Old MacDonald’s old-fashioned, peaceful farm is ancient history. On today’s farms, little chicks’ beaks are sliced off with a hot blade (sometimes the blade takes parts of their faces or tongues, too, or the chick just dies of fright), piglets’ tails are chopped off, and their teeth are yanked out with pliers. The animals are given drugs to make them grow quickly, but often they grow so quickly that their hearts and legs cannot keep up—they have heart attacks or their legs become painfully deformed. At the slaughterhouse, animals are hung upside-down, cut, and bled to death—often while wide awake. How many animals does this happen to every year? Some factory farms house thousands upon thousands of animals. In the United States alone, billions and billions (around 9 to be more precise) of animals are killed for food. To give you an idea of just how many that is, the world’s human population is only 6 billion.

Animals—dogs, cats, cows, chickens, pigs—value their lives as much as you value yours. Please don’t eat them.

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