Vegans & Animal Life

Vegan Motivations

There are a number of motivations for choosing the vegan lifestyle. One of the more common reasons to go vegan is a shocked and angry reaction to the treatment of animals in livestock production facilities. There is an intense demand for dairy and meat products. There is also a tremendous demand to offer competitive pricing, thereby leading farmers to cut production costs any way possible. This is done without much thought to the animals' comfort, because they are viewed as a product, not a living, breathing entity with feelings.

Poultry

Mass production, also known as "factory farming," is particularly prevalent in the poultry industry. Americans' average annual consumption of turkey meat alone has increased 70 percent since 1980. A common practice in chicken, turkey and duck farming is to cut off as much as half the beaks so that the birds will not peck each other, the USDA reports.

pork

Pigs are not treated much better on factory farms. In some cases, the pigs are kept in cages so narrow they are unable to turn around. There are currently no regulations prohibiting this practice in the pork industry. In fact, a farmer is generally considered lazy and lax if he lets his pigs run around a slop yard like that seen in "Charlotte's Web." The more respected practice in the industry is to actually keep pigs out of sight, sandwiched into small hog houses.

veal

Perhaps the most tragic of all is the treatment of veal calves. While veal is generally considered somewhat of a dining delicacy, those devouring it would probably prefer to skip the story of how the tender beef cutlet got onto their plate. A male dairy calf is kept in a small pen - again, not large enough for him to turn around or move freely at all. Furthermore, he is kept tethered by a chain of not more than three feet and fed a light diet for about five months before being killed. The atrocities of factory farming have spurred some to advocate free-range farming. However, even this practice - sometimes as simple as leaving available access to an open-air fenced area - does not prevent all possible forms of animal cruelty.