Factory Farming

As a farm animal sanctuary we have first hand experience with the impact factory farming has on the animals. Animals are kept in cramped and unsanitary spaces, standing in their own excrements and their living space is often so small they can hardly move. Mothers are kept in cages unable to attend to their babies and routinely their offspring is taken away from them after just a few hours. In the dairy and egg industry, the males are considered worthless and often disposed of, killed or left to die. Farm and food animals are regularly deprived of the five freedoms that are seen as the standard of care for many other species. The five freedoms are freedom of hunger and thirst, freedom from discomfort, freedom to express natural behaviors, freedom of pain, injury and disease and freedom from fear and distress. None of these apply to farm and food animals and there are hardly any laws that protect food animals. And this is not all. Not only the animals are exploited for our meat, also the workers in the slaughterhouses and rendering plants experience major abuse and unsafe work conditions.

Please note GLR has not read or viewed every book and documentary and by sharing these resources is not wholly endorsing any particular book or documentary. Our goal is to give quick and easy access to them categorized in the topics health, factory farming and environment, so you can explore them yourself. The Living Kindly, Vegan Calculator, websites have comprehensive lists with descriptions of many documentaries we are encouraging you to watch and Vegan.com has a comprehensive list of books to factory farming. Some of these documentaries contain graphic images and might be disturbing for some viewers.

**The image of the chickens are courtesy of Rooster Sanctuary and Broken Shovels and were taken during our rescue of baby chickens from a farm operation in La Salle that went bankrupt beginning of 2019 and left 30,000 chicks without food and heat.