Food
Old Macdonald breeds and raises his pigs, cows and lambs in barren sheds made out of stone and metal. Hens and ducks are kept in battery cages which do not have space for them to stand, walk, flap their wings, perch or make a nest. Old Macdonald keeps them all crowded in the dank atmosphere never allowing them to taste fresh air or see sunlight, except when they’re moved to and from the breeding unit.
Breeding sows (female pigs) are forced to give birth in contraptions called farrowing crates. They are metal-barred cages designed to stop the mothers from crushing their piglets. They don’t even allow the sows room to turn around or to make proper contact with the youngsters. What Old Macdonald doesn’t understand is that piglet-crushing results from sows having been specially bred for size and to produce more piglets than is natural. Both mothers and their young are heavily stressed. Some of the youngsters frantically bit their mothers’ teats and each others’ tails. Old Macdonald’s solution is to chop off the ends of their tails and pull out some of their teeth.
The piglets like to stay with their mummies for three to four months but in the farms, they are taken away at around three weeks to get them fattened up and off to slaughter quickly. Most will be killed by the time they are 24 weeks old. After a continual cycle of pregnancies, Old Macdonald’s sows are usually burnt out by the time they’re three or four. They end up in low-value foods as sausages and pork pies.
Cows are treated, by Old Macdonald, like milk-producing machines and are genetically manipulated and pumped full of antibiotics and hormones that cause them to produce more milk. His cows are artificially inseminated shortly after their first birthdays. After giving birth, they lactate for 10 months and are then inseminated again, continuing the cycle. Some spend their entire lives standing on concrete floors; others are confined to massive, crowded lots, where they are forced to live amid their own waste.
Cows have a natural lifespan of about 25 years and can produce milk for eight or nine years. However, Old MacDonald’s cows are vulnerable to disease, lameness, and reproductive problems that by the time they're 4 or 5 years old, they are sent to be slaughtered.
Cows produce milk for the same reason that humans do—to nourish their young—but calves on dairy farms are taken away from their mothers when they are just 1 day old. They are fed milk replacers (including cattle blood) so that their mothers' milk can be sold to humans. The male calves are castrated often without any anaesthetic, despite the fact they will be slaughtered at around a year old- before they are even old enough to breed. Given the chance, cows nurture their young and form lifelong friendships with one another. They play games and have a wide range of emotions and personality traits. But most cows raised for the dairy industry are intensively confined, leaving them unable to fulfill their most basic desires, such as nursing their calves, even for a single day.
90,000 of his chickens are kept in two massive, windowless sheds which are filled with burning ammonia fumes. Crammed in shoulder to shoulder, the birds struggle to make it to the food and water points. Old MacDonald’s birds are forced to stand and lie down in their own waste which covers their legs and bodies. Because of antibiotics, their limbs aren’t strong enough to carry their unnaturally huge bodies. He allows them to get killed when they’re only 6 weeks old! A lot of these chickens are scald to death in de-feathering tanks and their throats are slit while they’re still conscious. Their legs and wings also break during the slaughter process. Old MacDonald’s ducks don’t get any better treatment either.
Old MacDonald is a part of an industry that got into the habit of producing more sheep than consumers wanted. He sends his ‘surplus’ on marathon journeys to the continent. Current laws permit his sheep to be transported for 30 hours, with just one hour’s stop for rest, food and water. Special diets have been fed to his ewes to make them produce more twins and triplets. Old MacDonald’s latest wheeze is to shear his sheep in the winter. His winter-shorn sheep go for shelter in his barns where they huddle together for warmth.
There are so many Old MacDonalds and his friends out there who behave like this to the animals they rear. So the animals that are forced to provide you your food not only suffered a painful death but also didn’t have a happy life.
