Have you ever heard the phrase, “you are what you eat”? – Barbara Cartland. When saying that, what comes into your mind? Are you a pig, a duck, a cow? Maybe even a chicken…. Or are you the product of a harsh, abusive environment that serves the sole purpose of feeding a person once? I didn’t know an animal’s life was worth cooked dinner. Such a long process of continuously beating up a calf or a chicken because you want to eat. I was raised to believe that life’s worth was priceless; incalculable; incomparable. Yet here you are, in 2018, reading an article that will explain to you the treacherous living conditions animals must go through to meet their maker in the “fear” factories.

Gory Details

You probably don’t want to hear the gory details of animal slaughter; you probably just want to relax in your bed and read about how the ‘new Nicki Minaj is Cardi B.’ Well too bad; for unicorns and rainbows, you should’ve stuck with Buzzfeed. Now you’re grounded reading this article that will explain what these poor creatures go through every day. Advice? Suck it up. Because the most annoying thing is to see someone enclose themselves in a little bubble of sunshine and ignore the conflicts out there.

At the moment of their birth, chicks are huddled together under the asphyxiating environment of boxes with hundreds of brothers and sisters already there. When males are born, they put them in clusters of trash bags to kill them. Female chicks go through the excruciating process of getting their beaks cut off for when they’re in cages they don’t hurt the other chickens. And the weak ones? They are set for death the moment they are born and sometimes get their limbs cut off.

Nuggets Anyone?

Every day they are thrown around and banged up to boxes and tunnels to shred their bones, skin, eyes, brain… you name it. Those delicious Mcdonalds nuggets you ate last Saturday while thinking about your lonely day, were eyes, bones, beaks, hair, and blood mashed up and then deep fried. Imagine waking up coming out of your shell and finding no one that’ll protect you, not a soul that cares about your well being, will toy with you, but won’t show empathy. Harsh, huh! Not even the worst of the “fear” factories.

Chicken Little

Chickens are clustered in square foot cages of six. Some workers will take them out of the cages and start throwing them around to break their legs on purpose. They will bash their bodies around and start hitting them with a baton until they die. Hormones that are injected will affect their muscles and give them walking disabilities. When being held upside down clinging with their legs onto a machine, the chickens bang into different objects, and may sometimes be put under water, then dragged to a saw that will clean-cut their heads off their necks. Such a humane and gracious process to die, don’t you think so? I’m sure when showing your kids the movie Chicken Little, you will be able to say that the reality is that those animals are one of the 95% of all creatures that are raised in the factory farms and endure extreme conditions of impairment.

The Milk Dilemma

Ever heard from your parents and doctors that calcium is important for your bones? “Drink more milk,” they say. What they don’t say is, “take away the natural juice that calves are denied by other workers when needing the sufficient nutrition from their mother.” Don’t worry! They’ll just be taking a little bit of the baby’s milk, right? WRONG. Cows are injected with hormones that will make them create more milk until it’s milk bag drops to the floor and weakens them. Videos of calves being dragged away from their mother for trying to drink…”our” milk are seen being kicked, beaten and sent to death, getting their necks stomped on and their ribs broken. In videos you can also see a sick calf on the floor, and the mother caring for it. Imagine, you’ve waited your whole life to bring a child into your world and love and nurture it for someone to abuse and kill it in front of your eyes. Its Innocence ripped apart from you and vulnerability present in your eyes as you approach the dead body with the slim hope that it will wake up to show you that he/she was ok. You were going to be ok. But no, just the limp body and lifeless eyes staring at what was once life. Sad huh?

So? What about the chicks? The pork? The cows? What if they had your child’s eyes. Would you be able to tell your little brother, sister, or baby “this delicious, fat-filled dinner you’re having, cost a life. This was made from abusing and killing animals. This food was made at the expense of death. This substance that will only be in your body for, say 8 hours? This is now a baby cow wondering where his/her mother is. Be thankful for this, this food cost a being its life.”

The Solution?

Family and friends would tell me “MIA, stop ok? They already died, it’d be a waste to mourn for the dead. what’s done is done, you can’t do anything for what is already dead.” However, what about the ones that aren’t? 300 hundred cows are killed every hour. You can make sure that in time the numbers go down by not supporting the meat industry. By eating from the brands that are actually organic from REAL farms. By having a vegetarian diet. By having a vegan lifestyle. By showing others this article to reveal them of the maltreatment of these animals in our “fear” factories. Our animals? No, not possession; we don’t own anything that our mother earth created. 3.8 billion years of life and it takes a century for us to ruin it. “The earth is dying, and there is one mammal to blame,” -The Switch.

Further Resources and Readings:

Huffington Post

Animals Australia

ASPCA

Farm to Fridge – The Truth About Meat