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Factory Farming

The Issues of Factory Farming

Factory Farming

The Issues of Factory Farming

Nearly 10 billion animals are killed for human consumption each year in the United States. 99% are raised on factory farms, which maximize agribusiness profits at the expense of the animals, the environment, social justice, and public health.

Quick Trip Down The History of Factory Farming

9,000 to 8,000 BCE

Hunting and gathering was Homo sapiens’ food system for almost 90 percent of human history. Following the last ice age, a changing climate offered favorable conditions for the dawn of agriculture, and humans in the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East began domesticating wild animals – ancestors of domestic sheep, goats, cows, and pigs. In the following millenia, agriculture spread and independently arose across the world, leading to a shift from hunter-gatherer to agrarian societies.

1492

Following Christopher Columbus’ first voyage to the Americas in 1492, European colonists brought people they enslaved to the New World, as well as diseases and animals, in what is known as the Columbian Exchange. The initial eight pigs, twenty-five horses, and other animal species brought by Columbus and subsequent voyages became populations of millions of new animals in the Americas in a matter of decades.

16th Century

Colonial society in the Americas became economically dependent on a livestock-based farming model, in contrast to indigenous people’s traditional relationship to food, being far less centered on domesticated animals. This livestock-based farming model required extensive use of land and was a driving force in further colonization and expansion.

17th century

The middle of the 17th century in Britain saw the start of a progression of discoveries and innovations known as the British Agricultural Revolution. Among these changes was the widespread adoption of a more intensive crop rotation system, which in turn increased productivity and made it feasible to feed and produce larger numbers of animals.

18th to 19th centuries

The Industrial Revolution – a period which emphasized increasing profit and productivity – saw the innovation of technologies for mass production and set the stage for the future industrialization of animal agriculture. Agriculturalists Robert Bakewell and Thomas Coke developed selective breeding of animals in agriculture, creating sheep who grow unnaturally long wool and cows who grow unnaturally large.

1906

After seven weeks going undercover at meat processing plants in Chicago, Illinois, author Upton Sinclair published The Jungle to expose the dangerous working conditions for laborers and cruelty towards animals in the industry. Instead, the public became infuriated over the details surrounding food quality, as his work also pointed out the extremely unsanitary practices involved. As put by Sinclair, “I aimed at the public’s heart and by accident I hit it in the stomach.”

1930

Public outcry about food safety in 1906 had led to the passage of the Federal Meat Inspection Act and Pure Food and Drug Act, which mandated inspection of food products and animals used for food but did not address labor conditions nor animal welfare. The Meat Inspection Act was assigned to the Food Safety and Inspection Service under the USDA. The Pure Food and Drug Act was assigned to the Bureau of Chemistry, which was renamed the FDA in 1930.

1930s to 1940s

The discovery of antibiotics in the early 20th century made its way to application in the agriculture sector in the U.S., first being marketed for use in animals in 1938. The ability to drastically reduce the spread of disease in farmed animals led to higher productivity and even greater intensification in animal agriculture.

1930s to 1960s

The U.S. government began to strongly endorse industrialized farming as a means of production. As new technologies continued to intensify agriculture, legislation granting federal monetary support aided this growing level of production. The first of these bills was the 1933 Agricultural Adjustment Act, a price-support program designed to sustain agricultural production post-WWI and during the Great Depression.

1980s

Toward the end of the 20th century, the general structure of industrialized agriculture we see today was established and the relationship of our food system to animals, rural communities, consumers, and agricultural workers had radically changed

“Thousands of people who say they love animals sit down once or twice a day to enjoy the flesh of creatures who have been utterly deprived of everything that could make their lives worth living and who endured the … terror of the abattoirs.”

- Dr. Jane Goodall

A Look Inside Today's Factory Farms

Chickens used for egg production are among the most widely abused of all farm animals. In 2018, to meet the American demand for eggs, over 330 million hens were kept and expected to lay nearly 95 billion eggs. From hatching to slaughter, egg-laying hens are subjected to mutilation, confinement, and abuse, and are deprived of the ability to live their lives as active, social animals.
Every year, over 9 billion chickens are slaughtered for meat in the U.S., making chickens the most commonly killed domestic animal—95% of commercially slaughtered animals in America are chickens. Called “broilers” by the industry, these curious, social birds are treated simply as production units, selectively bred and fed for abnormally fast growth without consideration for their well-being.
In an average week more than 2 million pigs are slaughtered in the U.S., almost exclusively to be processed and eaten by people as “pork” products—primarily bacon, ham, and sausage. In 2017, about 135 million pigs were sold in the U.S., and 95% of those were raised on “farms” with 5,000 or more individual pigs.
Cows used by the dairy industry are intensively confined, continually impregnated, and bred for high milk production with little concern for their well-being. In 2017, more than 9.3 million cows were used to produce milk in the United States. In the same year, more than 3 million dairy cows were slaughtered for meat.
In 2019, 33 million cattle were slaughtered for beef in the United States. Young calves are nearly always separated from their nurturing mothers and often endure a series of painful mutilations including branding, dehorning, and castration. Within their first year, they endure the long, stressful journey to a feedlot, where they will be fattened on an unnatural diet and then sent to slaughter.
Turkeys raised for human consumption are crowded into poorly ventilated industrial production facilities, sometimes with as many as 10,000 birds packed into a single factory building. In 2017, 285 million of these naturally explorative and socially sophisticated birds were slaughtered in the United States, doubling the number killed for food just 40 years earlier
In the U.S., sheep are raised for meat, for milk, and for fibers used in textiles. In all three industries, these playful, intelligent animals routinely suffer inhumane treatment throughout their lives and are ultimately slaughtered for human consumption. Over two million sheep are slaughtered for meat every year in the United States.
Goats are also raised for meat, milk, and fibers. More than 620,000 goats were slaughtered for meat in the U.S. in 2018—usually at just 3-5 months old, a fraction of their natural lifespan. Like dairy cows, goats used for dairy are kept continually impregnated through artificial insemination so that they keep producing milk.
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