Resources For Education

Life Behind Bars

Life Behind Bars is a unique documentary describing the issues surrounding today's factory farms. Narrated by Mary Tyler Moore, this 15 minute film describes living conditions for egg producing chickens, pigs, and calves, and compares these conditions to those prevalent on today's intensive confinement production farms.

Life Behind Bars at a glance:
Life Behind Bars shows the characteristics of chickens living in humane environments. Plenty of outdoor space allows for the development of natural instincts, which is a necessary component of raising chickens. In contrast to these conditions, this video also describes today's factory farming systems, where egg-producing chickens are kept in windowless warehouses, in cages with less than a square foot of space for each bird — not enough room for them to even be able to stretch their wings. They are also routinely de-beaked, and male chicks are thrown away in dumpsters because they cannot produce eggs and are not suitable to produce meat.

Life Behind Bars describes the unique personalities and traits of farm pigs, as well as provides footage of pigs in a humane environment. In contrast to these conditions, this video also details how breeding sows on today's factory farms are kept in 2 foot-wide metal crates inside large warehouses, where they will remain for the entirety of their lives. They are forced to undergo a constant cycle of impregnation, pregnancy, and birth, until their worn out bodies are sent to slaughter after approximately four years of this cycle.

Life Behind Bars takes a look at the environment in which calves can live contently. With plenty of space and green grass, calves can develop properly in a stress-free environment.

In contrast to these conditions, this video also describes the life of a crated veal calf. Newborn calves are kept in 2 foot-wide crates for 16 to 20 weeks, tethered so that they can not turn around or groom themselves, and are fed an anemic diet to produce the pale flesh known, among other terms, as "fancy" veal.

Howard Rosenburg, the Pulitzer Prize-winning critic of the Los Angeles Times wrote:

" Life Behind Bars is a liberating, stirring, plain-talking video that rolls out an assembly line of compelling reasons to end the evils of factory farming. You needn't be an activist to be deeply moved by its eloquent, soulful plea to slaughter the system, not the animals."

Working teachers can obtain a complimentary copy by completing our online request form. The video or DVD can be purchased on Farm Sanctuary's website.