In 2016, a Southern California man threw his dog over the edge of a hillside cliff. The pitbull fell 15 feet before hitting a bush and was subsequently rescued. The man, sentenced to five years in prison, received widespread condemnation. But, horrific as his crime was, most of his critics were themselves guilty of an infinitely greater one.
In April 2020, a mass pig producer called Iowa Select Farms installed large heaters and humidifiers on four of their barns. On April 30, they transported a group of 1,470 pigs into one of these barns, shut off the ventilation and turned on the heaters and humidifiers. The veterinarians overseeing this operation for the company waited outside as temperatures in the barn climbed to 130°F and the humidity passed 90 percent. When the screaming died down and the pigs stopped moving, they turned on the ventilation and entered to check whether any animals were still alive. The few survivors were shot on the spot with a captive bolt gun. From April to June, they did this many more times with shipments of 1,500 adult pigs or 3,500 to 4,000 infants. The veterinarians reported that it took the adults on average 110 minutes to die — the infants died in 90 minutes. In total they cooked 243,016 pigs to deatH.
Iowa Select Farms was not the only pig producer to use this method, known in industry as “Ventilation Shutdown + heat and humidity” (VSD+) to “depopulate” their barns. During the height of COVID-19, many slaughterhouses closed. Unable to send their pigs to markets, producers say they resorted to other methods to keep their barns from overcrowding. The veterinarians estimate one million pigs were “depopulated” in 2020.
Why was the South California man so deeply condemned, but the cruel massacre of a million pigs barely made a peep? On every measure, the second crime exceeds the first by orders of magnitude. A million times more animals suffered to their last heartbeat. Science also shows that pigs are capable of feeling pain and at least as intelligent as dogs. So where’s the outrage? The answer is straightforward — our society applies an inconsistent standard to animals. We prize the small handful of species we keep as pets — the rest are objects we can use as we please and dispose of when we no longer need them.
The factory farming industry, which produces most meat, milk and eggs, takes the objectification of animals to its logical conclusion. VSD+ is hardly the exception — abuse of animals stands at the core of the industry. To give you an idea of how it’s run, I’ll describe only a few of their heinous crimes here. But, for a more detailed account, I recommend reading chapter three of Peter Singer’s classic “Animal Liberation Now.”
Broiler chickens are kept tightly packed in ammonia ridden, windowless sheds where they have almost no space. They are bred to eat enormous quantities of food, leaving them in chronic pain for much of their lives. Many die from overfeeding. In the slaughterhouse, they are shackled upside down by their legs and a conveyor belt moves them through electrified water, meant to render them unconscious, after which their throats are slit and they’re thrown into boiling water to remove their feathers. In practice, the electric bath doesn’t work on many chickens and, after having their throats slit, they are boiled alive, fully conscious.
At hatchery factories that produce laying hens, the male chicks, who cannot lay eggs, are thrown alive into a meat grinder. Most laying hens spend their entire lives in tiny battery cages with no room to move or spread their wings. And, when there’s an outbreak of avian flu, broiler chicks, laying hens and turkey alike are all cooked alive with VSD+. In the winter of 2022-23, 72 million birds suffered this fate. Yes, laying hens were heated to death in their battery cages.
Cattle too, are confined. Dairy cows are kept in stalls with barely enough room to lie down. Every year they are impregnated and their calf is taken away soon after birth, to maximize the milk companies can sell.
The factory farming industry ignores animal welfare, treats animals as objects and tries to maximize “production” in ways that lead to unfathomable suffering. What can we do about this? Activists can pressure governments into adopting regulations that somewhat improve animal welfare, but the industry’s horrors directly result from the demand for animal products and won’t fully cease until that demand subsides. You may think killing a chicken and consuming its flesh is okay, but so long as there’s a market for broiler chickens, the industry will abuse them. Regardless, the chickens you buy all live miserable lives, and, in buying them, you incentivize the companies do it again.
Some people doubt whether their purchases can affect a multi-billion dollar industry. They argue that buying one less chicken won’t truly spare a chicken from torture. But, the economists Bailey Norwood and Jayson Lusk studied the question and, even after accounting for price adjustments that may result from decreased demand, they found that buying fewer animal products actually saves animals. For eggs, decreasing your demand by some amount will decrease production by 91 percent of that amount. For chickens, 76 percent, for pigs, 74 percent, for cattle, 68 percent and for milk, 56 percent.
Eating fully vegan on our campus is not easy, and we must pressure Sodexo to improve. But, even if you don’t become fully vegan, a sliding scale is better than none — choosing the plant-based option half, or a third, of the time still spares many animals a fate far worse than being pushed off a cliff. Don’t be like that Southern California man — order the plant-based option!
Isaac Cohen is a senior majoring in computer science and a guest columnist.