Thomas Hobbes famously described life in a "state of nature" as "nasty, brutish, and short." The U.S. meat industry appears to have taken Hobbes' statement as a prescription for proper animal husbandry.
Every year, millions of farm animals are slaughtered without ever knowing anything besides life in a grim, crowded cage. Many are subjected to painful mutilation, as in the case of "tail docking."
In a sense, cows may have it worst of all. They typically spend the first six months outdoors, munching the pasture they evolved to eat. It must be a shock when they're loaded into trucks and sent to a feedlot, where they stand crowded together in their own shit and eat corn, which makes them sick. (Increasingly, they're eating "distillers grains," the industrial waste of the corn-ethanol process.) Unlike, say, caged hens, feedlot-imprisoned cows know what they're missing.
I'm happy to note that much-abused farm creatures may soon be getting some relief from a recent court ruling in New Jersey.
Full Story: http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/8/1/102224/6019?source=daily