Old MacDonald's Farm Is Long Gone.

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Now, factory farms “process” 10-billion animals for food in the United States each year. Raising animals on this scale is not possible unless they are treated like objects without feelings or needs.

If people treated dogs or cats the way animals are treated in the meat and dairy industries, they would be publicly condemned and sent to jail. But cruelty to “food animals” is not only legal, it’s standard industry practice. Chickens live packed into rows of wire cages, unable to flap their wings or preen themselves. This disrupts their pecking order, and they attack each other. To protect their products, the industry “debeaks” birds without anesthesia. For similar reasons, pigs’ tails are “docked” and their teeth are clipped. Cows are dehorned, branded and castrated without anesthesia. If things like this were done to your family dog or cat, what would you do?

It may seem like eating animals “has always been done,” but that can’t last much longer. Raising livestock consumes more than half of all water used in the United States. The water used to raise an average steer would float a destroyer. Animals in the U.S. meat industry produce 130 times the nation's volume of human waste. Over 70 percent of grain produced in the United States is fed to livestock (cattle must be fed four pounds of grain to produce one pound of beef). Meanwhile, people are starving.

If none of this bothers you, would a heart attack? Heart disease, the leading killer in the United States, is linked to animal-based diets full of cholesterol and saturated fat.

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What can you do?
You have complete control, and can make a change at your next meal. Luckily, choosing a plant-based diet has never been easier or tastier. Buy a vegan cookbook and set goals for yourself: Reduce your meat consumption, go vegetarian, then eliminate eggs and dairy from your diet. The animals, our environment and your health depend on it.