Imagine being born into a beautiful world full of opportunity, and then suddenly, life ends at at a shocking 6 months old. This is the life of a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) pig. This short and tortuous life is equivalent to a human living to the age of 26 months. CAFOs are used all across the nation for mass production of meat and dairy. An average CAFO looks like a regular warehouse from the outside. Little do consumers know that in that “warehouse” looking building, there might be up to 10,000 animals living on slatted floors with absolutely no grass.(Confined dining: A primer on factory farms and what they mean for your meat) These animals are used for one thing, and one thing only, profit. So if the profit from these CAFOs is so astonishing, then how come factory farming has so many negative attributes correlated to it? These negative attributes are traced …show more content…
Typically a pig CAFO will hold anywhere from 1000-3000 pigs. These thousands of pigs on average will get slaughtered before their first birthday. (Confined dining: A primer on factory farms and what they mean for your meat). Not only is the life of a pig short, but the life of a pig is traumatizing. “This intensive confinement produces stress- and boredom-related behavior, such as chewing on cage bars and obsessively pressing against water bottles.” (Pigs: Intelligent Animals Suffering in Farms and Slaughterhouses) The quality of a pig’s life is absolutely disgusting. Consumers need to put down the bacon and just open up their eyes. In reality, “Piglets are prone to stress-related behavior such as cannibalism and tail-biting, so farmers often chop off piglets’ tails and use pliers to break off the ends of their teeth—without giving them any painkillers.” (Pigs: Intelligent Animals Suffering in Farms and Slaughterhouses) This is why the the real price of bacon is so much more than just $4.95 at the nearest grocery