And in an industrial world where the animals are increasingly seen as a commodity or product to make money on haven’t improved the animals well-being. Rather, the intensification of our agriculture sector has made their life worse. And this cruelty is happening around the world. Even in the Swedish meat industry animal cruelty is common. And this even though the Swedish meat industry often and proudly proclaims itself for having "the world’s best animal welfare", one can see the awful consequences of industrial farming. The latest example of this is the Animal Rights Alliance disclosure earlier last year on the abuse and neglect of Swedish pigs.

The following disturbing photos in this blog post has all been provided by the animal rights organization Farm Sanctuary. The organization, which is based in New York, was founded in 1986. Farm Sanctuary document the abuses of factory farms, slaughterhouses, and stockyards, rescue animals from these conditions, rehabilitating and caring for animals at shelters in New York and California, as well as running advocacy and education campaigns on these issues.

Confined in metal and concrete pens with slatted floors, these pigs will live in these conditions until they reach slaughter weight of 250 pounds.

Female pigs used for breeding (breeding sows) spend most of their lives confined in gestation crates so narrow that they cannot turn around.

As you can see, a female pig in a gestation crate has no freedom of movement, and barely even has room to lay down.

Most beef cattle spend the last few months of their lives at feedlots, crowded by the thousands into dusty, manure-laden holding pens. The air is thick with harmful bacteria and particulate matter, and the animals are at a constant risk for respiratory disease. Feedlot cattle are routinely implanted with growth-promoting hormones, and they are fed unnaturally rich diets designed to fatten them quickly and profitably. Because cattle are biologically suited to eat a grass-based, high fiber diet, their concentrated feedlot rations contribute to metabolic disorders.

To raise calves destined to be slaughtered for veal, the calves are confined in crates about two feet wide and are tethered to the front of the crate with a chain around the neck. These calves will be slaughtered when 4-5 months old.

Dairy cattle make up the largest percentage of downed animals in factory farming, 75%. Too sick or injured to walk, this dairy cow is left in the stockyard while a calf looks on.

Though there have been moves in Europe to phase out battery cages for hens, in the US the vast majority of egg laying chickens are confined in battery cages such as these. These cages have wire floors and four or five hens are commonly packed into each cage. Obviously they cannot stretch their wings or exhibit any normal chicken behavior.

At chicken hatcheries, chicks enter the factory farming world packed into huge drawers.

Behind a hatchery for laying hens, unwanted male chicks–which are of no economic value to the egg industry–are simply tossed into a dumpster with shells and other waste.

Because commercial turkeys have been bred to have such unnaturally large breasts, to satisfy consumer preference for breast meat, they cannot mount and reproduce naturally. Thus, artificial insemination must be used for reproduction.

Due to the severely overcrowded conditions they will face, baby turkeys have the upper part of their beaks seared off so that injuries caused by pecking one another can be minimized.

Although not confined in cages like egg laying chickens, chickens raised for meat are packed so tightly in grower houses that each chicken is alloted about half a square foot of space. If that isn’t bad enough, because broiler chickens have been bred to grow so quickly (twice as fast and large as their ancestors) the organs and skeleton don’t always keep up with this growth. The heart and lungs can’t support the unnatural body mass, resulting in heart failure and large numbers of deaths a year due to health conditions.

Up to 10,000 chickens are often packed into cages for shipping to the slaughterhouse. On route, they are offered no protection from the elements and a certain percentage of birds are expected to die on each journey due to cold or heat.

At the slaughterhouse, chickens are hung up by their feet fully conscious. Although some slaughterhouses stun the birds by passing them through an electrified bath of water, US federal law specifically excludes chickens from the Humane Slaughter Act mandating that animals be stunned before being killed. However, often times the birds are not rendered unconscious by the shock and proceed, still hung by their feet, to have their necks cut by a mechanical blade. Unfortunately if the bird is not sufficiently stunned, the blade may not actually kill it and the animal proceeds to the next stage in the process while still alive. The birds are then submerged in boiling water to scald them and remove feathers. It’s estimated that millions of chickens a year in the US are ultimately killed in the slaughterhouse by this last step, being boiled alive.

Photo credit: Marshall Astor – Food Pornographer

Kathy Freston, a “self-help author and personal growth and spirituality counselor”, has posted an interesting article over at the Huffington Post about the consequences of eating meat. Or in this case if we didn’t:

If everyone went vegetarian just for one day, the U.S. would save:

• 100 billion gallons of water, enough to supply all the homes in New England for almost 4 months;
• 1.5 billion pounds of crops otherwise fed to livestock, enough to feed the state of New Mexico for more than a year;
• 70 million gallons of gas–enough to fuel all the cars of Canada and Mexico combined with plenty to spare;
• 3 million acres of land, an area more than twice the size of Delaware;
• 33 tons of antibiotics.

If everyone went vegetarian just for one day, the U.S. would prevent:

• Greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to 1.2 million tons of CO2, as much as produced by all of France;
• 3 million tons of soil erosion and $70 million in resulting economic damages;
• 4.5 million tons of animal excrement;
• Almost 7 tons of ammonia emissions, a major air pollutant.

The meat industry is a big burden for our climate as it is responsible for about one fifth of all greenhouse gas emissions, in the world. That means they currently pollutes more than the whole transport sector. The cattle release CO2, methane and other greenhouse gases. They also use a lot of land areas, around 25% of the earths total land area. And about one third of all farm areas are used to grow food for the cattle. And by year 2050 the meat production is expected to increase with 50%.

So just like Rajendra Pachauri, who currently chairs the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) since 2002 and who recently won the Nobel Peace Price along with Al Gore, said “that among options for mitigating climate change, changing diets is something one should consider.”

“The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has estimated that direct emissions from meat production account for about 18% of the world’s total greenhouse gas emissions,” he told BBC News.

“So I want to highlight the fact that among options for mitigating climate change, changing diets is something one should consider.”

You can read more about this over at BBC News.

We all know that the meat industry is a dangerous threat to our climate and overall a questionable industry. The cattle release CO2, methane and other greenhouse gases. They also use a lot of land areas, around 25% of the earths total land area. And about one third of all farm areas are used to grow food for the cattle.

According to studies the meat industry is responsible for about one fifth of all greenhouse gas emissions, in the world. That means they currently pollutes more than the whole transport sector. And by year 2050 the meat production is expected to increase with 50%.

And then I haven’t even mentioned the rather obvious animal suffering.

But maybe, if some “environmentally concerned scientists” get their way, the meat you’ll eat in the future will be produced inside a lab. Scientists from the In Vitro Meat Consortium are currently trying to produce meat from muscle tissue for human consumption.

This laboratory-grown meat, or in vitro meat, should not be confused with “imitation meat”, which often is produced from soy or gluten. The in vitro meat will be actual animal flesh, but flesh that never has been part of a living animal.

The in vitro meat would, according to the In Vitro Meat Consortium, be healthier and contain fewer diseases. It would also reduce animal suffering and have positive effect on the environment.

But some people are concerned that the in vitro meat will be of lesser quality and contain unresolved health risks than ordinary meat. Others worries that the in vitro meat will be different in appearance, taste, smell and even texture and thus reduce its appeal for consumers.

Either way the in vitro meat is far from the market today. More research needs to be done and there are currently several obstacles that need to be solved first:

• Proliferation of muscle cells: Although it is not very difficult to make stem cells divide, for meat production it is necessary that they divide at a quick pace. This requirement has some overlap with the medical branch of tissue engineering.
• Culture medium: Proliferating cells need a food source to grow and develop. The growth medium should be a well-balanced mixture of ingredients and growth factors. Depending on the motives of the researchers, the growth medium has additional requirements.
  • Commercial: The growth medium should be cheap to produce.
  • Environmental: The production of the growth medium shouldn’t have a negative impact on the environment. This means that the production should be energetically favorable. Additionally, the ingredients should come from completely renewable sources. Minerals from mined sources are in this case not possible, as are synthetically produced nutrients which use non-renewable sources.
  • Animal welfare: The growth medium should be devoid of animal sources, although they may initially be more useful than other sources.
  • Space travel: The growth medium should be almost completely created from the waste products in the space ship, if it is to be used in space travel.
• Bioreactors: Nutrients and oxygen need to be delivered close to each growing cell, on the scale of millimeters. In animals this job is handled by blood vessels. A bioreactor should emulate this function in an efficient manner. The usual approach is the creation of a sponge-like matrix in which the cells can grow, and perfusing it with the growth medium.

From Wikipedia.

Although more research needs to be done there is progress in this area, especially in Europe.

M. A. Benjaminson from Touro College performed the first, actual, research about in vitro meat. Benjaminson managed to grow muscle tissue from a goldfish in a laboratory setting.

And in 2004 researchers from Europe formed the non-profit organization New Harvest. According to them laboratory-grown meat in a processed form, like sausages and hamburgers, “may become commercially available within several years”.

In April 2005 the Dutch government granted a two million euro subsidy for a laboratory-grown meat project by Henk Haagsman at the University of Amsterdam.

At a workshop held at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences on June 15, 2007 the In Vitro Meat Consortium was established with the goal “to facilitate the establishment of a large-scale process industry for the production of muscle tissue for human consumption through concerted R&D efforts and attraction of funding to fuel these efforts.”