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.
|