Animal Aid: Animal farming

ANIMAL FARMING

Animal farming

Is factory farming making you ill?

Each year in the UK, around 1,000 million animals are killed for food. This figure doesn’t include fish, who are killed in such vast numbers that they are counted in tonnes.

Modern intensive farming exists to produce meat, dairy and products as quickly and cheaply as possible. To keep production costs down the animals are given the bare minimum they need to survive. They are fattened in huge, dirty, cramped sheds and deprived of everything that makes life worth living. They can hardly stretch their wings or legs and will never be able to roam.

Most farmed animals are slaughtered at just a few weeks or months old. Apologists for the industry pretend that, because the animals are purpose-bred on a farm, it is OK to treat them cruelly and then kill and eat them. Yet these animals are sentient creatures who feel pain and fear just like a cat, dog, or, indeed, a human being.

Animal Aid campaigns for better animal welfare in order to lessen the suffering farmed animals endure. But, above all, we promote the adoption of an animal-free diet as the best single step anyone can take to stop cruelty to animals.

Markets

So long as animals are raised and slaughtered for meat and dairy products, Animal Aid believes that they should be spared the wholly unnecessary additional suffering of a day at market.