Farm animals are rarely afforded protection under federal laws as they are often exempt from standard anti-cruelty policies that apply to our beloved dogs and cats. As a result, the factory farming industry treats them as they please, shelving them as commodities who can be abused in the name of profit instead of the sentient, intelligent, and social beings that they are.

The video here, filmed by Toronto Pig Save as a group of cows are transported to slaughter, proves that this mentality and poor treatment are common in factory farms, even though Big Ag would have us think otherwise with cute little commercials of happy farm animals willingly serving us.

These cows – who are no longer with us – clearly suffered a life of neglect and cruelty that millions of other cows have endured before them in the industrialized farming industry. Cows bred for meat live only about one to three years of their typical 25-year lifespan. They often spend their short lives crunched together in barren feedlots without pasture or shelter, moving around in their own waste.

Their suffering does not end in the feedlots either, as transport also imposes a stressful environment prior to their slaughter.

As Toronto Pig Save writes of this filmed transport to St. Helen’s Meat Packers in northwest Toronto, “It was the saddest sight to see.”

Hit “play” to see what cows actually look like before they become cellophane-packaged products.