The Farm Animal Stewardship Purchasing Act is about to be introduced onto the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, and it's going to need all the help it can get. The proposed bill would favorably impact the lives of millions of farm animals who are now living their entire lives in severely restrictive crates and cages. But with all that's going on in the world today, very few people are aware of this important piece of legislation. (PRWeb) February 12, 2007 -- Larry Parker of Vanguard Publications is pleased to announce a five-part series of articles, "A Heartfelt Examination of the Plight of Today's Farm Animals" (http://vanguardpublications.blogspot.com), that will make readers think twice about the current state of legislation which allows for cruel and antiquated practices to thrive behind the closed doors of industrialized farming.

Wikipedia states that "Factory farming is a term used to describe a set of controversial practices in large-scale, intensive agriculture, usually referring to the industrialized production of livestock, poultry, and fish. The methods deployed are geared toward making use of economies of scale to produce the highest output at the lowest cost."

At first glance, one can't help but notice a few interesting terms in this definition, like "controversial practices", "intensive agriculture", and "industrialized production", words that certainly conjure up a set of powerful images. But of even greater importance than these is the phrase: "...making use of economies of scale to produce the highest output at the lowest cost." And, what does this mean exactly for the purposes of a discussion about farm animals? Simply that the owners, developers, and managers of factory farms, under whose care reside hundreds of millions of farm animals, have only one primary concern in mind, one goal that drives them - the bottom line. The animals themselves have no value beyond their ability to "produce the highest output at the lowest cost." A far cry from the caring farmer and concerned caretaker from whom our meat and dairy products were obtained not more than just a few years ago.

No indeed. What's going on today cannot by any perturbation of meaning be referred to as farming. With the exception of a few surviving family farms, our meat and dairy production is now completely dominated by large corporations. While the creatures, whose lives are owned and controlled by agribusiness, are looked upon as mere commodities, food machines if you will. And in the quest for greater profits, the treatment of these animals has become more and more barbaric.

To learn more, visit http://vanguardpublications.blogspot.com. Here, in the five-part series of articles, "A Heartfelt Examination of the Plight of Today's Farm Animals," Larry Parker of Vanguard Publications introduces us to a world of subsidized gulags and hopes to make us think twice about the current state of legislation which allows for cruel and antiquated practices to thrive behind the closed doors of industrialized farming.

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