Factory Farming Deaths

A piece published in The Kansas City Star questions whether or not factory farming is responsible for this summer’s incidents wherein roughly 4,000 turkeys, 2,500 hogs, and 50,000 chickens, died of heatstroke. Animal-rights advocates like Paul Shapiro of the Human Society of the United States believe that housing livestock in this manner increases the risks of thousands of animals dying at one time. Two of the main problems associated with animal deaths at feedlots are disabled fans caused by power outages and extreme weather conditions, which cause animals to overheat and die, despite attempts at cooling them down via the use of sprinklers. Tim Gibbons, of the Missouri Rural Crisis Center, told the paper, “The industry claims putting thousands of animals in a building … is the wave of the future. It has sort of backfired in these cases because the result is thousands of animals dying.”