This photograph was taken in 2006 on an intensive livestock farm in Canada.Notice the windows, the bedding, and the snoozing, contented sows.
From peta factsheet
"Factory Farming: Mechanized Madness"
The green pastures and idyllic barnyard scenes of years past, which are still portrayed in children’s books, have been replaced by windowless metal sheds, wire cages, gestation crates, and other confinement systems—what is now known as “factory farming.”
Well peta you hit the nail on the head there "portrayed in children’s books" is exactly where the "green pastures and idyllic barnyard scenes" exist because they never did exist in real life.
Prior to the advancements in technology and the need, driven by an ever increasing population, farming was a very risky business for humans and animals alike. Animals lived in cold draughty buildings or outdoors where they were subject to cold or heat, wind and rain, to predators, and every disease known that blew in with the wind or on visiting animals, humans or vehicles.
Farmed animals have no federal legal protection from horrific abuses that would be illegal if they were inflicted on dogs or cats: neglect, mutilations and drug regimens that cause chronic pain and crippling, transport through all weather extremes, and inhumane slaughter. Yet farmed animals are no less sensitive, intelligent, or capable of feeling pain than are the dogs or cats whom we cherish as companions.
Horrific abuses? Mutilations? Drug regimens? Chronic pain and crippling?
And these things benefit the producer in what way exactly?
Deprivation and Disease
The factory-farming system of modern agriculture strives to produce the most meat, milk, and eggs as quickly and cheaply as possible—and in the smallest amount of space possible.
And guess what? By using the smallest amount of space we achieve the following benefits to society:
Affordable meat products
Affordable poultry products
Better standards of health and care for the animals (compared to pre 1960 farming methods)
Better working conditions for the stockman (compared to pre 1960 farming methods)
More land available for wildlife/human recreation than there would be with less intensive farming methods.
The virtual certainty that global famine will never happen.
Cows, calves, pigs, chickens, turkeys, ducks, geese, rabbits, and other animals are kept in small cages or stalls, where they are often unable to turn around.
Pigs in some countries are sometimes kept in gestation crates. Layer chickens are sometimes kept in battery cages. Veal calves are kept individually, usually in small huts with an outside area. Rabbits are usually kept in cages.
As for the other animals? Tut,tut,tut, peta. Methinks you exagerate to gain effect.
They are deprived of exercise so that all their energy goes toward producing flesh, eggs, or milk for human consumption. They are fed drugs that fatten them faster, and they are genetically manipulated to grow faster or produce much more milk or eggs than they would naturally.
Oh dear peta, you do come up with some rubbish. Where do you get it from? inbred's warped brain?
Intensively farmed livestock are not fed drugs to fatten them faster. They are fed good, wholesome food that is very expensive. Diets are carefully formulated to meet the needs of the animal. Feeds contain primarily wheat and barley, supplemented with whatever else may be available, such as pulses.
genetically manipulated to grow faster or produce much more milk or eggs than they would naturally?
God give me strength! No. Animals produce the amount of milk, meat or eggs that they produce because the poor producing animals are culled out. There's nothing new about this, its been going on for thousands of years. Farmers have always selected their best animals to produce the next generation.
