No one wants to know what goes on in the factory farms across this great land of ours. We’d all like to believe that the approximately 10 billion farm animals we consume annually in this country (according to the USDA) die painlessly and with minimal fear and suffering. But the reality of today’s factory farms as depicted in the 13-minute documentary short, Glass Walls, is something the meat industry has fiercely fought for years from public view.
The fact that livestock on these factory farms are raised and live for years before they are slaughtered makes many of us wonder what the lives of these highly sensitive and social creatures are like leading up to this point.
The ugly truth is that their lives are a living hell, stricken by malnutrition, disease, filthy conditions, and unimaginable physical abuse—and most of it is legal. The factory farms where the vast majority of our meat comes from (even that served in fancy steakhouses) just don’t treat animals as living, feeling or thinking beings. They are just “consumables” fueled by the American consumer’s demand for meat.
But Glass Walls is not trying to be provocative. Some might think it is sensationalizing the issue by just showing the worst of the worst. Not. On the contrary. It simply reveals how factory farms routinely and LEGALLY treat farm animals. Perhaps what many of us find most startling about Glass Walls is that the animals we consume often have far greater emotional and intellectual faculties than our beloved pets which we care for like our own flesh and blood! There’s something wrong with this picture.
Learn more about the fate of farm animals at FARM’s website. Or if you still need more evidence, go undercover with investigators who posed as workers and see how horrible things really can be.
