How This Little Piggy Gets to Market

Pigs are friendly and gregarious and are counted among the most intelligent of the domesticated beasts. Those who raise pigs—the ones who care about their animals—say that they’re as smart and as loving as dogs or cats; they enjoy music, bask in the sun, and play with toys. They’re also very clean animals that only wallow in mud to cool off and keep away flies. All of this makes it especially horrifying when you learn how they’re treated in factory farms.

Mother pigs on farms in the United States live out most of their lives in gestation crates that are only six feet in length and two feet wide—too small for them to even turn around. They display signs of boredom and stress when confined in such a manner, biting the bars of the cage
and gnashing their teeth. Piglets’ tails are often routinely cut off so they won’t bite each other on it, a neurotic
behavior that only occurs in confinement. Piglets are taken away from their mothers three weeks after birth, then packed into pens until they are singled out to be raised for breeding or for meat. Often, the piglets’ teeth are chipped off with pliers to further discourage them from biting each other.

For transport, pigs are stuffed into trucks with no food or water and without any temperature regulation. During the midwestern winters, they often freeze on the sides of the trucks or die from dehydration. According to numbers provided by the pork industry, over a hundred thousand pigs die on their way to slaughterhouses each year, and over four hundred thousand arrive crippled due to barbaric transport practices.

At the slaughterhouse, the pigs are stunned with an electrical charge to their brain or heart which, when done correctly, immediately renders them
unconscious before they’re tossed into tanks of scalding water which softens their skin and removes their hair. However, stunning is often done incorrectly—meaning that the pigs are still conscious and already in severe pain when they’re thrown into the scalding water. Audits of factory farms by
the USDA and independent organizations continually find scores of slaughter rule violations. One PETA investigation uncovered a plant in Oklahoma where workers killed pigs by slamming their heads against the floor and beating them with hammers.

Fish Have Feelings Too

Some vegetarians think that eating fish is a suitable alternative because they believe that fish aren’t subjected to the torture that cattle and pigs experience. This isn’t the case. As an effort to help curb the world hunger crisis, fish farming or aquaculture has become quite popular. Several researchers have found that, as a direct result of aquaculture, some populations of herring, mackerel, sardines, and other fish low in the marine food chain are in danger of disappearing altogether from the world’s oceans. Just like cattle, chickens, and pigs, raising large numbers of fish in a closed, unnatural environment puts an unusual amount of stress on the fish, which increases possibility of outbreaks of disease both on the farm and in the surrounding waters. This in its turn has led to an increase in the use of chemicals and antibiotics to control the outbreaks.

Fish are also poorly treated on fish farms. As many as forty thousand fish are kept in one small cage with barely enough water to survive. Fish in the wild can swim thousands of miles during the duration of their life. Caged fish can hardly move. Most consumers are not aware that the fish they are eating come from fish farms. In 1990, about 6 percent of the salmon
consumed in the world were the product of fish farms. By 1998, the number was 40 percent. Ten years later, the number is even higher. Unfortunately, many people make the false assumption that farmed fish is more environmentally benign. Yet, aquaculture causes enormous waste problems. For example, caged salmon farmed in Scotland contaminate coastal waters with waste that is produced by a whopping eight million people. Other repercussions of fish farming, in addition to coastal pollution, include the destruction of natural landscapes and forests, and the displacement of people living in those areas. In 2000, a report by the New Internationalist stated that the environmental damage caused by fish farming could be compared to that of replacing tropical rain forests with cattle ranches. Unfortunately, the fish farming industry has basically followed in the footsteps of the cattle, poultry, and pork industry.

To sum up, if you are becoming a vegetarian based on practical, moral, or ethical reasons, consider cutting fish out of your diet as well as beef, poultry, and pork. There are viable alternatives that are healthier for all.