US Lawyer calls for end to legal exemptions in livestock industry

America's most famous animal rights lawyer, Steven Wise, has called for an end to the legal exemptions against cruelty, as presently provided for in most intensive livestock industries.

Speaking on national television in Australia, Wise said: “If you look at a factory farm and imagine it full of dogs or full of cats instead of full of pigs or instead of chickens, you see that they are kept in very small cages or pens and they are oftentimes unable to stand up and turn around. 
“They're extremely crowded. Chickens might have their beaks taken off which can be a painful thing.
”Pigs can have their tails docked, their teeth filed, they are not in the sunlight, they have to stay inside, in a completely controlled environment, and that's until they're led off to the slaughterhouse, and the horrors of a modern factory slaughterhouse are just almost unbelievable.”
- Aired on Landline, Australian national TV, July 2007

‘End obscene cruelty to animals on factory farms’ - Australian Lawyer
Australian lawyer and author, Dr Mirko Bagaric says obscene cruelty to animals on factory farms exists because “most of us don't know the intolerable conditions in which farm animals are kept.”

Quoted in the Australian on-line Courier Mail, Dr Bagaric suggests that the level of pain experienced by these animals daily “would land people in jail if it was inflicted on pet dogs or cats”.

“But we're all pretty good at finding ways to ignore the desperate shrieks from behind the farm fence,” he said.  

Dr Bagaric's most recent book is: How to Live: Being Happy and Dealing with Moral Dilemmas