[Captain Kwok]

I work in the food development industry and can say with some confidence that the conditions are typically in-between the extremes that have been presented here. There's some good processors that make an effort to keep conditions in their farms reasonable. But with any large-scale operation where costs are a major factor (ie for fast food etc), then the practices become more questionable. Small-scale producers can't compete on cost, so they generally raise for speciality markets (ie organic, high quality stores/restaurants) and treat their animals well.

However, that is really limited to the more tightly regulated markets. You would be shocked at some of the things that go on in the less developed regions of the world. What might make things worse is that many large-scale operations (read: fast food suppliers) are moving to these regions for the cost benefits - which means the animals and laborers will take the brunt.