export_ofoct.com (2)

[00:00.42] And this. This is a trash can full of live baby chicks.

[00:06.80] I honestly didn't believe this one when I first heard about it.

[00:09.72] It just sounded like comic-book villain stuff.

[00:12.11] But it's real.

[00:13.44] The egg industry has no need for the seven billion male chicks born annually.

[00:19.02] So it kills them on their first day alive in this world, typically by throwing them in the trash or into a giant meat grinder.

[00:26.19] I could go on, but don't worry, I won't.

[00:29.91] We're all done with the images.

[00:31.77] I'm guessing you're not a fan of what you just saw.

[00:36.02] And you're not alone.

[00:38.41] Eighty-eight percent of Americans told a recent survey that they think gestation crates and battery cages are unacceptable.

[00:45.85] Try finding any other issue that 88 percent of Americans can agree on today.

[00:51.96] It's not surprising, though.

[00:55.15] We as a society have already decided that animal cruelty is wrong.

[01:00.73] If you treated your dog the way that a factory farm treats their pigs, you'd be committing felony animal cruelty in most US states.

[01:08.69] And this isn't just about the animals.

[01:12.15] Factory farms, which densely crowd together hundreds of thousands, even millions of near genetically identical, immune-compromised individuals, are the perfect breeding grounds for disease.

[01:25.70] They control these diseases with antibiotics.

[01:28.35] Tons of them.

[01:29.68] In fact, even as we face an antibiotic resistance crisis in humans, we are feeding far more antibiotics to farm animals than we use in all human medicine.

[01:38.71] But antibiotics can't stop viruses, which is why we have a bird-flu pandemic sweeping through America's factory farms right now.

[01:48.81] After I learned all this, I dedicated my life to ending the worst abuses on factory farms.

[01:56.24] And the good news is, I've seen more progress in the last decade than in all prior decades combined.

[02:03.95] On these three practices, we are close to a tipping point.

[02:08.20] Take the gestation crates.

[02:11.12] Advocates have won bans on them in 11 US states, from California to Florida.

[02:14.84] The Brazilian pork industry, led by giants like JBS, is moving away from the crates entirely.

[02:20.95] Take the battery cages.

[02:22.28] Advocates have won promises from the world's largest supermarket and fast food chains to stop sourcing eggs from caged hens.

[02:29.72] McDonald's is now 100 percent cage-free in its US and Canadian egg supply, and Costco is nearly there too.

[02:37.15] Forty-four percent of US hens are now out of cages, up from less than 10 percent a decade ago.