The Animal Welfare Act is aimed at protecting confined animals, such as those living in laboratories or zoos. However, there are a vast number of animals it does not protect: those living on industrial farms. And there are a heck of a lot of them; there can be millions on a single farm. The Animal Welfare Institute has just published the results of a study of barn fires from 2013 to 2017. Their report concluded that more than 2.7 million US farm animals perished in potentially preventable barn fires in that period. 326 barn fires killed at least 2,763,924 farm animals, of which chickens represented 95 percent of all farm animals who died in barn fires.
The main cause (or suspected cause) of barn fires was malfunctioning or misused heating devices, accounting for nearly half of all barn fires. Barn fires happened most often in the Upper Midwest and Northeast. The five states with the highest number of barn fires were New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota.
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