Most of the 10 billion land animals killed for food every year in the United States (48 billion worldwide) are raised in intense confinement. They are abused and mistreated in countless ways, being deprived of every natural instinctive pleasure and comfort. Most never see sunlight or feel fresh air.

All animals endure many hours without food or water during transport to the slaughterhouse. Animals are handled inhumanely as they are moved into and out of the trucks. Many die in transit.

Slaughterhouses operate so fast that animals are often not killed properly. According to the Animal Slaughter Act, animals are to be rendered unconscious by stunning before their throats are slit, but frightened animals often evade the stunner and remain fully conscious when their bodies are hoisted and their throats are cut. Some are still alive when they are scalded to remove feathers (poultry) or they begin to be dismembered (cows and pigs).

EGG-LAYING HENS
These birds spend their 2-year lives cramped in wire-floored battery cages where they can't walk or spread their wings and are covered with excrement from the cages stacked above them. Their beaks are seared off with a hot blade to prevent injury caused by the pecking behavior that becomes pathological when each hen has a living space only as large as one half of a sheet of paper.

BROILER CHICKENS
They are used for meat, are bred to achieve unnaturally rapid weight gain, with disproportionately developed breast muscle. Their legs cannot support such heavy bodies and fracture easily both spontaneously and when handled. Rapid growth also leads to heart failure. Toxic air inflames their eyes and lungs. These young birds are transported to the slaughterhouse at 42 days of life.

PIGS
Pigs are confined in pens with nothing to do but chew on the metal bars that surround them. Their tails are cut off and their needle teeth broken off to prevent injury from the aggression that results from their crowded confinement. Breeder sows are impregnated every 5-6 months and spend their whole lives in crates while they are pregnant or nursing.

TURKEYS
Turkeys are also bred to be heavy and large-breasted because breast meat is more desirable. Their legs can't support their heavy bodies, and as a result they are incapable of breeding naturally. In turkey breeding facilities male and female birds are subjected to a continuous cycle of brutal genital manipulation for artificial insemination. These breeding birds live in large dark crowded sheds for almost two years before they are transported to the slaughterhouse.

DAIRY COWS
Dairy cows are bred, artificially inseminated every year, and given hormones in order to maximize milk production, which has increased 5-fold to 10-fold over the past 100 years. These physiological stresses result in high rates of lameness, mastitis, and other avoidable illnesses. The male calves of dairy cows, sold to veal producers, are confined immobile in veal crates and fed only an iron-deficient formula to keep their muscles pale, tender, and mild in flavor.

WHAT TO DO?
Be part of the solution of these problems by reducing your consumption of animal products. Every time you choose to pass up meat and dairy products, you are:

• Improving your own health
• Behaving as an ethical and responsible Earthling
• Setting an example for people around you
• Making an incremental contribution to a movement that may influence, by example, the developing world

Eating a plant-based diet is an action that is consistent with both the human responsibility to value and preserve our gift of health and the ethical concepts of compassion and justice. Everyone benefits: you, future generations who will have to live in the world that you leave them, and the animals—the gentle, social, pleasure-seeking co-residents of our planet.

Try our easy and tasty vegetarian recipes and enjoy some options available at the supermarkets.