Plant-Based
for Animals
Many people desire that animals be treated with care and respect, whether as companions in the home or as wildlife in local environments. We naturally empathise with creatures we interact with, appreciating their capacity to feel joy, fear, and pain. Yet, despite this instinctive compassion, many animals raised for food or other human uses live lives of unimaginable suffering.
Profit-driven industries, especially large-scale animal agriculture, take advantage of the gap between what society values and what actually happens. By using misleading marketing and making cruelty seem normal, these industries put profit ahead of animal welfare. Most farmed animals live short lives in crowded, dirty spaces, without the freedom, natural behaviours, or social bonds they would have in the wild.
Animals like chickens, pigs, cattle, ducks, goats, sheep, and fish are often raised in places that do not meet their basic needs. Being transported to slaughterhouses is stressful and often cruel, and methods meant to be efficient can cause a lot of suffering. Beyond farming, animals used for fashion or lab testing also face harm and hardship, showing just how widespread this problem is.
This widespread mistreatment is an ethical problem and shows how our choices affect other living beings. Animals in factory farms lose their freedom, social lives, and the chance to live without fear or pain. Life in these settings is very different from the rich, fulfilling lives they could have had.
Choosing a plant-based lifestyle is a practical way to help reduce animal suffering. Every time you pick a plant-based meal instead of meat, dairy, or eggs, you lower the demand for industries that harm animals. This choice brings your actions in line with compassion and helps improve the lives of billions of animals.
Living plant-based is more than a personal choice; it sends a message that animals have value and should not be treated as products. When more people make these choices, it can inspire communities, leaders, and businesses to support kinder, more ethical practices.
Adopt a Plant-Based Lifestyle. Be Happy.
Everything in nature is connected, and what we eat affects the world around us—especially our environment. You can make a difference three times a day just by choosing meals that are kinder to the planet.
Each year, billions of animals are confined, exploited, and killed for meat and dairy. Choosing a plant-based lifestyle is a strong way to oppose cruelty.
References
➡️ https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/billions-of-chickens-ducks-and-pigs-are-slaughtered-for-meat-every-year
➡️ https://www.worldanimalprotection.org/our-campaigns/food-systems/factory-farming/hidden-health-impacts/
➡️ https://thehumaneleague.org/article/how-many-chickens-are-in-the-world
➡️ https://www.fao.org/poultry-production-products/production/poultry-species/chicken/en
➡️ https://animalclock.org/uk/
Land animals
Every year in the UK, 2.7 million cows, 10 million pigs, 12 million turkeys, 13 million sheep and lambs, over one billion chickens, and 10 million ducks and geese are slaughtered for human consumption.
Aquatic animals
Every year in the UK, 4.4 billion shellfish, up to 2.7 billion wild fish, and 77 million farmed fish are slaughtered for human consumption. These numbers do not include bycatch.
Just like us, sentient animals seek positive experiences. They want to be healthy, well-fed, and form bonds with others. They experience a wide range of emotions, from fear and frustration to true happiness and joy. This awareness—this capacity to feel—is the real metric for moral consideration.
Humanity’s relationship with the animal kingdom is profoundly out of step with this modern understanding. For too long, we have excluded these feeling beings from our moral circle, maintaining a relationship that is entirely out of step with our modern knowledge. All animals, both wild and domesticated, inherently deserve the chance to pursue their own well-being. Their proven ability to experience positive emotions compels us to adopt a higher standard of care, compassion, and ethical responsibility.
The suffering and death of millions of thinking, feeling animals subjected to experiments and mistreatment, simply because experimenters only acknowledge their sentience and awareness when it suits them. This reality urges us to take more responsibility for the lives and feelings of these beings.
References
➡️ https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s41055-025-00167-z
➡️ https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/animal-welfare/article/abs/animals-emotions-studies-in-sheep-using-appraisal-theories/9F642C90FF42F8ABDC7FC09F750A8BFC
➡️ https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10516-024-09714-5
➡️ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7830443/
➡️ https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/aro2.65
➡️ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9736651/
➡️ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33466737/
➡️ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36496937/
Factory farming represents one of the most intensive and exploitative systems of modern agriculture. It prioritises maximum production over welfare, generating vast quantities of cheap meat, milk, and eggs — but at an enormous ethical and environmental cost.
Factory-Farmed Animals
Aquatic Wildlife
Chickens
Cattle
Ducks and Geese
Pigs
Goats, Sheep,
and Lambs
Turkeys
Honey Bees
Many people have a vague idea, but few know the true extent of the horrors in these massive operations. Animals raised in these facilities are confined for the entirety of their lives, packed by the thousands into wire cages, metal crates, or other restrictive enclosures inside windowless sheds. Deprived of sunlight, fresh air, and freedom of movement, they are denied any opportunity to express natural behaviours such as foraging, nesting, or nurturing their young.
Today, around 99% of animals used for food come from these industrial systems. Most will never feel grass beneath their feet or the warmth of the sun on their backs until the day they are transported to slaughterhouses. Within this framework, the animal’s life is reduced to a mere production unit — its value measured only in output and efficiency.
The factory farming industry is built upon a model that seeks to minimise costs while maximising yield, almost always at the expense of animal welfare. Overcrowding, unsanitary conditions, and the routine use of antibiotics are normalised practices designed to sustain this profit-driven cycle. The reality is stark: the low cost of factory-farmed products hides a much higher price — paid by the animals themselves, by our environment, and ultimately by our collective conscience.
A cycle of cruelty exists in every glass of milk.
The dairy industry conceals great cruelty behind images of “happy cows” in open fields. In reality, the system depends on the repeated exploitation of female animals. Like humans, cows produce milk only after giving birth. This leads to ongoing cycles of forced impregnation and separation from their calves. This endless cycle of separation and suffering ends only with their slaughter.
- Artificial Insemination
The breeding of cows and buffaloes does not happen naturally; uncertified workers often insert bull semen into the female cow via a catheter, sometimes without gloves or proper sanitation. After each birth, the invasive procedure is done again to keep the milk production going, and calves are taken away shortly after the delivery. As a result of the never-ending sequence of impregnation, separation, and overwork, the animals become, both physically and emotionally, worn-out and, in the end, are killed when their milk production is getting low.
- Separated From Their Mothers
Like humans, cows have strong maternal instincts. However, factory dairy farms stop them from bonding with their calves. Newborn calves are taken from their mothers right away. Male calves are slaughtered for meat, while females are raised to go through forced pregnancy and milking. The mother’s milk, which should be for her calf, is used for human consumption, disregarding the cow’s natural instincts.
- Painful Mutilations
Cows on factory farms often go through painful procedures without anesthesia. Branding involves burning their flesh with heated iron, leaving open wounds prone to infection. To remove an animal’s horns, workers cut them out or burn off the delicate tissue. Tail docking is common too; it is done by cutting or using tight wire or rubber bands, which leads to severe pain.
Stolen from their mothers.
Caged in the cold.
Treated as waste.
This is the hidden face of your milk and cheese.
We must dismantle the dairy industry.
Behind every portion is a life trapped in suffering
for human consumption.
Animals are not commodities—they are sentient individuals with their own needs, desires, and capacity for joy. Cows, pigs, chickens, fish, and other farmed animals are capable of thinking, feeling, and forming social bonds, yet they live under harsh conditions with minimal legal protection. On factory farms around the world, they endure confinement, deprivation, and repeated exploitation, their natural behaviours suppressed. To fulfil human food demand, these animals, despite being aware and sentient, are kept in a situation of continuous suffering.
- Cows
Cattle are sentient, social animals who experience pain, fear, and stress—just like us. From birth, they are often separated from their mothers and confined in overcrowded, unnatural conditions. Many undergo castration and other painful procedures without anaesthesia. Their lives are a cycle of exploitation, ending in slaughter long before their natural lifespan, with little opportunity to express natural behaviours or experience freedom.
- Pigs
Pigs are highly intelligent animals, even considered smarter than dogs, yet on factory farms, they are confined in cramped, windowless warehouses where they rarely see sunlight or breathe fresh air. Female pigs endure the greatest suffering, being forcibly impregnated repeatedly and giving birth in tiny metal crates so small they cannot turn around or care for their piglets. Their natural behaviours, bonds, and instincts are entirely suppressed, leaving them trapped in a cycle of confinement and pain.
- Chickens
Chickens are the most exploited land animals on the planet, outnumbering pigs, cows, and lambs combined. On factory farms, they spend their entire lives in overcrowded, filthy sheds. They are bred to grow unnaturally fast, causing their legs and organs to fail, leading to heart attacks, organ failure, and crippling deformities. Those who survive this harsh existence are typically slaughtered at just six weeks old, never experiencing the freedom to move, forage, or live naturally.
34 hours of suffering — that’s the real cost of an egg.
Each year, over 300 million hens are trapped in the egg industry—living beings reduced to machines for production. From the moment they hatch, their suffering begins. Within days, a searing blade cuts off the tips of their beaks—without anaesthesia—leaving them in pain and often unable to eat or drink properly.
Confined in small wire cages with barely enough room to spread their wings, hens spend their entire lives standing on metal bars, surrounded by filth and the stench of waste. Disease and death are constant companions, and many hens are forced to live alongside the bodies of those who didn’t survive.
Male chicks, unable to lay eggs, are deemed worthless by the industry. Within hours of hatching, they are either suffocated or thrown alive into high-speed grinders—machines that shred their tiny bodies in seconds. After just two years, the surviving hens’ exhausted bodies can no longer produce enough eggs, and they, too, are sent to slaughter. This endless cycle of suffering exposes the true cost of something most people see as ordinary: an egg.
Behind every box of eggs is a system built on suffering. Male chicks are discarded the day they hatch — killed simply because they will never lay eggs.
Hens are packed into crowded sheds, their lives reduced to constant strain until the day they are no longer deemed “useful.”
No label—‘free-range’ or ‘organic’—erases this cruelty. This is the cost hidden behind something as ordinary as an egg.
Start making conscious choices today.
Poor welfare in captivity
Animals are sentient beings who naturally seek survival, freedom, and protection from harm. In all forms of livestock production, regardless of declared welfare standards, animals are subjected to conditions that restrict their autonomy and compromise their physical and psychological well-being. Even in systems promoted as “high-welfare,” confinement, handling practices, and productivity demands inevitably lead to stress, discomfort, and suffering.
Animal welfare is commonly evaluated using the internationally recognised “Five Freedoms” framework. These principles aim to ensure that animals are free from hunger, thirst, malnutrition, pain, injury, disease, discomfort, fear, and distress, while also allowing them to express natural, species-specific behaviours. However, in commercial husbandry systems, these freedoms are rarely achieved in full due to overcrowding, limited space, artificial environments, and economic pressures.
As a result, individual animal welfare remains fundamentally compromised in all captive farming systems. Structural limitations within animal agriculture prevent the consistent fulfillment of basic biological and behavioral needs. Therefore, no system based on confinement and exploitation can provide truly optimal welfare for sentient beings who require autonomy, environmental enrichment, and social interaction to thrive.
The Five Fundamental Freedoms of Animal Welfare:
- Freedom from hunger, thirst, and malnutrition
- Freedom from discomfort
- Freedom from pain, injury, and disease
- Freedom to express normal and natural behavior
- Freedom from fear and distress
Making the Connection
The rights of animals, people, and the planet are deeply connected. The solution is simple: going vegan means showing compassion, taking action for animals, and supporting them in the best way possible.
To learn more, watch the 30-minute film Making the Connection.
Being vegan protects animals from exploitation and harm.
Veganism goes far beyond the food on our plates—it is about respecting all life.
Millions of animals are confined in environments such as fur farms, zoos, safari parks, aviaries, breeding programs, circuses, private collections, and laboratories. Most mammals and birds cannot truly thrive in captivity. While they may survive, survival alone does not equal a good or fulfilling life. Every living being has natural instincts and coping mechanisms to endure hardship—but enduring suffering is not the same as living well.
You Can Help Animals Used for Food
With so many delicious plant-based options, eating compassionately has never been easier. Whether you choose it for the animals, the planet, or your own health, every plant-based meal is a small but powerful way to make the world a kinder place.
We need your help to reframe how animals are perceived by society. By sharing our free resources within your local community, you not only raise awareness but also inspire meaningful dialogue about respect and compassion for animals. Collectively, these actions contribute to a more powerful movement for animal liberation—one that guarantees animals are appreciated, safeguarded, and granted the dignity they rightfully deserve.
Factory Farming Overview
Introduction to Factory Farming
Factory farming confines billions of animals in crowded, unnatural conditions, prioritizing profit over their welfare. This article explores the realities and impact of industrial animal agriculture.
Factory Farming Practices
Factory farming uses intensive methods to raise animals in confined, high-density environments. It highlights the routines, procedures, and systems designed to maximize production at the expense of animal well-being.
Live Transport: What Happens During It?
Live transport subjects farmed animals to prolonged confinement, extreme stress, and often inhumane handling. These conditions can lead to injury, exhaustion, and severe suffering, highlighting a critical welfare issue in industrial animal agriculture.
Slaughter: How Animals are Killed?
Billions of farmed animals are killed each year under stressful and inhumane conditions. As meat production has grown into a multi-billion-dollar industry, heavily subsidized by taxpayers, the sector works to keep slaughterhouses largely out of public view, hiding the harsh realities from the public.
Animals Exploited for Fashion
Millions of animals suffer each year for fashion, from foxes and minks killed for fur to cows, sheep, and exotic species exploited for leather, wool, and skins. Behind the glamour of clothing and accessories lies a hidden industry of cruelty and exploitation.
Animal Testing: Animals Used in Experiments
Millions of animals—including mice, rabbits, dogs, and primates—are trapped in laboratories, isolated in cages, and subjected to painful experiments. Stripped of their natural lives, they wait in fear for the next invasive procedure.