The reasoning behind cruelty

1709: 

If you haven’t seen it with your own eyes, it’s hard to imagine the depths of inhumanity on animal farms and most particularly on factory farms. These places serve to illustrate how far we humans will go to secure a living by exploiting animals. It seems we’ll stop at nothing! To deprive animals of their liberty is bad enough, but to deny them any social life, and sometimes to restrict their bodily movements so they’re unable to move or even lie down, all of this constitutes major cruelty. There are millions of pigs held in iron-clad stalls, there are hens tightly packed into small cages, and other birds crammed onto the floors of sheds containing perhaps thousands of similarly imprisoned birds. These 'indoor animals' are forced to breathe fetid air, reeking of ammonia from their excreta.

It reminds you of conditions in concentration camps. Our animal farms are places of terror, where animals are subjected to constant pain and agitation every day of their lives. It’s being done this way to make them fatten faster, or more productive for longer, and all at the lowest possible cost to the farmer. These chickens, pigs, calves or fish are treated like inanimate objects, like so many cabbages in a field.

The farm operator wouldn’t consider how any animal might feel, so great is their need to achieve economic reliability - “Every competitor is cutting costs by lowering welfare standards. To stay in business, welfare must be sacrificed”.