The Open Door Web Site : Biology : Problems and Concerns caused by Human Influences on the Environment : Factory Farming

There is much concern about the ways in which animals are treated in factory farms and the conditions many of these animals are made to suffer when they are transported over long distances.

Some people have chosen not to eat meat at all because of their concerns about farm animal welfare. Many people will only buy chicken and eggs from free-range farms.

Compassion in World Farming is an organisation which is raising awareness over the issue of farm animal welfare. There is a hyperlink to the CIWF web site and that of its French branch, the PMAF, in the table opposite.

Some of the facts published by the CIWF in its education information pack are shown in the table below. More detail about these and other issues are published on the CIWF website:

	Sheep are exported alive, as far as Italy or Greece, for slaughter and further fattening. Journeys can last over forty hours. Pigs are exported for breeding to be kept in sow stalls. Calves may soon be exported again to be reared in veal crates. Sow stalls and veal crates are illegal in the UK.
	Pigs, dairy cattle, chickens for meat and for eggs, turkeys amongst others are often kept indoors under overcrowded conditions. This is commonly referred to as factory farming. Fish, such as salmon and trout, are also intensively farmed.
	Calves are separated from their mothers, shortly after birth, so that people can drink the mother's milk. Selective breeding to increase milk production increases the incidence of lameness and mastitis and can much reduce a cow's life-expectancy.
	Veal is the meat of calves. On the Continent, calves reared for veal are often kept in small wooden crates in which they cannot turn round. They are fed on a diet deficient in iron to keep their flesh white. This system is illegal in the UK and will be banned in the EU from 2007.
	It is now illegal in Britain to keep pregnant pigs in sow stalls, but it remains common in the rest of Europe. Sows are still confined in farrowing crates when they give birth, and the piglets and fattening pigs are still kept intensively.