Why Animal Rights?
Supporters of animal rights believe that animals have an inherent worth—a value completely separate from their usefulness to humans. We believe that every creature with a will to live has a right to live free from pain and suffering. Animal rights is not just a philosophy—it is a social movement that challenges society’s traditional view that all nonhuman animals exist solely for human use.
Credit: Jo-Anne McArthur / Animal Equality / We Animals Media
The abuse that animals suffer at human hands is heartbreaking, sickening, and infuriating. It’s even more so when we realize that the everyday choices we make—such as what we eat for lunch and the kind of shampoo we buy—may be directly supporting some of this abuse. But as hard as it is to think about, we can’t stop animals’ suffering if we simply look the other way and pretend it isn’t happening.
Credit: Jo-Anne McArthur / We Animals Media
Every day in countries around the world, animals are fighting for their lives. They are enslaved, beaten, and kept in chains to make them perform for humans’ “entertainment”; they are mutilated and confined to tiny cages so that we can kill them and eat them; they are burned, blinded, poisoned, and cut up alive in the name of “science”; they are electrocuted, strangled, and skinned alive so that people can parade around in their coats; and worse.
Animals are powerless against the cruelty of humans, and depend on compassionate people like you to give them a voice and be their heroes by learning about the issues they face and taking action. Each of us has the power to save animals from nightmarish suffering-and best of all, it’s easier than you might think. Join the millions of other compassionate people who are working to create a kinder, better world for animals.
“To my mind the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being. I should be unwilling to take the life of a lamb for the sake of the human body. I hold that, the more helpless a creature, the more entitled it is to protection by man from the cruelty of man.”
What Is Factory Farming?
The overwhelming majority of animal-derived foods sold in the U.S. today—including meat, eggs, milk, and cheese—come from large-scale, industrialized farms known as “concentrated animal-feeding operations.”
On these “factory farms,” animals are packed in as tightly as possible to maximize output and profit, even though this causes many to die from disease or infection before being sent to the slaughterhouse.
Credit: Jo-Anne McArthur / We Animals Media
According to an analysis by the Sentience Institute, 99% of animals used for food in the U.S. are living on factory farms.
Animals used for food are crammed by the thousands into filthy, windowless sheds or stuffed into wire cages, metal crates, and other torturous devices. Billions of fish—along with “nontarget” animals, including sharks, sea turtles, birds, seals, and whales—are caught each year by the commercial fishing industry.
Animals used for food will never raise their families, root around in the soil, build nests, or do anything else that’s natural and important to them. Most won’t even feel the warmth of the sun on their backs or breathe fresh air until the day they’re loaded onto trucks headed for slaughterhouses.
Credit: Jo-Anne McArthur / We Animals Media
The factory farming industry strives to maximize output while minimizing costs—always at the animals’ expense. The giant corporations that run most factory farms have found that they can make more money by cramming animals into tiny spaces, even though many of the animals get sick and some die.
The industry journal National Hog Farmer explains, “Crowding pigs pays,” and egg-industry expert Bernard Rollins writes that “chickens are cheap; cages are expensive.”
How Many Animals Are Killed for Food Every Year?
Approximately 9 billion chickens
In the U.S. this number of chickens are killed for their flesh each year and 305 million hens are used for their eggs.
More than 1 million pigs
Die en route to the slaughterhouse, of the millions of pigs killed every year for food; at least 40,000 sustain injuries before they arrive.
245 million turkeys
Are raised and killed for their flesh every year in the U.S. More than 46 million of them are killed each year at Thanksgiving alone, and more than 22 million die at Christmas.
31 million ducks
Are killed each year for their flesh and for cruelly-obtained foie gras.
Tens of billions of fish
More fish are killed for food each year than all other animals combined, as tens of billions of fish and shellfish are slaughtered annually.
Animals Used for Food Endure Constant Fear and Torment
They’re often given so little space that they can’t even turn around or lie down comfortably. Egg-laying hens are kept in small cages, chickens and pigs are kept in jam-packed sheds, and cows are kept on crowded, filthy feedlots.
Credit: Jo-Anne McArthur / We Animals Media
Most farmed animals have been genetically manipulated to grow larger or to produce more milk or eggs than they naturally would. Some chickens grow so large that their legs cannot support their outsized bodies, and they suffer from starvation or dehydration when they can’t walk to reach food and water.
Credit: Stefano Belacchi / Equalia / We Animals Media
Many fish on aquafarms suffer from parasitic infections, diseases, and debilitating injuries. Conditions on some farms are so horrendous that millions of fish die before farmers can kill and package them for food.
Credit: Lukas Vincour / Zvírata Nejíme/ We Animals Media
In the foie gras industry, pipes or tubes are shoved down the throats of ducks and geese three times daily so that 4 pounds of grain can be pumped into their stomachs to produce the diseased “fatty liver” that some diners consider a delicacy.
Credit: Omer Shoshan / We Animals Media
Credit: Luis Tato / HIDDEN / We Animals Media
Babies are torn away from the sides of their loving mothers, and the nourishment that the mothers long to provide their offspring is instead shipped off for human consumption.
Credit: Jo-Anne McArthur / We Animals Media
Animals endure mutilations such as debeaking, dehorning, and castration without painkillers.
What About Animals on ‘Humane’ Farms?
Animals on organic and “free-range” farms often endure the same cruel mutilations as those on other farms. At the end of their miserable lives, these animals are typically shipped on trucks to the same slaughterhouses used by massive factory farms.
Remember: “Organic,” “natural,” “humane,” “pasture-raised,” “grass-fed,” and “free-range” are just labels. The meat, eggs, and milk stamped with them are filled with the same artery-clogging saturated fat and cholesterol as all other animal-derived foods. These labels represent little more than efforts to make consumers feel better—they often mean little to nothing for the animals involved.
The only truly humane foods are vegan ones.
How Animals Used for Food Are Killed?
When their bodies wear out from producing milk or eggs, animals raised for food are crowded onto trucks and transported for miles through all weather extremes, typically without food or water. At the slaughterhouse, the throats of those who survived the transport are slit, often while they’re still conscious.
Many remain alert when they’re plunged into the scalding-hot water of the defeathering or hair-removal tanks. Some are even still awake while their bodies are being skinned or hacked apart. Most animals killed for food are practically babies, slaughtered after just a few months—far short of their natural life expectancy.
The Perks of Going Vegan
Going vegan is also good for your health. There is no nutritional need for humans to eat any animal product. All our dietary needs—even as infants and children—are best supplied by a meatless diet. The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics notes that eating plant-based foods reduces the risk of suffering from many chronic degenerative diseases and conditions, including heart disease, cancer, hypertension, diabetes, and obesity.
Raising animals for food requires massive amounts of resources. Two-thirds of all agricultural land in the U.S. is used to raise animals for food or to grow grain to feed them. Chickens, pigs, cattle, and other animals raised for food are the primary consumers of water in the U.S.: A single pig consumes 21 gallons of drinking water per day, while a cow on a dairy farm drinks as much as 50 gallons daily. Farms produce billions of pounds of manure daily, which ends up in lakes, rivers, and even drinking water.
“We can eat meat, but we don’t need to eat meat – if you have a choice, why wouldn’t you choose compassion? ”