Factory Farming
Protecting Animals in Democracy is calling for measures
to end the factory farming of animals - including broiler chickens,
turkeys, ducks, other birds, pigs and cows - through measures such
as reduced stocking densities, decreased growth rates, banning of
cruel methods designed to maximise productivity, mandatory provision
of enrichment to enable animals to better fulfil behavioural needs,
banning of genetic modification of farmed animals, and reform of
economic support to discourage factory farming.
Hundreds of millions of animals are intensively - or 'factory'
- farmed in Britain every year. Many of the techniques involved
are acknowledged to cause severe physical and psychological suffering.
To take just one example, more than 800 million chickens were slaughtered
in the UK during 2003 to provide poultry meat. The life span of
an unconfined chicken can be up to 10 years, yet table fowls or
broilers reach adult size and are slaughtered at six weeks of age.
These enforced and unnaturally rapid growth rates mean that the
animals spend a significant period of their short lives in chronic
pain, due to crippling lameness or heart disease. Furthermore, around
100,000 chicks/birds die every day because of a number of ailments
related to their lack of fitness. (1) Professor
John Webster of Bristol University describes the chronic pain suffered
by broilers as 'the single most severe, systematic example of man's
inhumanity to another sentient animal.' (2)
Anyone who has had experience of looking after hens cannot fail
to be outraged by the broiler industry.
Another cruel practice that the current law permits is the treatment
of breeding sows. Wild pigs isolate themselves from the herd before
giving birth and build a nest of twigs and leaves. They give birth
to litters of five or six piglets in seclusion and comfort and rejoin
the herd a few days later. The contrast with what the law allows
to happen to pigs on farms could not be greater.
Four in five sows in the UK are confined to farrowing crates before
they give birth, a profound welfare insult which frustrates all
of these powerful natural instincts and represents a severe curtailment
of their need to express normal behaviour. Farrowing crates, lined
up next to one another, provide no privacy and no movement. Sows
can stand, sit and lie (although not without some difficulty) but
they can neither walk nor turn around in the crates. The law says
they must be given straw with which to carry out nesting behaviour
- but not if the crates have slatted floors to drain urine and manure,
probably the most common kind of crate. Sadly, their nesting instinct
is so powerful that they will try to do so anyway, scraping at the
barren floor with their snouts and trotters.
The farrowing crate is unarguably profoundly detrimental to the
physical and psychological welfare of the sow, but alternatives
are not adopted for financial reasons. (3)
80% of the public would like to see better welfare conditions for
farmed animals in Britain. (4)
Our question to candidates in the 2005 General Election
was: Do you support measures to end the factory farming of animals
- including broiler chickens, turkeys, ducks, other birds, pigs
and cows - through measures such as reduced stocking densities,
decreased growth rates, banning of cruel methods designed to maximise
productivity, mandatory provision of enrichment to enable animals
to better fulfil behavioural needs, banning of genetic modification
of farmed animals, and reform of economic support to discourage
factory farming? YES / NO
Further information:
REFERENCES:
- Source: RSPCA
- Quoted in RSPCA (2001) Behind closed doors: the
truth about chickens bred for meat. P. 9.
- See www.viva.org.uk/campaigns/pigs/farrowing/farrowing.htm
- Macnaghten, p. 46.
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