Myth: Agriculture in Germany is characterized by family farms. Because of family farms, the animals are doing well.

In Germany, 89% of farms are individual enterprises, but only 48% of the labor force are family members ([1], p.2). It is therefore not true that German agriculture is dominated by family farms.

The use of the terms "peasant" and "family farm" and their combination is also intended to suggest the rural idyll of farms with happy animals. Bavaria has one of the highest percentages of family-run farms ([26], p.9). Nevertheless, the practices common to mass animal husbandry are also applied there. For example, 40% of cattle farms [27] and 50% of dairy farms [28] in Bavaria are tethered. In piglet farms, crate housing is still practiced for sows [27]. 91% of Bavarian laying hen places are in farms with an average of 22 thousand laying hen places ([29], p.258). For turkey fattening, beaks are regularly docked, mostly without anesthesia [27]. The common practice in the dairy industry is to artificially inseminate the cows, take away the newborn calves, slaughter the male calves or sell them abroad, take more than 20 liters of milk from the cows daily, repeat the process of impregnation, separation and killing annually, and finally slaughter the dairy cows after an aver-age of 5 years due to decreasing milk yield.