According to the Federal Statistical Office of Germany, roughly 760 million livestock was slaughtered in 2019. A microscopic number of these animals manages to escape the statistic every year, sometimes in adventurous ways.
During the 2021, I travelled across Germany and Austria to meet these special escapees like Ferdinand, Hanni, Wolfgang, Joey, Halla and many more. I collected their stories and captured their personalities. In both factory farming and the slaughter of so-called farm animals, Germany is sitting up at the top in Europe. Most of the farm animal breeds up for slaughter and harvest have been developed by farmers and scientists over decades for efficiency’s sake. And it has left deep scars on the animal’s mental and physical health.
Ducks can’t reproduce themselves anymore. The ability to hatch eggs has been bred out because it is no longer required. Sheep grow endless wool and won’t survive without the constant shearing from humans. Bull legs are too thin to carry the body. Cows are dehorned because it reduces bruising to other cows and injury towards farmers. Cows can live up to 20 years, but most only ever live between 5-6 years. Caged in automated cowsheds and perpetually observed by machines, they’ll never get to see or touch the green meadows which adorn their milk packages. The cow’s ability to bear calves and produce the expected amount of milk is a matter of life and death for them. Most of these animals never reach their average lifespan. They are usually slaughtered in an abattoir or die due to overbreeding illnesses. To keep public cognitive dissonance at bay, these animals are numbered but never named. This is so the consumer never has to face the reality of commercial farming, when shopping for their meats and dairies in the supermarkets.