Young, unweaned birds are routinely removed from their parents at or shortly after hatching to be artificially reared by humans. This practice gained popularity under the faulty assumption that it was the best way to ensure that birds became "tame" and bonded with their human caregivers. The sad truth is that hand-rearing has meant misery for countless generations of birds.

Hand-feeding, especially in the hands of inexperienced individuals, often leads to tragic complications, including infection, aspiration pneumonia (caused by food entering the lungs), burned or punctured crops (caused by forceful feeding or food that is too hot), malnutrition, or even death. Birds who are artificially reared are also more likely to develop behavioral problems such as excessive screaming, feather plucking, self-mutilation, and aggression.

Upon hearing the word "farm," most people imagine an picturesque scene: green hills, red barns, contented animals lazing in the sun.

But life (and death) on a fur "farm" is anything but idyllic for the foxes, mink, and other animals imprisoned there. Also disingenuously referred to as fur "ranches," these facilities are more akin to industrialized torture camps.

Animal advocates have had tremendous success in educating the public about the horrors involved in the trapping of wild animals for the fur trade. Graphic images of foxes and other furbearing mammals fighting desperately to free themselves from the steel jaws of traps are indelibly etched on many people's minds. Few would deny the cruelty of setting strangulation snares or body-gripping traps to capture animals in forests and fields.

By contrast, many people still mistakenly believe that animals raised for their fur are treated more humanely than those trapped in the wild. A recent study conducted for the International Association of Fish & Wildlife Agencies indicated that most respondents objected to trapping animals to make fur products and voiced a preference for furs from fur farms.

Such survey results are pleasing to the fur industry, which for years has worked to popularize products from what it calls "ranch-raised" animals. Fur trade propagandists work hard to sell the idea that animals on fur farms live "the good life." But nothing could be farther from the truth.

Not Old McDonald's Farm

On fur farms, animals such as foxes, mink, ferrets, and sables (an animal in the weasel family) spend their entire lives stacked on top of one other in barren cages with nothing beneath their feet but wire mesh. Those in the topmost cages are marginally more fortunate; they do not have feces falling into their food and water from animals imprisoned above. In many cases, multiple animals are forced to share a single, tiny cage. They may have no protection from wind, rain, or snow, save a roof on an "open" shed.

Studies have shown that as many as 85 percent of the animals confined in these facilities develop behavioral abnormalities such as rocking, head-bobbing, and self-mutilation due to boredom, anxiety, and the inability to meet their instinctual needs. A mink who, in the wild, would forage and roam for miles, might spend her days frantically pacing her cage, stopping only to bite repeatedly at her own tail.

Fur farms inflict such terrible psychological trauma on animals that in one study of vixen (female foxes), half of the kit loss that occurred prior to weaning was attributed to infanticidal behaviors, primarily mothers eating their young. Such behavior rarely occurs in wild populations. Diseases harbored in filthy pens and disorders caused by genetic manipulation are also seen in animals on fur farms.

If life on a fur farm is cruel, death there is equally so. After suffering through years of confinement, animals are killed and skinned for their pelts. Killing methods are typically cheap, crude, and performed in such a way so as not to damage the animal's fur; there is no such thing as humane "euthanasia" on a fur farm.

On U.S. fur farms, one of the most frequently used methods of killing animals is electrocution: the "farmer" puts a metal clamp in an animal's mouth, a metal rod in the anus, and sends a high-voltage current surging through the body. Sometimes the power surge forces the rod out of the anus, so the procedure must be repeated to kill the animal. Other commonly-employed techniques include homemade gas chambers, such as a box hooked up to a tractor exhaust pipe; lethal injection of various chemicals that kill through paralysis, which can result in immobilized animals being skinned alive; and neck breaking.

More than 36 million animals die on fur farms around the world each year. Thirty-one million (or about 90 percent) of these animals are mink. Foxes account for another 4.5 million, while chinchillas, sable, ferret (usually marketed as "fitch"), coypus (an aquatic mammal also known as "nutria"), and raccoon dogs (not to be confused with the North American raccoon), account for most of the remaining half-million animals. Due to the recent drop in pelt prices for mink and fox, some of U.S. fur farms have attempted to "diversify" by raising bobcat, coyote, raccoon, and beavers, along with coypus and rabbits -- all in equally abhorrent conditions.

A Lawless Industry

Some countries, including England, Scotland, and Wales, have recently outlawed fur farms. During debates about fur farms in the United Kingdom in December 2000, government minister Elliot Morley stated:

Fur farming is not consistent with the proper value and respect for animal life. This is a moral issue that goes beyond welfare considerations. In the 21st century, animals should not be killed just for the business of stripping their skins off their backs ... In a modern society there should be room for Government to make ethical decisions and it is right and proper for the Government to have introduced this ban.

Unfortunately, the U.S. government seems not to agree with this assessment. In fact, no federal laws regulate how the animals on the nearly 400 fur farms in operation in the U.S. are to be housed, cared for, or killed.

Even with the handful of countries banning or restricting fur farming, globally, fur-farm production is increasing, particularly in Asia. This phenomenon can be traced the increased marketing and public acceptance of fur trim. Today, male minks and foxes are killed almost exclusively for use in fur-trimmed accessories such as hats, jacket collars, and ruffs -- proof that, despite what some apologists claim, fur trim is not a byproduct of the larger fur trade.

Just because animals are raised for their fur in confined and controlled settings doesn't reduce their intense pain and suffering. It is essential that animal advocates fight myths propagated by fur-farm proponents.

A Dairy Diary

The modern-day dairy cow suffers greatly during her unnaturally short life. Her home is most often an overcrowded dirt lot, where she may be forced to stand in fetid pools of mud, urine, and manure. Fed from a trough, she rarely, if ever, sees a pasture.

Each year she is forcefully inseminated so that she will conceive and give birth -- a prerequisite for lactation. Her calf will be taken from her within hours of delivery; for days, she may bellow frantically in search of her baby. During her ten-month lactation period, machines will drain her of ten to twenty times the amount of milk her calf would suckle.

If her calf is male, he will probably be thrown in a truck and sent to auction soon after he is born. If he survives this ordeal, he is likely sold to a veal operation. For the duration of his short life, he will be confined to a tiny crate that prevents almost all movement. He will be fed a meager, iron-poor diet so that his flesh will remain pale, the way "fine diners" prefer. A female calf will not fare much better. In most cases, she will remain on the farm to replace her mother or some other worn-out milk producer.

A dairy cow might be injected with a variety of substances that then make their way into the human food supply. She may receive injections of synthetic hormones that increase her milk supply by an additional 30 percent. As a result, she will be chronically hungry and prone to mastitis -- a painful udder infection that afflicts up to 75 percent of dairy cows. She will probably also receive large doses of antibiotics before she is butchered.

A cow who becomes ill in modern dairy operations often suffers greatly before she is noticed and treated (or killed). According to Bill Bickert, an agricultural engineer at Michigan State University, "The large-scale dairy can result in a lack of attention to detail when it comes to procedures and individual cow care." Dairy expert John Kirk, DVM, of the University of California at Davis, stated in a lecture last year that the at least 20 to 25 percent of cows in dairy herds experience painful lameness.

After years of cycling through continuous pregnancies, births, and lactations, a cow's milk production will begin an irreversible decline and she will be "culled" from the herd. In California today, the average productive life for a dairy cow is a mere 2.4 lactations (starting at age 2) before she is sent to slaughter, even though she has a potential lifespan of 20 or more years. Nearly 15 percent of all beef consumed in the U.S. consists of the bodies of slaughtered dairy cows.

Mega-Dairies, Mega-Destruction

Not only are modern-day dairy practices inhumane to animals, they are dangerous to the planet. Large dairies containing many thousands of cows are increasingly common and are particularly hazardous to the environment.

"Mega-dairies" are becoming the norm in California, which leads the nation in dairy production. In 2000, the state's 2,195 dairies churned out 32 billion gallons of milk, or about 18 percent of the U.S.'s supply. Because the cost of land in California is generally very high, most dairies located there keep the maximum number of cows in the minimum amount of space. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), between 1993 and 1998, the average number of cows per dairy in California nearly doubled; in 2000, the state had 1.5 million dairy cows. The environmental havoc mega-dairies have wreaked in California should serve as warning to other states not yet as severely impacted, since the growth of large operations there merely reflects a national trend toward more concentrated operations.

The EPA defines "large" dairies as those housing 700 or more cows, but many "mega-dairies" confine several thousand animals in a small area. These operations are a common point source of both water and air pollution, which fall unevenly across the region in which the dairies operate. The EPA's 2002 Progress Report for the Pacific Southwest Region illustrates the damaging effects of the waste produced at large-scale dairy operations. According to the report, "each cow produces about 120 pounds of wet manure per day." A 1,000-cow dairy will produce the same amount of waste as a city of 20,000 people, with no sewage treatment.

These outsized quantities of manure can contaminate rivers and groundwater supplies, including sources of drinking water for humans. Water pollution from dairies occurs in a number of different ways, from slow continuous leaking of manure-laced runoff into groundwater, to untimely rain after the application of manure to a field, to breaks or overflows in "lagoons" built to hold vast amounts of waste. According to the EPA, dairy waste pollutes waters with "nutrients (e.g., nitrate, phosphorous), organic matter, sediments ... heavy metals, hormones, antibiotics and ammonia" deadly to fish and aquatic ecosystems. The EPA also warns of "public health threats" caused by microorganisms in animal wastes, such as E. coli, salmonella, and cryptosporidium, which, when they enter the human drinking water supply, can cause serious illness or death. In 1998, the California Water Resources Control Board listed the water quality of 9 rivers and 49 ground water basins in the state as impaired by waste from animal operations, particularly dairies.

Pollution is not the only impact on local water supplies. Dairy farms are also intensive users of water. For example, The Heritage Dairy, a hotly-contested 6,000-cow facility recently given permission to operate in Dixon, CA (see sidebar) will consume approximately 9 million gallons of well water each year. With droughts and development already putting water supplies in jeopardy, the country can ill afford to pump vast quantities of this resource into the ballooning dairy industry.

The Air We Breathe

Of all environmental impacts created by mega-dairies, air pollution generally imposes the most immediate problem for the community. Dairy workers and those living near dairies frequently report adverse health effects from exposure to animal waste. People who experience prolonged exposure to dairy-related pollutants are vulnerable to respiratory illness, lung inflammation, and asthma, according to the EPA. The agency also states that "odorous and potentially toxic gases, such as sulfur dioxide, produced by the decomposition of animal wastes, may also cause nausea, headaches, and throat and eye irritation." Recently, three men at two different dairies in California died when they were overcome by toxic fumes from liquefied manure, fell into manure holding tanks, and drowned.

Dairy facilities also contribute to other air quality problems by introducing dust, smog, and greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. For example, manure lagoons are a major source of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming. According to the EPA, the world's livestock herds and waste lagoons comprise the largest source (30 percent) of human-induced emissions of methane.

Emissions from dairies and other animal feeding operations also play a role in the formation of ozone (smog) and other pollutants that pose a danger to public health and that are regulated by the Clean Air Act. High ozone levels can also reduce crop yields and make plants more vulnerable to disease. In California's Central Valley, a largely agricultural region in which ozone and particular matter often exceed national health standards, state projections show that animal waste is on track to become one of the largest sources of smog within the next three years.

Dust and dried manure particles kicked up by cows on crowded feedlots also contribute to air pollution. According to a May 15, 2002 article in the Los Angeles Times, the particulates in cow excrement carried downwind from dairies in Chino contribute to "some of the worst particle air pollution in the nation." Moreover, in the American Lung Association's May 2001 report on air pollution, California counties receiving a grade of "F" for air quality included all the major dairy-producing counties: Fresno (105 dairies), Kern (33 dairies), Kings (151 dairies), Madera (46 dairies), Merced (313 dairies), Riverside (109 dairies), Sacramento (55 dairies), San Bernardino (193 dairies), San Joaquin (151 dairies), Stanislaus (305 dairies), and Tulare (236 dairies) (1998 dairy statistics from the California Department of Agriculture).

Until 2002, factory farms were exempt from clean air requirements in California because of a long-standing legal loophole that was closed only after community groups, including Medical Alliance for Healthy Air, Communities for a Better Environment, and the Natural Resources Defense Council, filed suit. A recent study by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), however, reveals that regulation of air quality problems arising from factory farms is a tricky endeavor. According to the NAS, "Because the Clean Air Act and its regulations generally rely on objective measures of pollutants, the regulatory process has not been effective in controlling odors, which are difficult to measure objectively." In other words, permitting mega-dairies and other industrial-sized farms under the Clean Air Act will do little to protect the community (including humans, wildlife, and domestic animals) from air quality problems associated with factory farming.

Ironically, while communities suffer from the impacts of industrial-sized dairies, and cows suffer from the effects of overcrowding and forced milk stimulation, the dairy industry itself is experiencing economic hardship due to overproduction: Because supplies are abundant, farmers receive lower prices for the milk they produce. State and federal subsidies, which encourage even greater milk output, only exacerbate the problem -- at the taxpayers' expense.

In California, for example, the state plans to pay dairy farmers up to $45 million over a 12-month period in the form of agricultural subsidies. Even some in the dairy industry point out the illogic of using tax dollars to pay farmers for overproduction. Rachel Kaldor, Executive Director of the Dairy Institute in Sacramento, told The Sacramento Bee earlier this year, "We have so much extra milk right now ... and we know as sure as the sun will rise tomorrow that when you give dairymen or anyone else more money for their product, they will make more." It's a costly, destructive cycle that shows no sign of slowing.

Healthier Humans

Fortunately, not only do numerous dairy alternatives exist, they are increasing in popularity -- and for good reason. Research shows that dairy products supply about one-third of the saturated fat found in the typical American diet; saturated fat raises "bad" cholesterol levels in the blood more than other forms of fat. Residues from the hormones and antibiotics fed to many dairy cows also threaten human health. Further, according to a recent study published in the journal Nature Genetics, between 30 million and 50 million North Americans, including 75 percent of African-Americans and 90 percent of Asian-Americans, are lactose intolerant and frequently experience nausea, cramps, bloating, gas, and diarrhea after ingesting dairy foods.

Despite the dairy industry's attempts to peddle the image of milk and milk-based products as "health foods," the truth is, a dairy-free diet may be a better bet, nutritionally speaking.

"But what about calcium?" is a question commonly posed to those who choose not to eat dairy. Although the public largely associates calcium with dairy this essentially nutrient is actually present in many non-dairy products, such as leafy green vegetables, fortified orange juice and soy beverages, dried figs, and enriched wheat flour. In fact, the calcium in leafy greens (with the exception of spinach and collard greens) is often more plentiful and better absorbed than the calcium in dairy products, and contains no cholesterol or saturated fat. Additionally, unlike dairy foods, vegetables contain beneficial phytochemicals and are loaded with fiber.

Moreover, while dairy products do contain calcium, there is no evidence that milk consumption prevents osteoporosis, as the milk industry often implies. In fact, documented evidence now suggests that the opposite may be true.

A 1998 study published by the Journal of the American Dietetic Association revealed that vegan women did not have lower bone density than vegetarian women despite the fact that the vegan women consumed no dairy products and had lower intakes of calcium. The reason for this may be that reducing calcium loss is more important than levels of calcium intake. Diets high in protein, particularly animal protein, appear to increase the loss of calcium through the urine and lead to a weakening of the bones.

Another recent study (in which two API staff participated) further supports the benefits of a dairy-free diet. Researchers at the University of California at Davis, exploring the relationship between osteoporosis and diet, compared women who eat both animal and plant foods to women who only eat plant-derived foods. Their results indicated that rates of bone resorption -- in which calcium is leached from bones into the bloodstream -- were the same in the omnivore women and the vegan women. Bone formation rates, however, were significantly lower in the women who ate animal products, indicating a possible association between omnivorous diets and lower bone densities.

Dairy products also appear to increase vulnerability to cancer. According to a study published in the July 16, 2003 edition of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute found that premenopausal women aged 26-46 who eat red meat and high-fat dairy foods, such as cheese, may be at greater risk for breast cancer than those whose fats come primarily from plant sources.

This is not the first time that animal products have been implicated in contributing to certain cancers. A report published in the January 2001 American Journal of Clinical Nutrition linked eating meat with certain cancers and found colon cancer to be most strongly correlated with a meat-heavy diet. A 1997 report by the American Institute for Cancer Research and the world Cancer Research Fund concluded that vegetarians have decreased rates of several kinds of cancer, due to their larger intake of plant foods.

If we choose to listen, there is a clear message to be heard in the results of these health studies, in the suffering of the cows exploited in dairy production, and in the environmental harm dairies cause to our air, soil, and water: For the sake of animals, people, and the planet, don't buy dairy!

Community Fights Mega-dairy Invasion

When a 6,000-cow mega-dairy was allowed to move in next door to the small town of Dixon, CA, without an environmental review or public input, API sprang into action. API joined forces with Viva!, Animal Place, The Association of Veterinarians for Animal Rights, and local residents to form the Citizen Action Group Against Mega Dairies. This grassroots coalition demanded that the local government and planning commission listen to the community concerns about the environment, property values, human health, and animal welfare.

Many California dairy producers have learned the value of doing business in counties that have no experience with industrial-sized dairies. When land prices or regulatory burdens increase in one area, many dairies opt to pack up and move to a location with cheaper land and minimal or nonexistent regulations.

Such was the case in Dixon, a town targeted by two companies experiencing environmental challenges in other California locales. First, in the spring of 2002, The Heritage Dairy, a 6,000-cow operation, relocated to Dixon from Ontario, in southern California. Soon afterward, the Zysling Dairy submitted an application for another 6,000-cow dairy, after facing environmental challenges in Tulare County, CA.

Members of the Citizens Group protested to county and city officials, testified at hearings, and alerted the media about the mega-dairies. This public outcry led to more intense scrutiny of the Zysling Dairy, which subsequently withdrew its permit request. After a public workshop conducted at the request of the Citizen Group, county officials are now considering a moratorium on large dairies in the county until studies are done to determine whether the impacts of such facilities can be mitigated.

By joining stakeholders together to educate the public, lobby decision-makers, and voice residents' concerns, the Citizens Group can serve as an inspiration for other communities challenging the presence of mega-dairies and other dangerous businesses in their area.