“Misery on the menu” describes what’s done to animals used for food. I felt sick as I read more about this. Some of the information is too horrible even to write about. The treatment of animals raised for food is truly barbaric.
We all know that veal calves are taken away from their mothers within twenty-four hours and sent to auction at one or two days old, chained for life in small cages, in the dark, exclusively fed milk, not their mothers’ milk but skim milk, made anemic to give their flesh that light color, unable to lie down normally, unable to walk, denied solid food, and slaughtered at about four months of age. These practices are against the law in the UK and much of Europe, but not here in the U.S. The Humane Society has also covertly filmed workers at a veal slaughterhouse kicking and shocking day-old calves.Most egg-laying chickens—95 percent of them—are usually kept in “battery” cages, with less living space than an 8 × 10 sheet of paper, for their entire lives. Since male chickens can’t lay eggs, male chicks are discarded, either by being ground up alive and fully conscious in a “macerator” or sucked through a series of pipes onto an electrified “kill plate.” Each year, 260 million male chicks are killed. Chickens raised for food are packed into warehouses so closely together they can hardly move, with as many as 100,000 in one building. Even chickens advertised as “cage-free” are often housed in a single, huge, overcrowded building. Chickens grown for large breasts can’t even support their own weight, and often can’t stand; their growth is unnaturally accelerated to the point that when they’re slaughtered they’re still peeping like baby chicks. At least 8 billion broiler chickens are killed each year in the U.S.