Mollie, a 10-month-old pet hamster in the Netherlands, probably runs a lot more than you. 

We know this because, a few weeks ago, a Dutch physicist named Thijs — who owns Mollie — rigged up the rescued hamster’s running wheel to Strava, a popular app that runners use to log their miles. Thijs found that Mollie typically runs around six miles every night.

“He’s beating me,” Thijs told the CBC. “Almost 70 kilometres a week, which I think many people doing marathon training would be happy to hit.”

The internet loves a quirky animal story, and this one has gotten plenty of attention on Reddit and X. Mollie even got a recent profile in Runner’s World, and he now has over 9,000 followers on Strava. Mollie’s Strava updates are headlined with cute puns like “No Rest for the Whiskered,” and “The Fast and the Furriest.”

I get why so many people are cheering on Mollie and his commitment to going the distance: Hamsters are adorable, and the idea of one logging miles on Strava is extra charming. But the light-hearted virality of the story masks a fundamental problem with owning small pets like hamsters. Mollie evolved to run in an open and diverse ecosystem, but he lives in a small cage and doesn’t have much to do besides circle endlessly in a simple wheel.

Big problems with small pets

Most pet hamsters are Syrian hamsters, native to that country’s Aleppinian plateau — steppe terrain in the northern part of the country. In the wild, they regularly traverse the landscape to forage for food, consuming a wide sampling of seeds, fruits, insects, and green vegetation. They store their haul in their cheeks while journeying back to their two-foot deep burrows. 

But, as pets, they’re largely fed a monotonous diet of grain pellets and are confined to tiny cages where they can’t engage in their natural behaviors, like building proper burrows, traveling for food, and exploring their turf. Confining a dog or cat in a kennel for all or most of their lives would no doubt be a severe form of cruelty, yet we’ve normalized doing so for small animals whom we’re less likely to view as capable of suffering, even though there’s no scientific basis for that assumption.

And while you might think it could be nice for an animal to not have to work for their food, research has found that many species don’t like to freeload (cats might be one exception). On top of all of that, according to some research, these smaller pets are less likely to receive veterinary care to address their ailments and injuries than cats and dogs. 

Their tedious and confined existence can contribute to “stereotypic” behavior: repetitive motions, like gnawing on cage bars, that are indicators of stress. Some animal welfare researchers have proposed that wheel use could also be a sign of stress — or that it could indicate an urge to run or escape. One other study suggested it might help reduce other stereotypic behaviors. 

“I think that the welfare of these animals is worse than anybody else’s,” Jessica Pierce, a bioethicist and author of several books on the ethics of pet keeping, told Vox for a previous story. She was talking about small pets in general — not just hamsters, but also species like snakes, fish, and birds, most of whom are still much more wild than our domesticated cats and dogs (who also might not be as happy as we think). 

Thijs, for his part, is sympathetic to these concerns, which he told me over email were fair. “I hope the attention that Mollie got will not result in people impulsively buying hamsters (and then forgetting about them after it turns out their hamsters just sleep 80% of the time),” he said.

He adopted Mollie from someone who could no longer take care of him and who kept him in an even smaller enclosure. “[Mollie] showed some behaviour that really concerned us back then (climbing, biting the fence, etc),” Thijs said over email. So, within the first week, he upgraded Mollie to a larger cage and a larger wheel and got him some toys, which seemed to improve his mood.

“I think some behavioural aspects (more running, digging tunnels in the bedding, ‘foraging’ if we hide food in the bedding) make his behaviour closer to natural, but it’s, of course, never like in the wild,” he said. Thijs also wonders whether his data-gathering might provide insight into how certain actions — like when he cleans Mollie’s bedding or when he stays up late watching Netflix — affects Mollie’s running behavior. 

“People often talk about pets being ‘happy,’ but, especially with small animals, that’s difficult to assess objectively,” he told me. “I’m curious whether long-term activity data might give us useful clues about changes in his behaviour or wellbeing!”

Inside a “hamster mill”

While Thijs adopted Mollie, there’s also the question about where many of these pets come from. A 2024 undercover investigation by the nonprofit Last Chance for Animals into a massive US “hamster mill” documented thousands of rodents being bred and raised in overcrowded, small, barren cages. Some of the animals were dehydrated, diseased, and suffered from wounds. Individual animals weren’t provided with veterinary care, and breeding hamsters whose production dropped — along with litter runts — were gassed to death.  

Investigations into other rodent mills have found similar problems. Such investigations, combined with veterinarians’ concerns with keeping small animals as pets, has driven some cities — including Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Washington, DC — to prohibit pet stores from selling rodents and other small pets.  

I don’t mean to single out Thijs for his interesting experiment, especially considering he adopted Mollie and immediately improved his life. But animal ethicists like Pierce argue that however much effort one puts into giving these small pets a better life, it likely doesn’t ever add up to a good life, considering the constraints of cage confinement and other common care issues. 

To Pierce and some of her colleagues, the sizable gap between what small pets need and what they often get reveals a largely hidden but serious crisis of animal neglect and suffering. And that’s rarely mentioned, if at all, in viral social media posts or news articles about these critters. 

If we take a moment to pause and see Mollie’s life for what it is — and examine the industry that breeds these small animals for profit — all those miles he’s logging on Strava seem more like daily posts saying that he’s striving for a far different life with no way to get there. 

“This entire ‘track his runs on Strava’ thing started off more as a geeky side-project, I never expected it to get anywhere near this much attention,” Thijs told me. “But it’d be nice if you can use it as a way to educate people (including me!) about the ethical considerations!”

A version of this story originally appeared in the Future Perfect newsletter. Sign up here!

In February, an animal rights group flew a drone over a farm in California that raises calves destined for dairies and cattle ranches. Double D Dairies, the company that owns the farm, is linked to a prominent milk brand that highlights its humane farming practices. But the drone documented a very different reality. 

In one part of the drone video, filmed by the group Direct Action Everywhere, employees can be seen kicking calves in the face. In another, they grind hot irons into calves’ skulls, apparently without anesthetics, causing some to thrash and collapse (this procedure is done to prevent horn growth). Many calves were confined in tiny crates.

The ranch fired one of the employees after the investigation was published in the Los Angeles Times. “Animal welfare and safety are incredibly important to us, and we have a zero-tolerance policy for any mistreatment,” the owner wrote to the LA Times over email. When Vox reached the owner for an interview, he declined to comment.

This sort of treatment of farmed animals, it turns out, is far from unusual. Many investigations into the milk and beef industries — along with other livestock sectors — have uncovered similar abuses.

But without drone footage, we probably wouldn’t know about many of them. Drones flown by animal advocates have also captured enormous hog manure pits overflowing during a hurricane, millions of egg-laying hens culled amidst a bird flu outbreak, and a large egg farm that falsely claimed to let its hens roam free when it didn’t.

Over the past decade, as drones have become more affordable and easier to operate, they have become an essential — and impactful — tool for exposing wrongdoing at the factory farms that collectively house billions of animals in the US. But a recently proposed rule by the Trump administration could cut off such drone-powered documentation, making the mere search for this type of animal cruelty illegal — and a huge, largely hidden industry all the more impenetrable. It could also take out eyes in the sky that add visibility into countless other massive industries and facilities across the US. 

The potential drone ban, briefly explained

There are more than 800,000 registered drones in the US, and whether people fly them for fun or for business, they have to follow some basic rules. They must keep them below 400 feet, for example, and avoid flying them near sensitive places like airports, military bases, and federal prisons.

But the types of facilities that are off-limits for unauthorized drone flight could soon balloon to also include a much broader range of places, such as data centers, banks, and wastewater facilities, along with farms and slaughterhouses. 

A decade ago, Congress directed the Federal Aviation Administration to develop a system in which businesses deemed vital to US economic and national security could request drone flight restrictions over their property. And in May, the FAA proposed a new rule to do just that. 

The rule would allow facilities in 16 vaguely defined sectors considered “critical infrastructure” to request drone restrictions, including everything from “financial services;” to “information technology;” to “food and agriculture;” and, broadly, “commercial.” 

The likelihood of the proposed rule becoming regulation as it’s currently drafted is unclear, though getting it done is a priority for the Trump administration. In June 2025, the White House issued an executive order calling for the FAA to “promulgate a final rule as soon as practicable.” 

The meat industry says the potential new rule would help to protect America’s food supply. They say that, in theory, drones could pose a biosecurity risk; they worry that drone operators could intentionally or inadvertently spread disease from farm to farm. Other objections include the possibility that these small aircraft might distress the animals or that people could spy on farms and gather proprietary information on farm technologies and production practices.

But in its comments to the FAA lies another motivation from these industries: making it harder for activists to document what happens on farms.

“Activists have been deploying drones against animal agriculture, and against hog operations specifically, for well over a decade,” the National Pork Producers Council wrote in a comment to the FAA.

“Poultry operations, in particular, have been targeted by outside groups using drones to capture aerial footage for activist campaigns,” the North Carolina Poultry Federation wrote. 

“Ag-gag” 2.0

For decades, activists have gone undercover to work at farms and slaughterhouses and covertly film and expose animal cruelty on the ground. Their footage has given millions of Americans a peek into the US meat, milk, and egg industries and has occasionally led to criminal animal cruelty charges, boycotts, and legislative action. Eventually, the industry fought back.

In the 2010s, lawmakers allied with the meat industry proposed bills in around 25 states to make such investigations illegal, and several were passed into law. Critics called them “ag-gag” laws, describing how they gag activists and journalists from exposing animal cruelty and environmental pollution in the agricultural sector. And while a few were struck down in the courts as unconstitutional, several still stand. 

In the wake of this investigative crackdown, animal advocates increasingly turned to drones over the past decade to conduct their investigations. It didn’t take long for several heavily agricultural states — including Iowa, Texas, and Kentucky  — to restrict drone operators from flying over animal farms.

Drone operator José Elias, who works for SingleStone Media — a nonprofit that reports on how factory farms affect rural communities — told Vox that the FAA’s proposed rule “allows a pathway for factory farms to continue to operate under secrecy.”

The proposed rule also worries Ram Daya, a freelance photojournalist with the group We Animals who, for years, has flown drones over factory farms to capture their enormous scale and intensive confinement of animals. Drone investigations, he said, have helped to expose the vast gulf between “how [farms] portray themselves” — often as humane and sustainable — “versus how they actually operate.” 

If enacted, Daya said, the rule would “further hinder the ability of the general public to understand what’s going on in farms and animal industrial facilities.”

He and others said this is part of a larger pattern by governments and industry to stifle farm investigations — a new iteration of “ag-gag” laws.  

Beyond factory farms, of course, this proposed regulation could hamper important insights into a huge number of other industries, businesses, and government-run facilities. An environmental journalist, for example, used a drone outfitted with a thermal camera earlier this year to reveal that Elon Musk’s xAI company was illegally using gas to power one of its data centers. 

The broad scope of the proposed rule has caught the attention of journalistic and pro-democracy groups, as well, who’ve argued in comments to the FAA that its rule could suppress newsgathering — and that the agency ought to better weigh First Amendment protections in its rulemaking.

“As drones have become an essential tool of modern journalism, restrictions on their use increasingly limit the public’s ability to receive information about newsworthy events,” the National Press Photographers Association wrote. “The FAA should therefore ensure that this rule protects against genuine security threats while preserving journalists’ ability to use drones as a principal means of documenting matters of public concern.”

The group wants the FAA to require drone restriction applicants to be able to demonstrate a specific threat and explain why existing laws are insufficient to deter it; give the public a meaningful opportunity to comment on drone restriction applications; and establish a process for journalists and others to challenge them, among other changes.  

Most Americans will never set foot inside a factory farm or slaughterhouse. What little we know about these places has often come from investigators willing to document them. If that work becomes harder, it becomes harder to know where our food comes from. That’s good news for an industry that has long fought against public scrutiny. And bad news for the rest of us — and the billions of animals involved.

A version of this story originally appeared in the Future Perfect newsletter. Sign up here!

Organic chicken costs on average more than twice as much as conventional chicken, and people buy it in part because they believe that the animals are given a much better life. 

If you’re one of those people, maybe you envision a small farm where flocks of healthy birds split their time between green pastures and spacious barns. When a chicken gets sick or injured, you might picture a veterinarian tending to them, and if they can’t be saved, they’re humanely euthanized. While the chickens aren’t pets, you’d assume that they’re at least not abused.

These are reasonable expectations, given how organic farming is marketed. And organic chicken certification does, on paper, legally require better animal welfare than conventional rearing: more space, fresh air, outdoor access, and other improvements.  

But a new undercover investigation reveals that these expectations may often be far from reality.

Earlier this year, an investigator with the nonprofit Mercy for Animals worked at an organic North Carolina farm that raises chickens for Pilgrim’s Pride, a major supplier of conventional and organic chicken. Pilgrim’s Pride then slaughters the chickens and sells them to Costco and other brands. The farm is also certified as humane by the nonprofit American Humane Society. (Disclosure: I worked at Mercy for Animals prior to joining Vox in 2020.) 

During his roughly 2.5-month stint at the farm, the investigator documented unsanitary living conditions, along with severe neglect — like birds with twisted necks and open wounds — and disturbing cases of outright abuse, including the farm manager leaving birds to die slowly in deadpiles, and euthanizing birds by bludgeoning them with PVC pipes and rakes.

“It was every day that the manager would be bludgeoning chickens to death or burying them alive,” the investigator, who goes by the pseudonym Sam due to the covert nature of his work, told me. 

But many of those in the industry don’t seem to want to talk about it. The farm could not be reached for comment. Hiland Global Certifications, a certifier of organic foods that audits the farm, declined an interview request for this story and did not respond to detailed questions. Costco didn’t respond to an interview request and detailed questions. Pilgrim’s Pride declined an interview request and didn’t answer specific questions. 

In a statement, a spokesperson for Pilgrim’s Pride said that it is “deeply disturbed by the conduct” at the farm, that it has dropped it as a supplier, and that it will initiate additional third-party audits at its supplier farms. 

However, when chicken companies — or supermarkets, for that matter — drop farms as suppliers, they shouldn’t expect that whatever farm they supply from instead will be extraordinarily different; such cruelty has been found over and over and over again in the US poultry industry, including numerous past investigations of farms that supply Pilgrim’s Pride.

What’s notable about this new investigation is that it exposes problems within two beloved, and supposedly more ethical, institutions in American life: Costco — with its higher employee wages and stated commitments to progressive causes — and organic farming, which has long been perceived as a more moral sector of the food industry. 

The investigation also reveals the immense shortcomings of governmental oversight, corporate animal welfare guidelines, and third-party inspectors, because at each step of the supply chain — from the farm, to the chicken supplier, to the organic certifiers and American Humane Society auditors, and finally, to Costco and other corporate buyers — severe animal cruelty appeared to slip through the cracks. 

Organic may not mean what you think (for animals)

The USDA launched its organic certification program in the early 2000s, a time when consumers were increasingly hungry for alternatives to America’s highly industrialized food system. 

When it comes to crops, organic farms can’t grow genetically modified plants or spray their crops with synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. Organic livestock operations must give their animals organic feed and are also required to give them outdoor access, more barn space, cleaner air, and other higher welfare standards than conventionally raised animals. Euthanasia must also be humane.

The investigated farm at the center of this latest Mercy for Animals investigation has about 100,000 or so live chickens on its premises at any given time, and it does give the birds more room in their barns than a conventional farm.  

Among the main welfare requirements in the USDA organic program, though, this was the only one it appeared to follow. Mercy for Animals alleges that it uncovered numerous organic standard violations at the farm, including:

• Outdoor access: While the farm did have outdoor space for the birds, Sam said he never saw them have access to it. (He said the manager told him Pilgrim’s Pride had a temporary exemption on this rule for farms in the area due to inclement weather that winter and spring, though “there were no major weather events during my employment,” Sam told me.) 
• Safe ammonia levels: Chicken waste emits a lot of ammonia, which at high enough levels can cause respiratory issues and even blindness for the birds. Levels must remain below 25 parts per million, but Sam recorded it reaching up to at least 100 ppm in one barn, which was the highest his reader went.
• Darkness: Organically raised chickens must be given a minimum of eight hours of continuous darkness per day so they can sleep. However, the manager said she only gives them three to four hours (she also told Sam she planned to increase it to eight hours on the day an employee from Pilgrim’s Pride was scheduled to arrive). Chicken producers restrict darkness in order to increase profits, as more light makes the birds eat more and grow faster.

Sam said he documented more than 70 incidences of improper euthanasia, with the farm manager regularly euthanizing sick and injured chickens by bludgeoning them with PVC pipes and rakes. In one instance, the farm manager crushed a bird with a bucket, and in another, slammed a chicken against a wall.

Sam also recorded instances of chickens kicked and thrown. Many birds suffered from severe injuries, like torticollis (twisted neck), leg deformities, and lesions on their bodies and feet, while others were too weak and sick to even stand and walk. 

The investigation illustrates that organic and even basic welfare standards are only as good as their enforcement. The USDA requires organic farms to be inspected yearly, which means that for the vast majority of a given year, farms that flout the rules likely won’t have any meaningful repercussions.  

A spokesperson with the USDA said it is unable to comment on investigations. “Upholding organic integrity and protecting organic producers and consumers is a core mission of NOP [the National Organic Program],” a spokesperson wrote in a statement to Vox. “Part of that mission includes providing due process under the law and allowing certified organic farms to come into compliance when problems occur.” 

Investigations into other organic-certified animal farms have also found organic standard violations and animal neglect and abuse.

The farm is also certified as humane by the nonprofit American Humane Society, which is known to have relatively low standards that are similar to the industry’s own general guidelines. The American Humane Society declined an interview request for this story and didn’t respond to detailed questions. “We have zero tolerance for animal cruelty and abuse,” a spokesperson wrote in a statement to Vox. “We are aware of the video and have launched an independent investigation.”

How to make organic chicken better

Mercy for Animals alleges that the farm in question violated several USDA organic standards. But it’s also important to look at what organic standards don’t include in the first place, like more humane slaughter methods and better breeding. 

Breeding may sound dull and unimportant, but it’s by far the most pressing welfare issue in chicken farming, including on organic farms. The modern chicken has been bred to have abnormally large breasts, which consumers most prize. That makes it hard for their tiny legs to support their top-heavy bodies, and as a result, many have trouble walking and standing, as Sam documented. 

They also grow incredibly fast, which causes some chickens to die prematurely on the farm from painful lung and heart conditions; some die from dehydration or starvation because they can’t stand and walk to reach food and water. Even the president of the World’s Poultry Science Association has acknowledged that chickens’ “existence is painful.”

So many chickens die prematurely on farms that collecting and disposing of them is a primary responsibility for chicken farmhands. “My main job duty was mostly collecting the dead,” Sam told me.

In the wake of these investigations, it’s not uncommon for companies to condemn the cruelty and drop the farm as a supplier. Similarly, many consumers vow to boycott the companies affiliated with an investigated farm.

These instincts are understandable, but they ultimately won’t result in much change for animals. That’s because 80 percent of all chickens in the US are factory-farmed by just 10 companies, they all generally use the same fast-growing chicken breeds and management practices, and most have been investigated only to find cruel treatment and abysmal living conditions. 

To reinforce that point, Sam said that what he witnessed wasn’t exclusive to this one farm or meat company but is rather emblematic of the overall industry’s culture: “Every time we go into a [farm], we find the same things; it’s always animal abuse, animal cruelty.”

In a formal complaint, supported by an affidavit with photo and video evidence, Mercy for Animals is demanding the sheriff’s department in Lee County, North Carolina, to investigate and pursue criminal charges against the farm’s manager for animal cruelty and false advertising based on the many documented organic violations. But the organization’s bigger goal is to push large companies like Costco and its competitors to adopt higher animal welfare standards — and make sure they stick to them.

“This isn’t really about one investigation. … It’s about whether companies with enormous influence are willing to take responsibility for the systems that they create,” Arash Yomtobian, president and CEO of Mercy for Animals, told me. “Costco has the power to reduce suffering for more than [an estimated] 250 million chickens annually through proven reforms, like slower-growing breeds and improved living conditions, yet the company continues to choose profit over accountability.” 

In 2021, Mercy for Animals released an investigation into Costco’s conventional chicken line that found many of the same welfare problems as the latest investigation. Months later, Costco said it gives its birds a little more space than the industry standard and that it was experimenting in giving birds environmental enrichment. The company didn’t follow the group’s urging to use slower-growing breeds that have less painful existences by way of fewer leg deformities and fractures, and lower rates of metabolic disorders. 

Several European countries are moving away from fast-growing chicken breeds, though the US poultry and grocery sectors have largely resisted activist pressure.

Costco says animal welfare is a “moral and ethical obligation.” Pilgrim’s Pride says providing safe and high-quality chicken housing is a priority. The American Humane Society says its standards ensure humane treatment. The USDA says its organic standards strive to align with consumer expectations on animal welfare. These are the nice things companies that sell meat, and the institutions that certify the meat, say. But Sam’s investigation — and more than 200 other ones — prove that reality rarely matches corporate platitudes. 

The most foolproof solution to this systemic cruelty is for consumers to simply eat fewer animal products. But animal advocates and organic food proponents have also proposed a number of solutions to reduce animal suffering on farms, which include:

• Setting higher organic animal welfare standards.
• Passing basic federal welfare laws for conventionally raised livestock (currently there are none for animals on farms and ranches).
• Unannounced, frequent, and thorough organic farm audits; stricter penalties for violators; and making audits free (currently, farms pay certifier companies, which could incentivize certifiers to minimize violations and penalties in order to maintain their clientele).
• Installing CCTV cameras on farms and inside slaughterhouses.

Some groups even want to see the federal government create a dedicated animal welfare agency.  

There is no shortage of ideas on the table to reduce animal suffering on farms and bring more integrity to the many “humane” claims on meat, milk, and egg packages. The question is whether lawmakers and regulators have the courage to implement them.