the udder stays cleaner this way, even though this theory has been disproven. The cows are also dehorned and/or disbudded (have their horns, or developing horn material, cut or burned off), generally without painkillers.

Just as with humans, cows only produce milk as a side effect of giving birth. To keep the milk flowing, dairy farms artificially inseminate cows once a year. Their gestation period lasts nine months, so the majority of dairy cows' lives are spent pregnant. When a calf is born, he or she is removed from the mother-generally that same day-to make the mother's milk available for collection. This is very traumatic to mother cows and to their calves. Male offspring are often raised for veal, while females become the next generation of dairy cows.

While large-scale dairy operations are typically separate from beef cattle operations, these industries are connected. Dairy cows usually meet their ends at beef slaughterhouses when, at just two to five years of age, their milk production has slowed or they are too crippled or ill to continue in the industry. At that point, they are slaughtered for beef.
Quick Facts Progress for Dairy Cows

States including California, Ohio and Rhode Island have banned tail-docking of dairy cows and we expect more to follow.

The American Veterinary Medical Association and the Association of Bovine Practitioners both oppose tail-docking for lack of evidence that it provides benefits.

Welfare-conscious consumers and companies are committing to certifications that ban tail docking and tie stalls, require outdoor access, and provide guidance to reduce stress and pain from lameness and weaning. Learn more about these third-party-audited programs in our Meat, Eggs and Dairy Label Guide.

Veal Calves
Veal is the meat of young male cattle born to dairy cows. As males, veal calves are of little use to the dairy industry, and as a dairy breed, they are inefficient beef producers.

Traditional veal meat was made pale and tender by restricting calves' diets and keeping them in stalls so small they could barely move. Increasingly, calves are housed in groups beginning at about six weeks old, but they still lack sufficient space, outdoor exercise, solid food and even the fulfillment of a most basic instinct: the need to suckle.

At an age when they would normally be nurtured and protected by their mother, veal calves are often forced to live alone with no physical contact with other cattle. And while calves normally explore their world by grazing, playing and socializing, factory-farmed veal calves are generally kept indoors with few if any environmental enrichments.
Quick Facts

The veal industry would not exist without the dairy industry. On industrial farms, calves are generally taken from their dairy-cow mothers within a day of birth to be raised for meat.

Veal calves' diets and movements are tightly restricted to keep their muscles from developing, which makes the resulting meat tender.

Progress for Veal Calves
The use of veal crates has dramatically declined since the American Veterinary Medical Association said that calves should be able to turn around and the veal industry's trade group recommended "that the entire veal industry convert to the group housing methodology."

Turkeys

Approximately 238 million turkeys are raised for meat in the U.S. annually. Like chickens, most turkeys are housed in groups on the floors of long sheds where they are denied fresh air, sunshine and pasture. They are forced to breathe dangerously high levels of ammonia emanating from their own waste.

Modern, factory-farmed turkeys look very little like their wild ancestors. For one, they are disproportionately breast-heavy (a result of genetic selection), reflecting a consumer preference for breast meat, and selective breeding has resulted in extremely accelerated growth. Their unnaturally fast and disproportionate growth causes turkeys extraordinary suffering, including pain and difficulty simply walking or breathing.

Turkeys' bodies have become so unnaturally disproportionate that they can no longer mate with one another. They are bred year-round via artificial insemination, damaging their bodies that were only meant to reproduce once per year.
Quick Facts Progress for Turkeys
Welfare-conscious consumers and companies are committing to certifications that address certain physical alterations as well as the effects of fast growth and require adequate space, better lighting programs and other enrichments. Learn more in our Meat, Eggs and Dairy Label Guide.

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The United States raises and slaughters almost 10 times more birds than any other type of animal. Approximately 8.5 billion chickens are killed for their meat every year, while another 300 million chickens are used in egg production. All birds-egg-laying hens, meat chickens, turkeys, ducks, geese and others-are excluded from all federal animal protection laws.

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ore than 9 billion chickens, along with half a billion turkeys, are slaughtered for food in the United States each year. This number represents more than 95 percent of the land animals killed for food in the country. Worldwide, more than 50 billion chickens are raised and slaughtered annually.

Chickens are sociable, intelligent animals. Studies have shown that they are able to solve problems and, unlike young children, grasp the permanence of objects (they understand that objects taken from view continue to exist). Their natural behavior includes living in stable groups of 30 or so that employ a social hierarchy (the origin of the term pecking order). The chickens in a given flock all know and recognize each other. Their communal activities include scratching and pecking for food, running around, taking dust baths, and resting. They crow and chirp in a range of some 30 meaningful vocalizations. Chickens also have a strong urge to nest, and, like most animal mothers, they nurture their young attentively and affectionately. A hen carefully tends her eggs in the nest, turning them up to five times an hour and clucking to them; remarkably, the unborn chicks chirp back to her and to one another. People who have had opportunities to become acquainted with chickens-for example, while growing up on farms or visiting farm-animal sanctuaries-often remark on how affectionate chickens can be and how they seem to have their own personalities.

Through the 1950s, even chickens raised for eventual slaughter were kept in traditional small coops of no more than 60 or so birds, with free access to the outdoors; they could nest, roost, and share space according to their natural behavior. But modern large-scale farming practices ("factory farming") give chickens no opportunity to behave according to their nature. Quite the contrary-the reality of the life and death of factory-farmed chickens, both those raised for meat and those used to lay eggs, is shocking.

As in all factory-farming industries, chicken production is designed for maximum efficiency and maximum profit. With these goals, regard for the welfare of the animals involved is a luxury that reduces profits unless the extra costs can be passed on to the consumer (as on the much-publicized but less frequently seen "free-range" meat and egg farms). The results are overcrowding, disease, high death rates, and observable unhappiness for the animals involved.
"Broiler" chickens
Many people believe that chicken, especially the breast of the chicken, is healthier to eat than "red meat." Chicken consumption has consequently risen dramatically over the last few decades as more and more people make the switch. The birds raised for meat, called "broilers" by the industry, are the product of genetic manipulation that has drastically increased breast and thigh tissue (the most popular parts of the animal) and produced a very rapid growth rate that outstrips the development of their legs and organs. Broilers raised in this way are supposed to reach "slaughter weight" at just six or seven weeks of age, but the death toll is very high. The growth of abnormally heavy bodies causes crippling and painful skeletal deformities, and the overburdening of the birds' underdeveloped cardiopulmonary systems often causes congestive heart failure before they are six weeks old. Some broiler chickens who do not succumb to these problems still die of thirst, because they are physically unable to even reach the water nozzles in their sheds. Other common causes of death pre-slaughter are heat prostration, cancer-in an animal less than seven weeks old-and infectious diseases.

Broiler-chicken facilities tend to be extremely overcrowded, with tens of thousands of birds crammed into a single closed broiler house. Each chicken is given less than a square foot of space, so hardly any floor is actually visible. The birds are unable to roam, to scratch, or, indeed, to avoid each other at all. Their instinct to live in a hierarchical community is thwarted, and social tension results. Chickens living in these stressful conditions will peck and fight with each other, which has led chicken producers to the "solution" of debeaking chicks shortly after they hatch in order to minimize damage. This debeaking process, like much else in factory farming, is run assembly-line fashion, without anesthesia; the chicks are placed beak-first into an apparatus that quickly cuts the tips off the beaks with a hot blade.

It is impossible, in such an atmosphere, to maintain health and cleanliness. The chickens' excretions pile up, and the resulting ammonia fumes become so strong that they burn the birds' eyes, and blindness results. Reports from observers say that birds with "ammonia burn" rub their eyes with their wings and emit cries of pain. Other health problems include the proliferation of Salmonella bacteria, which can remain on the slaughtered birds and so frequently cause threats to human health that special chicken-meat handling practices are invariably recommended by health authorities.

Once the chickens have attained slaughter weight, they are loaded into crowded trucks that offer no protection from extreme temperatures, and many birds die as they are shipped to processing facilities. The most efficient of these facilities kill some 8,400 birds per hour, the result of a high degree of automation. Machines run by humans automatically stun the birds, cut their throats, and scald and pluck them. First, human workers strap the live chickens into leg shackles on a moving rail, from which the birds hang upside-down as they move on to baths of electrified water, which stuns them. This is ostensibly for humane purposes, in order to render them insensible before their throats are cut, but some observers believe it is done merely to immobilize them to a degree sufficient to make further processing easier, not to desensitize them. The stunned birds move on to a mechanical blade that cuts their throats. After the chickens bleed out, they are plunged into a scalding bath that removes feathers. Unfortunately, this high-speed assembly-line process contains potential missteps. The voltage in the electrified bath may be too low, resulting in the rapid recovery of the chickens, who are then well aware of the throat-cutting machine as they approach it. The blade misses many chickens, so they consequently are boiled alive in the scalding bath.

Chickens are exempted from the USDA's Humane Methods of Slaughter Act, which mandates that animals be rendered insensible to pain before being slaughtered. The Humane Society of the United States is one of several organizations lobbying to obtain a requirement that poultry animals not be exempted from legislation that would protect them from painful, sometimes torturous, death.
Egg-laying hens
As bad as conditions are for chickens raised for meat, they are even worse for birds in the egg industry. Erik Marcus, making a comparison to the better-publicized cruelty done to veal calves, says in his book Meat Market: Animals, Ethics, and Money:

I personally believe that the average battery hen has it worse than the average veal calf. I think it's probable that a forkful of egg comes at a cost of greater suffering than a forkful of veal... For people making a gradual switch to vegetarianism out of concern for animals, I therefore believe that the first food to give up should be, not meat, but eggs.

There are about 300 million laying hens in the United States; of these, some 95 percent are kept in wire battery cages, which allow each hen an average of 67 square inches of space-less than the size of a standard sheet of paper. For perspective, a hen needs 72 square inches of space to be able to stand up straight and 303 square inches to be able to spread and flap her wings. There is no room even for the hens to perform self-comforting behaviors such as preening and bathing. Hens are usually kept eight or nine to a cage; long tiers of these cages are built one upon another in sheds that hold tens of thousands of birds, none of whom has enough room to raise a wing. Excrement falls from the top cages to the lower ones, causing the same "ammonia burn" problem as in the broiler houses. Like chickens raised for meat, laying hens are debeaked as chicks. The hens are deprived of the ability to create nests for their eggs, which instead drop through the wires of the cage for collection. This inability to engage in instinctive behavior causes great frustration.

A sad side effect of the egg-production industry is the wholesale destruction of male chicks, who are useless to the egg industry. These chicks are not used in the meat industry either, because they have not been genetically manipulated for meat production. Male chicks are ground up in batches while still alive, suffocated in trash cans, or gassed.

The methods used to maximize production include manipulation of lighting to change the hens' environment and hence their biological cycles; unnaturally long periods of simulated daylight encourage laying. Periodic forced molting creates an additional laying cycle: during this time, the hens are kept in darkness and put on a "starvation" diet (reduced-calorie feed) or starved altogether for up to two weeks.

Caged in this way, hens are unable to exercise, and constant egg production leaches calcium from their bones; these two factors cause severe osteoporosis, which leads to broken bones and great pain for the hens. The syndrome is called Cage-Layer Fatigue. Additionally, the wires of the cage injure the feet of the chickens, as the hens must sit in essentially one position their whole lives with their feet pressing into the wires. They rub against the sides of the cage, which causes severe feather loss and skin abrasions. In essence, hens who would normally be able to use their whole bodies and have lives as full as those of any other animal in nature are reduced to immobilized egg-laying machines, existing for that one purpose only.

The hens live like this for about two years or less, until their bodies are exhausted from the stresses of constant laying and their egg production decreases. At that point, they are shipped to slaughter to be turned into animal feed or sometimes human food or are simply discarded. In 2003 a public outcry brought attention to a California ranch that was reported to have discarded thousands of live hens using a wood chipper; no charges were brought because, as it turned out, this is a common industry practice.
What about free-range eggs and meat?
Many people, distressed by learning about these conditions, pledge to eat only "free-range" eggs and meat, which they imagine come from chickens that have free access to the outdoors and fresh air. There are some facilities like that, but in reality, there is no uniform standard for the free-range designation. No regulations exist that describe the size of the outdoor area or the number of birds allowed in a single shed, for example. A free-range chicken facility need only be cage-free and provide "access" to the outdoors through a door. In practice, the facilities may be windowless and as overcrowded as any other, and only a few chickens may ever be able to reach the door at all. Further, the breeds used are likely to be the standard ones used in non-free-range operations: free-range broilers are, like other broilers, bred for such high meat production that the birds are unable to move about freely even if they want to, and both broiler and laying hens are susceptible to the same life-threatening conditions of heart failure and osteoporosis as any other agribusiness chicken.

Free-range laying hens, like all other laying hens, are killed after about a year or two when their egg production drops. They are usually slaughtered under the same conditions described above. Like battery chickens, free-range chickens come from hatcheries that kill the male chicks.
Toward a better future
Movements are afoot across the globe to improve conditions for chickens and other poultry animals. The European Union has agreed to abolish the use of battery cages by 2012. The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and other organizations are pushing for such a law, and various states and communities in the United States have passed or are considering similar laws. And there have been other successes. In 2000, McDonald's Corp. announced new policies that mandate that their suppliers increase space for caged laying hens and stop using forced molting at the facilities that produce their eggs; they also plan to phase out the practice of debeaking. In March 2007 another fast-food giant, Burger King, promised to implement new animal-welfare policies that include provisions for buying a certain percentage of its eggs from cage-free producers and some of its chickens from producers that use more-humane slaughter methods. The supermarket chains Whole Foods and Wild Oats have also moved away from using and selling eggs from caged chickens.

Meanwhile, vegetarians, vegans, and animal-welfare organizations continue to emphasize that meat and egg consumption are not necessary for anyone's health and that people concerned about animals and ethics should give strong consideration to going vegetarian.

May 4, 2007, was International Respect for Chickens Day, an annual event launched in 2005 by the nonprofit organization United Poultry Concerns (UPC) to "celebrate the dignity, beauty and life of chickens and to protest against the bleakness of their lives in farming operations." On that day, volunteers in the United States and Canada created displays, handed out information, and took other actions to publicize the miserable conditions in which billions of chickens raised for food spend their lives. UPC was established to address the plight of domesticated fowl used for food production. As UPC puts it, "These birds are the largest number of abused warm-blooded animals in the world. Along with the billions of birds who are slaughtered for 'food' each year, millions more suffer in laboratories, get dumped in animal shelters, and die miserably in poultry houses without anyone knowing that they ever lived."

Images: Laying hens on factory farm in wire cages- © Farm Sanctuary; five battery hens crowded in a cage 16 inches wide- © Farm Sanctuary; male chicks shortly after birth, disposed of in a trash bin- Courtesy of PETA; "free-range" chickens in The Netherlands-© Floris Leeuwenberg- The Cover Story/Corbis.

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Books We Like

Meat Market: Animals, Ethics, and Money
Erik Marcus (2005)

Meat Market is at least three kinds of book: an exposé of the modern farmed-animal industry; a strategic guide for a future social movement on behalf of farmed animals; and a compendium of essential information on issues crucially related to farmed-animal rights and welfare, including original assessments of standard arguments against meat eating and animal testing. In vivid yet dispassionate detail Marcus describes the immense suffering of chickens, pigs, dairy cows, and veal calves on factory farms, showing how the miserable conditions in which these poor creatures live and die are the inevitable result of the industrialization of animal agriculture since the mid-20th century and the relentless pressures for ever greater efficiency and profit.

Because it is no longer economically viable to raise farmed animals except in a factory setting (the family farm is long dead), there is no ethically acceptable alternative to the complete "dismantlement" of animal agriculture, as Marcus calls the movement he envisions. Marcus does not underestimate political power of the industry he means to take down: in the United States, corporate meat and dairy producers receive significant taxpayer subsidies and lobby effectively against any reform; they even have an official voice in formulating government guidelines on human nutrition. Yet, as Marcus persuasively argues, the industry is vulnerable to "an honest, accurate message that primarily emphasizes the ethical problems with animal agriculture," because even the vast majority of meat eaters abhor the cruel treatment of animals and would be revolted by the abusive practices on which animal agriculture is built, if only they knew about them. Meat Market, in one of its guises, is exactly that kind of message.

The book also includes eight supplementary essays by vegan and vegetarian activists, extensive endnotes providing a wealth of additional information and argument, and a list of recommended readings on veganism and farmed-animal protection.

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Factory-Farmed Chickens: Their Difficult Lives and Deaths

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ore than 9 billion chickens, along with half a billion turkeys, are slaughtered for food in the United States each year. This number represents more than 95 percent of the land animals killed for food in the country. Worldwide, more than 50 billion chickens are raised and slaughtered annually.

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How far should people go to protect animals?

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How far should people go to protect animals?

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I believe it is important to take important measures in protecting animals, today there is endangered species dying out. I'm a huge animal lover. I don't want my kids growing up not being able to see a tiger or even a polar bear.

When it comes to animals we eat, such as cows, pigs, fish, and chickens. There should be specific measures to take when being used as food. There should be a way for them not to feel pain. I've seen videos where people kill the cows while still alive. Same goes for the chickens, many farmers put hormones in their chicken food to make them grow faster, Chickens grow up to the size for turkeys in literally less than two weeks. This isn't just harmful for the chickens but humans as well. Eating hormones also effects us as well.

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Almost all of us grew up eating meat, wearing leather, and going to circuses and zoos. Many of us bought our beloved "pets" at pet shops, had guinea pigs, and kept beautiful birds in cages. We wore wool and silk, ate McDonald's burgers, and fished. We never considered the impact of these actions on the animals involved. For whatever reason, you are now asking the question: Why should animals have rights?
In his book Animal Liberation, Peter Singer states that the basic principle of equality does not require equal or identical treatment; it requires equal consideration. This is an important distinction when talking about animal rights. People often ask if animals should have rights, and quite simply, the answer is "Yes!" Animals surely deserve to live their lives free from suffering and exploitation. Jeremy Bentham, the founder of the reforming utilitarian school of moral philosophy, stated that when deciding on a being's rights, "The question is not 'Can they reason?' nor 'Can they talk?' but 'Can they suffer?'" In that passage, Bentham points to the capacity for suffering as the vital characteristic that gives a being the right to equal consideration. The capacity for suffering is not just another characteristic like the capacity for language or higher mathematics. All animals have the ability to suffer in the same way and to the same degree that humans do. They feel pain, pleasure, fear, frustration, loneliness, and motherly love. Whenever we consider doing something that would interfere with their needs, we are morally obligated to take them into account.

Supporters of animal rights believe that animals have an inherent worth-a value completely separate from their usefulness to humans. We believe that every creature with a will to live has a right to live free from pain and suffering. Animal rights is not just a philosophy-it is a social movement that challenges society's traditional view that all nonhuman animals exist solely for human use. As PETA founder Ingrid Newkirk has said, "When it comes to pain, love, joy, loneliness, and fear, a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy. Each one values his or her life and fights the knife." Watch a video with Ingrid Newkirk from the 2015 Animal Rights National Conference here.

Only prejudice allows us to deny others the rights that we expect to have for ourselves. Whether it's based on race, gender, sexual orientation, or species, prejudice is morally unacceptable. If you wouldn't eat a dog, why eat a pig? Dogs and pigs have the same capacity to feel pain, but it is prejudice based on species that allows us to think of one animal as a companion and the other as dinner.

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Almost all of us grew up eating meat, wearing leather, and going to circuses and zoos. Many of us bought our beloved "pets" at pet shops, had guinea pigs, and kept beautiful birds in cages. We wore wool and silk, ate McDonald's burgers, and fished.

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Eagerness to treat animals kindly does not justify imposing one's hopes and dreams for them on human beings.

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Earlier this week, New York Times columnist Frank Bruni declared that "an era of what might be called animal dignity is upon us." If he merely meant to draw attention to the fact that we're more attached than ever to our pets - spending billions of dollars a year on veterinary care and paraphernalia, even making places for them in our wills - then the point would be undeniable.

But that was not Bruni's aim. Beyond these sociological observations, Bruni was writing to endorse the movement that's working to establish the legal personhood of animals and grant them legal rights.

I agree that this movement is important and in the long run may very well succeed in its efforts. But I don't at all think we should be cheering it on. On the contrary, it's something that all humanists should find deeply troubling.

Let me be clear: I'm all in favor of treating animals decently, with special sensitivity to their pain and suffering. By all means, let's pass stricter regulation of factory farming and laboratory experimentation.

But the basis of these reforms should not be any quality we presume the animals themselves possess. It should grow out of an expansion of the sphere of human concern and sympathy, along the lines of the old aristocratic ideal of noblesse oblige - the notion that one's superiority obliges one to act nobly toward commoners. In other words, we should treat animals decently not because they're just like human beings, but rather because they're not.

The animal rights movement, by contrast, invariably takes the opposite tack - either reducing us to the level of animals or attempting to raise them up to ours. Both should be resisted.

The founding father of the animal rights movement, Princeton University ethicist Peter Singer, takes the first approach. In a series of writings going back to his seminal book Animal Liberation (1975), Singer has developed a version of utilitarianism that denies any special status to human beings, and claims that the only significant moral consideration is the degree of pleasure or pain experienced by a sentient being. Since both humans and (other) animals are sufficiently sentient to endure pain, we have as much of an ethical obligation to avoid inflicting it on animals as we do on humans.

Provided that specific humans and animals are equally sentient, that is. In cases where that equality is unclear, Singer is notoriously willing, for consistency's sake, to endorse infanticide for (ostensibly pre-sentient) human newborns - and to say that we have fewer moral obligations toward severely disabled human beings than we do toward certain highly evolved animals.

Once the dividing line between humans and animals has been erased, it's hard to uphold any fundamental ethical distinction between them.

Steven Wise, a law professor and founder of an organization - the Nonhuman Rights Project - that fights to establish the legal personhood and rights of animals, takes the opposite approach. (The group's most recent lawsuits along these lines were dismissed by a judge in mid-December.) Rather than trying to establish human and animal equality on the low basis of commonly experienced pleasure and pain, Wise works to elevate animals to the human level. Chimps and bonobos can reason, they exhibit emotions, and they live in and contribute to primitive cultures. That makes them more than things; it means they possess the same degree of dignity as fully functional humans.

That claim is crucial. Philosophers and lawyers bicker about what grounds human rights. Do we acknowledge them and use government power to protect against their violation simply because we have a history of doing it? Does a right just pop into existence as soon as a certain number of human beings clamors for getting a law passed in its name?

In the end, though, the only way to make sense of the spiritually wounding experience of having a fundamental human right violated - even in places with no history of codified legal rights - is to presume that rights protect the violation of intrinsic dignity. To kill an individual is wrong, in this view, whether or not a particular political community publicly recognizes a legal right to life - because to kill an individual is to violate the intrinsic dignity that he or she possesses simply by virtue of being human.

Wise (like Frank Bruni) understands that if he can demonstrate that certain higher animals possess the same intrinsic dignity that human beings do, the law within liberal democracies will be obliged to recognize that such animals are persons possessing at least some fundamental, inviolable rights.

So why not do it? Because there's too much at stake with regard to human self-knowledge. We should do more to protect animals from needless pain and suffering, but not at the cost of denying so much of what makes human beings distinctive.

As I pointed out several years ago in an essay for Commentary magazine (currently trapped behind a paywall), animal rights advocates are right to note that humans and animals can each be motivated by hunger, but they can't explain "a person's choice to starve himself for a cause." They recognize that humans and animals both crave sex, but they can't explain how or why "some choose to embrace celibacy for the sake of its noble purity." They convincingly highlight the tendency of humans and animals to avoid pain and bodily harm, but they can't explain a man's "willingness to face certain death on the battlefield when called upon to do so by his country. Still less can [they] explain why stories of such sacrifice sometimes move us to tears."

Human dignity is inextricably linked to these moral qualities, which grow out of and reside in a shared public world defined by distinctively human ideas of virtue and vice, beauty and ugliness, right and wrong. That's why I concluded my essay by insisting that to demonstrate that it possesses inviolable rights, a chimp or bonobo would need to do nothing less than "stand up and, led by a love of justice and a sense of self-worth, insist that the world recognize and respect its dignity." That's what it would take to prove that the members of an animal species possess the same intrinsic moral worth as human beings.

Anything short of that is an expression of human self-deception. And blindness about all that we are. Losing sight of that reality and truth in an act of advocacy-driven conceptual obfuscation is simply too high a price to pay, even for the promise of alleviating the suffering of our closest cousins in the animal kingdom.

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Earlier this week, New York Times columnist Frank Bruni declared that "an era of what might be called animal dignity is upon us." If he merely meant to draw attention to the fact that we're more attached than ever to our pets - spending billions of dollars a year on veterinary care and paraphernalia, even making places for them in our wills - then the point would be undeniable.

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Santa Clara Magazine Web Exclusives - Do animals have rights?

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The theological status of animals as moral beings, by Paul J. Fitzgerald, S.J.

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The case against animal rights

A number of arguments are put forward against the idea that animals have rights.

Animals don't think

Animals are not really conscious

Animals were put on earth to serve human beings

Animals don't have souls

Animals don't behave morally

Animals are not members of the 'moral community'

Animals lack the capacity for free moral judgment

Animals don't think

St Thomas Aquinas taught that animals acted purely on instinct while human beings engaged in rational thought.

This distinction provided the frontier between human beings and animals, and was regarded as a suitable criterion for assessing a being's moral status.

Animals are not really conscious

The French philosopher Rene Descartes, and many others, taught that animals were no more than complicated biological robots.

This meant that animals were not the sort of thing that was entitled to have any rights - or indeed any moral consideration at all.

Animals were put on earth to serve human beings

This view comes originally from the Bible, but probably reflects a basic human attitude towards other species.

Christian theologians developed this idea - St Augustine taught that "by a most just ordinance of the Creator, both their [animals'] life and their death are subject to our use."

St Thomas Aquinas taught that the universe was constructed as a hierarchy in which beings at a lower level were there to serve those above them.

As human beings were above animals in this hierarchy they were entitled to use animals in any way they wanted.

However, as C.S. Lewis pointed out:

Animals don't have souls

Christian theologians used to teach that only beings with souls deserved ethical consideration.

Animals did not have souls and therefore did not have any moral rights.

This argument is no longer regarded as useful, because the idea of the soul is very controversial and unclear, even among religious people. Furthermore it is not possible to establish the existence of the soul (human or animal) in a valid experimental way.

This also makes it difficult to argue, as some theologians have done, that animals should have rights because they do have souls.

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This article discusses whether non-human animals have rights, and what is meant by animal rights.

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I believe animals do have rights. Why is it there's people that have up to 5 dogs or cats in their household, and treat them as their own family members. Yet there's other animals being slaughtered mercilessly.

Many of the animals today, do not have any rights. Only certain house pets such cats and dogs, have legal protection

People argue that were animals too, and we evolved from apes. Animals carry the same characteristics such as humans. They can feel sadness, happiness, and pain.