A Poem for Animal Conditions in CAFOs (Contained Animal Feeding Operations)

The industrial way for raising

and processing animals is wrong.

Animals are lined up in feedlots,

rump-to-rump,

standing in mud and waste.

This is not how animals were meant to live.

Cows rush to the stream of corn

and hormones

and antibiotics

do they know they weren’t meant

to eat those things?

Yet it is all they are given

so they eat it anyways.

This is not how animals were meant to live.

Chickens, confined six to a few feet of cage,

are going crazy

rubbing themselves on the cages

until they are raw and bleeding.

Pecking at each other until a worker

cuts their beaks right off.

“That’ll take care of the problem.”

This is not how animals were meant to live.

The pigs, too, are going wild

with their living conditions.

They bite each other on the tails

until someone snips the tail off—

leaving a stub to make the next bite

all the more painful

to teach them not to be bitten.

This is not how animals were meant to live.

Animals are hit

beaten

brutally murdered

slammed

bloodied up

by workers in the slaughterhouses

on videos filmed secretly on a phone.

This is not how animals were meant to live.

This is not how animals were meant to live.

This is not how animals were meant to live.

Imagine yourself there, now.

Imagine that as your life.

What if you were in their place?