In this reported piece, Liz Pachaud, a former undercover investigator for the international animal protection organization Mercy For Animals, explains how factory farms work in the United States.

No longer able to see through my tears, I pulled to the side of the road and started sobbing. Though Mercy For Animals had prepared me for the horror I’d witness as an undercover investigator, in 2011 I had the worst first day at work I could have imagined. All day I watched baby piglets get their tails and testicles cut off without anesthetic, squealing and bleeding, their little bodies writhing in pain. But there was nothing I could do to end their agony—I couldn’t blow my cover because I was playing a long game.

It was my job to expose the cruel, yet standard, practices at one of the nation’s largest pig factory farms, Iowa Select. The footage I obtained with a hidden camera would be used to alert the public, government officials, and food retailers alike to what was really happening to animals at factory farms.

As the investigation went on, things only got worse. I watched piglets tossed like footballs. I saw pregnant pigs held captive in cramped gestation crates, unable to turn around or even lie down comfortably for nearly their entire lives—their eyes pleaded with me for mercy.

Sadly, Iowa Select is no outlier. Its practices are standard at pig factory farms across the country, and countless chickens, fish, turkeys, and cows are similarly abused.

Animal abuse is so rampant in today’s meat, dairy, and egg industries for a number of reasons. For starters, the Animal Welfare Act—one of the few federal laws protecting animals—excludes all animals raised and killed for food. As a result, there’s been “a moral race to the bottom,” as journalist Matthew Scully wrote in The Washington Post, “with corporations vying against each other to produce more and bigger animals with less care at lower cost.” This means egg-laying hens routinely have their sensitive beaks seared off, baby piglets have their testicles ripped out, and cows bred for dairy have their tails chopped off. This is all done without painkillers, by the way. Teen Vogue reached out to Iowa Select for comment, but has not heard back.

The green pastures on our milk cartons and “humane meat” stickers are little more than a marketing ploy, a way to keep us ignorant of systematic animal abuse. In fact, the meat, dairy, and egg industries are so desperate to conceal the cruelty that pervades factory farms and slaughterhouses that they’ve pushed dozens of state bills, nicknamed “ag-gag” bills, to sweep evidence of abuse under the rug and penalize whistleblowers like me. The bills are often introduced by lawmakers that receive hefty donations from meat, dairy, and egg companies. In fact, Governor Terry Branstad and several other legislators in support of their state’s bill took substantial contributions from influential agriculture groups, including the Iowa Pork Producers Association. In 2012, just one year after my Iowa Select investigation, Iowa governor Branstad signed the first ag-gag law.

But it’s not just animals suffering the harsh consequences of today’s farming practices. We all pay the price. According to the United Nations, animal agriculture is a top contributor to climate change. Animals themselves emit large amounts of greenhouse gas, but the entire fossil-fuel-burning industry around them, complete with refrigerated transport trucks and factories, also makes factory farming so damaging. Plus, much of the immense waste farmed animals produce pollutes the waterways of surrounding communities—often rural and low-income. These are just some of the reasons numerous environmental organizations are calling on their members to drastically reduce their meat consumption.

Animal products are also devastating to public health. High meat consumption is associated with obesity and is linked to heart disease, diabetes, and certain types of cancer. Indeed, plant-based diets help prevent these health problems, according to mounting scientific evidence. Yet our government, lobbied by the meat, egg, and dairy industries, subsidizes factory farms when it could make healthy vegetables, fruits, and nuts more affordable in low-income communities nationwide.

Here’s the good news: You don’t have to go undercover at a factory farm to make a difference. We all have the power to help end this cycle of suffering. By reducing or eliminating our meat, egg, and dairy consumption, we can choose, every single day, to lessen the demand for animal products and spare more and more animals a life of misery and pain.

Many horrible things happening in today’s world are truly beyond our power to change. This is not one of them. Take a stand the next time you sit down to eat.

Related: Animal-Welfare Inspection Reports Just Got Removed From the USDA Website

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