When you bite into a piece of meat, eggs, or dairy, you're contributing to animal suffering on a massive scale. In the United States alone, more than nine billion land animals are slaughtered annually for their meat—that's more than 280 lives per second and doesn't even include the millions of male chicks that are ground up alive after birth because they're "useless" to the egg industry.

Tragically, the suffering starts long before slaughter. Virtually all animals consumed for food are raised in crowded, disease-ridden factory farms that put profit ahead of the animals' wellbeing. Chickens and turkeys are raised to be so obese their legs cannot support their weight; mother pigs are housed in gestation crates too small to turn around in and forced to breed repeatedly until their bodies are spent; egg-laying hens are housed in cages so small they cannot spread their wings.

A Look at Factory Farm Animals

Chicken slaughter is especially horrific, as seen in LCA's undercover footage below. The birds are crammed together in small wire cages, piled onto trucks, and sent to slaughterhouses that slaughter them in brutal, assembly-line fashion. The birds are shackled upside-down to a hanging conveyor belt while still fully conscious and plunged into a scalding water tank. Many are scalded alive because the blade fails to decapitate them. (Turkeys are slaughtered using this brutal method, too.)

Even animals from small, so-called "humane" farms suffer greatly. LCA's undercover investigation of the Pel-Freez rabbit slaughterhouse revealed extreme cruelty: workers hit the rabbits on the head with knives, flipped them upside-down, broke one leg to hang them from a hook, and then decapitated them—all while many rabbits were still fully conscious and screaming. These rabbits all came from small farms and many were marketed as being "humanely raised".

Instead of filling your plate with violence, keep cruelty off your plate! LCA urges you to spare animals from suffering.

What You Can Do:

1. Choose delicious, plant-based alternatives. Most grocery stores carry a wide assortment of vegan meats, cheese, and much more—so be sure to check the freezer aisle or produce section.

2. Download LCA's free Eat Cruelty-Free guide for helpful tips and recipe ideas.

3. Spread the word and educate your friends and family about the suffering inherent in the production of animal products. Share this page on social media—the more people who learn about the horrors of the factory farming industry, the more animals that will be spared.