Future Food: 'Over 50 billion animals are slaughtered every year throughout the world for food alone

Factory farming is the only way to produce this huge amount of meat, this is a method which does not even allow for animals’ most basic needs. Life long restriction of movement, darkness, mutilation without anaesthesia and problems resulting from selective breeding are the price that creatures capable of feeling pain and fear have to pay in order to provide this amount of meat. Unspeakable brutality towards animals has been documented countless times during their transportation and, of course, in the slaughterhouse. The recognition that animals are sentient beings has brought about a change in attitude towards the way in which animals are kept over recent years. It is highly likely that the next generation will simply not accept practices such as battery cages, sow stalls or live animal transport. Maybe the next generation will even turn their back on the slaughtering of animals altogether. Studies in ethology (animal behaviour research) show us that, in respect of consciousness, intelligence and the ability to feel pain, many animals are more developed than new born human babies...