Environmental security/The demand for humanely raised products

At a remote research center on the Nebraska plains, scientists are using surgery and breeding techniques to re-engineer the farm animal to fit the needs of the 21st-century meat industry.

The potential benefits are huge: animals that produce more offspring, yield more meat and cost less to raise. Pigs are having many more piglets -- up to 14, instead of the usual eight -- but hundreds of those newborns, too frail or crowded to move, are being crushed each year when their mothers roll over.

Cows, which normally bear one calf at a time, have been retooled to have twins and triplets, which often emerge weakened or deformed, dying in such numbers that even meat producers have been repulsed. 'It's horrible,' one veterinarian said, tossing the remains into a barrel to be dumped in a vast excavation called the dead pit. The center said it lacked the expertise to assess the pain felt by animals.

U.S. Research Lab Lets Livestock Suffer in Quest for Profit: Animal Welfare at Risk in Experiments forMeat Industry