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What Came Before – The Truth About Meat and Modern Farms

by Jennie Richards · Published March 29, 2016 · Updated July 12, 2021

TV and movie star Steve-O introduces you to three beautiful farm animals—Nikki, Fanny and Symphony. Watch the 11-minute video and hear about their incredible rescue and the reality of what came before for them.

Nikki is a pig that escaped her farm and gave birth during the devastating floods that hit Iowa. The floods actually saved Nikki’s life. Pigs are very intelligent animals, they are loyal, playful and very affectionate similar to dogs.

Symphony the hen is also a rescue from a life of misery on an industrial farm. Chickens are considered as intelligent as dogs and cats, and they pass their knowledge down to their chicks and even nurture and communicate with their chicks before they are hatched from the egg.

Before her rescue, Fanny the cow was so sick and crippled from the brutal and physically abusive life cows experience on dairy farms. Cows like Fanny enjoy other cows, have best cow friends, are very sweet and docile, and can be very affectionate.

Here are some facts about farm animals today. This applies to all farm animals on industrial, organic, local and sustainably-raised farms:

What Pigs Like Nikki Experience:

Pigs are caged in cages so small they cannot turn around, walk, or move and never feel grass, mud, sun or daylight
Pigs go insane from the stress, abuse and lack of metal stimulation
Baby pigs have their tails chopped off without any anesthesia or any pain relief and scream from the pain they experience for hours
Baby pigs that are sick or too weak — are brutally bludgeoned or clubbed to death by workers, or workers throw them against walls to kill them, or they are gassed and suffocated, leaving them to die a slow and painful death on the farm floor
At six months of age, pigs they are transported to the slaughterhouse, where they are strung up upside down by a leg, and are fully conscious as they are bled out for several minutes
All farms, small or large, treat pigs like Nikki with incredible cruelty – this is standard treatment in the pork industry

What Chickens Like Fanny Experience:

Chicks are born onto crowded, hard, cold metal trays with no mother, or mothering or nurturing that is so natural and needed by them
Sorting of chicks begins on day one as they are thrown onto conveyer belts where all male chicks are separated and killed by being crushed, ground up, macerated or suffocated while fully conscious
Baby female chicks have their beaks cut off with hot scissors. This is extremely painful for them and can cause life-long pain and make it difficult for them to eat
Hens are packed into wire cages so small that the hens cannot move, walk or even spread their wings, like is so natural for birds
Their tender feet become crippled from arthritis standing on the harsh wire flooring all day, and for months. The wire cage floor hurts their feet and legs and causes great pain
Chickens are genetically selected to grow so abnormally large today that they suffer from massive heart attacks and live in constant and chronic pain
Chickens today receive no medical or veterinary care and are often ill, have infections, are cut or injured. Often chickens die in their own cage slowly suffering. If workers see them, they will brutally and cruelly kill them
Slaughter is a slow, painful death while fully conscious causing minutes of suffering, and chickens are often still alive when placed in the scalding bath to de-feather them

What Cows Like Symphony Experience:

Cows are painfully de-horned, have their tails cut off, are branded with a scalding hot iron, and castrated – all without any anesthesia or pain relief, and while fully conscious
Cows are crammed onto small mud lots where they live in filth, waste, ammonia fumes and often wet mud which causes severe and painful mastitis and infections
Cows today are genetically manipulated to produce up to 100 pounds of milk per day, 10 times their natural production. Today’s cows are bred to be so large, that they can no longer carry their own weight, and have such difficulty walking that they cannot stand and fall down. When this happens, they are picked up by a tractor and put into transport, then dragged to the slaughterhouse kill floor because they cannot walk. All while they suffer and feel deep fear
Baby calves are removed from their mothers, then are either slaughtered or raised as veal calves where they live in extreme confinement, on a drug-laced liquid diet causing constant diarrhea. Here is more about veal calves.

What Fish Feel

Fish feel pain and suffer like other animals do, but don’t’ have the vocal cords to scream or communicate their pain
Fish endure unimaginable cruelty, as they are dragged up into the surface of the water, where their swim bladders rupture or their eyes pop out due to the changes in air pressure
Fish are often cut into pieces while still fully conscious
Massive trawler nets that are used to catch fish, also catch by-catch like turtles, sharks, seals, dolphins and many other animals in every catch
Fish that are domestically raised on fish farms are packed so tightly together they can barely move around or swim, and farm waters are full of feces and waste

All of this is standard treatment for animals on today’s farms. Remember, a cruel diet is bad for your body, but a kind diet is good for your body!

Originally Released: 2012

Video Length: 11:09 Minutes

What You Can Do:

Cut cruelty out of your diet. Don’t pay others to hurt animals for you – so you can eat them. Quit eating meat, dairy and eggs, and encourage your friends and family to do the same.
Buy great meat-free items in grocery stores and restaurants. There are so many plant-based alternatives to meat, cheese, eggs and milk today, and the list is growing!
When you stop eating animals – you will spare 31 animals from daily misery every year.
There are so many health benefits for going meat free and eating a plant-based diet, check them out here!