Animal cruelty in factory farming

From painful mutilations, early weaning and poor air quality to unnatural feeding regimes, rough handling, long-distance transport and ultimately slaughter at a young age – animals on factory farms suffer on many levels.

Header image: Farm Transparency Project

Within the harsh confinements of factory farms, animals are painfully mutilated and kept in cramped, barren cages, pens, and sheds. It is impossible for them to fulfil their hardwired instincts to forage or perch, build nests, and interact with one another in comfort. This, in turn, causes them severe stress, injuries, ailments, hunger, and social deprivation.

Chicken on a New South Wales farm, Australia
Pigs, Latin America
Cattle at the Maydan Feedlot, Queensland, Australia

The demand for cheap meat is equating to more animals being churned through factory farms like cogs in a machine. It is inhumane to treat animals like pigs, chickens, cows and many others like commodities when they are living beings who feel complex emotions such as pain, joy, and fear – just like us.

Chickens

Chicken on a New South Wales farm, Australia

Chickens have more space in the oven than when they’re alive

Chickens are intelligent beings who can tell people they know from strangers. They are also sensitive and have different personalities. But factory farm systems are not treating chickens as living beings with feelings but as cogs in a machine – inflicting pain and suffering at every stage of their short lives.

Over 700 million chickens are reared for meat each year in intensive farming systems in Australia, often with no natural light or fresh air, unable to peck or spread their wings. They are bred to grow unnaturally large and at a rate that is unhealthy and unnatural.

Due to their overgrown size and unnatural speed of growth, these chickens often suffer from painful lameness, overworked hearts and lungs, and wounds like skin sores and burns.

Header image: Misssheep

Call on KFC to give chickens better lives

Fast-food giant KFC is one of Australia’s most established restaurants with more than 700 stores.

But despite being famous for their chicken, World Animal Protection’s 2022 report The Protein Switch, demonstrates that KFC are lagging behind other fast-food outlets in Australia when it comes to chicken welfare.

KFC Australia still haven’t signed the Better Chicken Commitment. This means they continue to let chickens suffer in their supply chain.

No animal deserves the life these chickens live. By signing our petition, you’re calling on KFC to sign the Better Chicken Commitment and put a stop to the cruelty these creatures experience.

Add your voice

Chicken on farm. Credit: Animals Liberation
Chicken on a New South Wales farm, Australia

Pigs

Pigs, Latin America

Pigs live in horrifying conditions on factory farms

Pigs are intelligent, curious and empathetic animals. Given a choice, they would spend their days socialising with friends, rooting around for food and resting on comfortable bedding.

Unfortunately, pigs farmed for meat will never get to show off their intelligence or follow their instinctive curiosity because they are often confined to barren, small steel cages on factory farms. Mother pigs have it especially bad as they are inseminated in a cage no bigger than an average household refrigerator, with barely enough room to move. While most are then moved into group housing, about 20% of mother pigs in Australia are still confined to sow stalls for most of their pregnancy.

In the first week of a baby pig’s life, his or her teeth are clipped or ground, the tail is cut, and males can be castrated, often without pain relief. Pigs raised for meat are kept in barren pens with uncomfortable flooring, which cause them to suffer painful skin lesions and diseases.

For mother pigs, life inside a cage the size of a refrigerator is no life. With your help, we are pushing for pigs to have the opportunity to express natural behaviour and socialise, free from the confines of cages and free from painful mutilations. Together, we will call on the industry to make a change and give pigs a life worth living.

A group of mother pigs at feeding time. Production of animal feed is worsening the climate crisis.

Beef cattle

Cattle at the Maydan Feedlot, Queensland, Australia

Beef cattle suffer painful mutilations before a violent death

Image credit: Animal Liberation Queensland / Farm Transparency Project

Cattle (cows and bulls) are naturally inquisitive animals who like to spend their time grazing and socialising with their herd. Unfortunately, about a million cattle are confined to feedlots in Australia every year.

Raised in crowded and filthy feedlots, many without proper access to shade, even on extremely hot days.

To make them reach “slaughter weight”, cattle raised for meat are made to spend the final months of their lives in feedlots, where they are fed a grain-based diet. If done too quickly, the transition from grass to grain can cause serious medical conditions such as acidosis or even be fatal.

These gentle animals are typically crammed into an animal transport truck and taken on long and gruelling journeys to abattoirs as soon as they reach the desired weight. They are made to go without any water for up to 48 hours which is shockingly permitted by the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries, and Forestry.

No living being deserves to endure such horrific pain and misery. Nearly 8 million cattle are slaughtered for beef in Australia every year.

With your support, we will continue working towards giving farm animals around the world, a life worth living.

cattle in Australian feedlots

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