In this day and age, where the vast majority of American shoppers select their meat and dairy products from a refrigerated section in a grocery store, people simply do not think about the origins of their food. When Americans do think about their food, the majority of them probably have an image of animals raised in a stereotypical rural environment, cows eating in a pasture, pigs lolling around in mud, and chickens scratching in the dirt of a large pen. However, the reality of most modern American farming is that it is big business, not a family enterprise. While animals may be kept on a farm, these are not farms like those evoked by images of children's animal play sets or even historical American pastoral images. On the contrary, these are farms that can raise hundreds of thousands of animals at each time. These farms are all about producing food in the least expensive, most productive way possible. Unfortunately, those goals are oftentimes incompatible with goals that the consumer might expect for the animals they consume, so factory farms attempt to avoid publicity about their conditions. Rather than roaming in pastures, animals are confined to small cages, and may actually live their entire lives without ever seeing sunlight or being able to move in an unconfined manner. To promote growth or production, some of these animals are routinely fed hormones. In addition, because they have such a great monetary investment in a large amount of animals confined to relatively small spaces, these farms are very concerned about diseases. As a result, the farms often routinely use antibiotics to keep the animals from contracting and spreading infectious diseases. There is very little oversight or regulation on actual farming procedures; in the United States slaughterhouses are regulated, but these regulations focus on consumer health not animal welfare, and the regulating agencies are overwhelmed by the sheer volume of work, ...