Factory Farming Should Be Banned

Factory farming is very cruel. Confinement to the point at which suffocation is commonplace is the norm. Many animals never touch the ground or see direct sunlight. They cannot behave in natural ways: e.g. chickens cannot spread their wings or peck the ground, pigs cannot root or nest. That’s just the normal unpleasantness. The extremes are truly horrible. Chickens are bred selectively and genetically modified until the birds cannot stand up and their bones cannot support their weight. Battery hens are crammed into tiny cages and to stop them doing damage when they attack each other (as they inevitably do in such unnatural conditions) their beaks and toes are cut off. Roosters are killed at birth by strangulation or asphyxiation in a bag. Pigs, highly social animals, are kept singly in cages they can’t turn around in – and a number of diseases are very common because of the cramped conditions. Veal calves are deliberately and permanently squashed so that muscle growth is inhibited and the flesh is tender. They are fed on an iron-deficient diet so their flesh is pale.

The meat produced by factory farming is cheap because it is of very low quality. It is ‘mechanically recovered’ (i.e. ripped from the bone by machine at suck force, and then pureed and reconstituted), and parts of the body that most consumers would say shouldn’t be used – lips, eyes, testicles, anal tracts – are included in sausages and patties. The quantity of the meat is enhanced by the industrial process of water injection (this is why your burger shrinks so much when you cook it – the water is evaporating). The animal is often injected with cocktails of drugs and hormones to encourage faster and greater growth, which are then often passed on to you, the eater, in your meal. The animal is fed on foodstuff designed to achieve fast growth rather than a healthy animal. And so on.

The apparently low price of industrial food does not reflect the true costs of production. Hidden costs include environmental degradation, fossil fuel use, damage to human health, and the destruction of rural communities. The owners of factory farms do not pay these costs; they are paid by the communities in which these operations are located, by taxpayers, and by society as a whole.

Factory farming sees animals as ‘products,’ ‘commodities’ for production and sale just like bricks or bread. But animals are conscious and aware and know pleasure and pain. They shouldn’t be treated like this. Even if we are to continue eating meat, which on a utilitarian judgement may be necessary, we should nevertheless treat them humanely, and with dignity. Factory farming does not. It is true that we are capable of higher thought and animals are not – but this means that we have a duty of stewardship and of care for them – how terribly we fail in fulfilling that duty.

Factory farming is effectively ending the practice of healthier, traditional farming methods that were more in tune with nature, and which were the backbone of a whole rural way of life, now being destroyed. The countryside as we know and love it was created by traditional farming methods, particularly grazing, not vast sheds full of imprisoned animals fed on imported feed. Health risks to humans are also greatly magnified by factory farming, with epidemics swiftly spread between overcrowded animals and antibiotic resistance encouraged by medicated feed.

Large-scale beef farming has significantly added to the damage to the ozone layer, as cows and their manure produce vast quantities of methane. It also erodes topsoil at an alarming rate.