As children we just ate what was put before us. We asked no questions. We made no connections about our food.

As we grew, maybe we realized in a vague and uninvolved way that the pork chop or steak on our plate was once a living animal. In the supermarket, we saw packages of meat and blood but still where it all came from was abstract.

Now I wonder if we shouldn't let our children gently in on the “secret” of what they are eating and how the animals live and die. It would be interesting to see how many children would no longer want to eat meat. After all, many of their children's books are about animals, which are presented as lovable, fun, feeling creatures. Only “Charlotte's Web” even mentions that an animal (pig) is slated for slaughter.

I became a vegetarian in my early 20s living on my own in New York City. I no longer wanted to eat the remains of animals that had died, and I also believed a vegetarian diet was much healthier. But it was only years later that I learned of factory farms and the reality of the animal's life and death.

Back in those days, it took some doing to be a vegetarian. Health food and whole food stores were small and their offerings were limited. Restaurants would only offer a plate of steamed vegetables to a vegetarian.

How things have changed. Most restaurants have several vegetarian entrees on their menu, and there are many vegetarian or vegan restaurants. Supermarkets have whole sections of vegetarian food from frozen meals to soy products that replace dairy items. Most vegetarian food is also organic, and the choices are extensive.

I found that my love of companion animals also began to help me see farm animals in a whole new way. I lived on a farm for several years, and I learned, for instance, that chickens are inquisitive animals in their natural surroundings. They form friendships, recognize each other, love and care for their young and enjoy full lives and even bond with their caretakers. I learned too that cows can roam pastures, care for their young, form life-long friendships with one another and can even be seen playing games. I especially liked the pigs. They were clean, intelligent, friendly and gregarious animals.

Only much later did I learn how these and other animals lived and died on factory farms - the modern form of agriculture that strives to produce the most milk, meat and eggs as quickly and cheaply as possible - and in the smallest amount of space.

According to my research, cows, calves, pigs, chickens, turkeys, ducks, geese, rabbits and other animals are kept in small cages or stalls where they often can't even turn around. According to investigations by PETA and other organizations, the animals are deprived of exercise so that all their energy goes toward producing flesh, eggs or milk for human consumption. They are fed drugs that fatten them faster, and they are genetically manipulated to grow faster or to produce much more milk or eggs than they would naturally. Because crowding creates an atmosphere that promotes disease, the animals in factory farms are fed and sprayed with huge amounts of pesticides and antibiotics which remain in their bodies and are passed on to the people who consume them. Both the World Health Organization and the American Medical Association have supported ending the use of antibiotics in this manner.

The animals that are eaten by people live terrible lives and suffer terror and pain at death. One example is laying hens who live their whole lives in battery cages stacked tier upon tier. They are confined seven or eight to a cage and don't have room to turn around.

Conveyor belts bring in food and water and carry away the eggs. Farmers often induce greater egg production through “forced molting” where the chickens are denied any food or light for days, which leads to feather and weight loss.

To prevent stress behaviors caused by this extreme crowding - such as pecking their cage-mates to death -the hens are typically kept in semi-darkness and the ends of their sensitive beaks are cut off with hot blades without any painkillers.

At the slaughter house they are hung upside down, their legs are forced into metal shackles, their throats are slit and they are immersed in scalding hot defeathering tanks. They are often conscious throughout the process. PETA's Web site describes a KFC supplier's slaughter house that is even more inhumane - if that is even possible. There is a boycott of Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Similar atrocities take place in the lives and deaths of other animals that are raised and killed for human consumption.

Finally, as was touched on in a recent article in The Citizen about runoff from factory farms into the streams that empty into our Finger Lakes, factory farms are harmful to the environment. Animals raised for food require huge amounts of grain to be grown for them using many thousands of acres of land. It takes more than 1,250 gallons of water to produce just one pound of cow flesh, and it takes 235 gallons of water to grow one pound of wheat.

E-mail me if you'd like the references used in this column or for more details about farm animals.

Farm Sanctuary in Watkins Glen is a great place to visit to see farm animals that have been rescued and are living normal lives. The Web site is www.farmsanctuary.org.

My next column will cover the health benefits of a vegetarian diet.

Judy Vorreuter is the founder and director of Animal Advocates of the Finger Lakes. Contact her at judy@cayugaanimaladvocates.org