Farm Animals
Egg laying hens (chickens) in a factory farm battery cage (above) can be contrasted with free range chickens (below) who are given space to roam and a shelter for shade.Concern for farm animals is mainly focused on factory farming, where farm animals are raised in confinement at high stocking density. Issues revolve around the limiting of natural behavior in animals (see battery cage, veal and gestation crate), and invasive procedures such as debeaking and mulesing. Other issues include methods of animal slaughter, especially ritual slaughter.
While the killing of animals need not necessarily involve suffering, the general public considers killing an animal an act that reduces its welfare. This leads to concerns with premature slaughtering, such as the chick culling. This applies in a lesser extent to all food animals.
Animal welfare science is an emerging field that seeks to answer questions raised by the use of animals, such as whether hens are frustrated when confined in cages, or whether the psychological well-being of animals in laboratories can be maintained.
Read more about this topic: Animal Welfare
Famous quotes containing the words farm and/or animals:
“It might be seen by what tenure men held the earth. The smallest stream is mediterranean sea, a smaller ocean creek within the land, where men may steer by their farm bounds and cottage lights. For my own part, but for the geographers, I should hardly have known how large a portion of our globe is water, my life has chiefly passed within so deep a cove. Yet I have sometimes ventured as far as to the mouth of my Snug Harbor.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Researchers, with science as their authority, will be able to cut [animals] up, alive, into small pieces, drop them from a great height to see if they are shattered by the fall, or deprive them of sleep for sixteen days and nights continuously for the purposes of an iniquitous monograph.... “Animal trust, undeserved faith, when at last will you turn away from us? Shall we never tire of deceiving, betraying, tormenting animals before they cease to trust us?””
—Colette [Sidonie Gabrielle Colette] (1873–1954)