Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals

Singer estimates that over 100 million cows, pigs, and sheep are raised for slaughter in the United States alone, while over 5 billion poultry are killed for the dinner table. Farming as the world once knew it has long been over, replaced with “factory farming” that emphasizes efficiency and cost efficacy above all else, including the treatment of animals. 

Singer first examines the treatment of chickens in the factory farm system. Chickens are kept in impossibly tight enclosures with little light to encourage greater weight on the smallest amount of feed possible. Singer goes into how a system such as the factory farm is the antithesis to the natural environment. For example, pecking order, a determined hierarchy, is easily maintained within a flock of around ninety chickens; however, instability runs rampant when it comes to over 80,000 chickens crowded into a single shed. As a result of this and the extreme crowding, the chickens fight frequently, and both feather pecking and cannibalism can run rampant. Instead of addressing the issue by giving the chickens the necessary space required, the industry has instead introduced a roundabout practice of “debeaking.” This practice often causes serious injury and pain to the bird. Singer also describes the feces-covered housing areas for the chickens, the frequency of deaths by disease such as acute death syndrome, and the illnesses that plague the birds.

Singer further warns consumers that turkeys are treated in a similar fashion to chickens. Likewise, egg-producing poultry farms are often just as cruel. As male chicks have no use to the industry, they are often killed, ground up, and fed to the hens, or they are suffocated. These hens are often kept in “battery cages” where more birds can be kept. The cages allow for efficiency outside what is common for traditional farming methods. The cages frequently cause injuries. Chickens require solid ground to wear down their toenails; however, the hens’ nails and then flesh often become permanently grown around the wire bottoms of the battery cages. Singer quotes Poultry Tribune when describing a typical cage: Up to five birds are kept in a twelve-by-twenty-inch cage, too small for even a single bird to spread its wings. At the end of 1991, Switzerland passes a law requiring hens have “protected, darkened, and soft-floored or litter-lined nesting boxes” (120).

Pigs face similar treatment, with tail docking to keep pigs from chewing on one another’s tails out of boredom, cages that allow for extremely limited movement, toxic air, and severe distress and bodily injury from attempting to escape close confinement. Cows also face cruel treatment. To produce veal, the industry pumps infant cows with ceaseless tides of medication, deprives them of iron so that their flesh remains pale, and puts them in confinement so tight they are unable to turn around or lie down. Similar practices have been implemented with dairy cows, bulls, pigs, and poultry; all animals face starvation, torture, fear, and eventually death through cruel methods such as the poleax while conscious. Singer speaks of the kosher treatment of animals, where the organism is unable to be unconscious during its slaughter, and notes the numerous religious figures who have spoken out against this. 

Singer concludes the chapter by reiterating that humans have continuously abused animals for their own convenience and purpose. The use of genetic engineering has only served to allow humans to control, manipulate, and take advantage of animals rather than change the attitudes and practices toward them.