Have you ever see an “All Natural”, “Organic” or “Cage Free” label on a food product such as chicken breast or eggs? These labels are popping up everywhere in response to a new awareness of what we put in our bodies and how our farmed animals are raised.

Debeaking is the partial removal of a bird’s beak. This procedure is commonplace in factory farms to prevent cannibalism and feather picking. Debeaking is usually accomplished by slicing off part of the beak with a hot blade, shortly after the chicks have hatched. It is a painful and sometimes fatal procedure.

While there are many labels that can appear on food packaging, not all of them means the animals have been raised in a humane manner.

A gestation crate is a 7 ft by 2 ft metal enclosure used in intensive pig farming, in which a female breeding pig is confined during pregnancy, and in effect for most of her adult life.

The animals we eat have been bred, or genetically modified in some cases, to grow so big so fast until both eater and eaten can no longer function properly and suffer health problems as a result.

Somewhere east of the North Carolina town of Tar Heel lay rows upon rows of hog farms, as far as the eye can see. Each hog house, as long as a football field, holds up to 10,000 hogs and backs onto a single large lagoon. The lagoons are a sickly shade of pink [...]