Agriculture is a daily aspect of life. It played a key role in developing humanity past the hunter-gatherer stage and into sophisticated civilizations. With the aid of modern technology, farming has become a highly efficient process to get the most biomass in livestock from the least amount of resources and expense. Yet this efficiency requires the surrender of many animal rights. From poultry to bovines to swine, animals are suffering due to the mistreatment of the notorious factory farms.

The most expensive aspect of farming is the sheer amount of land required to house these animals. In an attempt to lessen this, farmers on some of the more large-scale agricultural operations have been essentially shrinking livestock while maintaining the amount of meat they produce. There are two main practices involved in this: tail docking and debeaking.

Tail docking is the process of removing the end part of the tail of an animal to prevent it from swatting another animal in nearby quarters. While this may seem like a practical approach, the removals are almost never done in a sterile nor surgical manner. This results in an infection on the animal that causes excruciating pain and occasionally sepsis. This is the same animal that is getting prepared to be sold for human consumption, meaning that not only is the practice unsafe for the animal, it is unsafe for humans as well.

Debeaking is a similar yet arguably worse process. Debeaking is used on poultry, most commonly chicken, to prevent them from pecking at each other due to the close quarters. This process involves a farmer using a hot blade to burn off the beams of the chicken. In close quarters with limited food, studies have shown that chickens typically resort to violent cannibalism. This is never found in the wild, but this behavior is commonplace with farmed chickens in close quarters.

Not only are factory farming methods harmful to the animals in question, it is damaging to the environment. In 2017, the largest deadzone in the Gulf of Mexico was reported due to runoff from farms. This impacted the local tourism industry, fishing industry, and homeowners on the water. Many beaches along the gulf coast were littered with dead fish.

Unfortunately, the rules and regulations are incredibly lax regarding the pollution of farms. This means that many big factory farms are actively damaging the environment and getting little repercussions from the government. While many non-profit organizations, such as Faunalytics and the Humane Farming Association, have been fighting the inhumane practices of factory farming, stricter regulations are needed to make sure animals are treated humanely.