It causes boredom, frustration, stress, and other serious welfare concerns for farmed animals. The most intensive confinement system for cows is called a tie stall and is used on dairy cows. Each cow spends all her time tied into a single stall, followed by a loose stall in which cows are allowed to roam around a small shed. Still, these cows spend their whole lives indoors.
One study found that confinement of any sort, when compared with raising cows in a pasture, negatively affects welfare in many respects. Many chickens raised for meat—known as broiler chickens—are kept in battery cages, with roughly the same amount of space as a piece of lined paper.
Female pigs used for breeding are held in gestation crates so small that they cannot turn around for the duration of their lives. Genetic manipulation in factory farms can take many forms. Factory-farmed animals can be bred to possess certain traits; for example, broiler chickens are often designed to grow bigger breasts, since breast meat is a favorite among consumers. This added body weight is unnatural for the birds and causes a host of debilitating medical conditions as the birds age.
Photo: Connor Jackson. Genetic manipulation can also lead to worsening conditions for animals. Cows are often grown without horns, enabling more cows to be packed into smaller areas.
While this may increase farm outputs, it detracts from animal welfare. Genetic modification carries risks to both human and animal health. Over time, acquiring such desired traits in farmed animals can lead to each individual becoming nearly genetically identical, which augments the already-high pandemic risk inside CAFOs.
Under normal circumstances, individual genetic variations act as speed bumps on the road to viral transmission. Large numbers of genetically identical animals allow viruses to spread much faster and potentially become more virulent.
There are many reasons that factory farming remains the dominant method for raising animals for food in the United States. The conditions on factory farms also remain obscured, thanks to ag-gag laws and other legislation. Public perception of farmed animals plays a role in the proliferation of factory farms as well, since animals are generally not viewed as deserving a life beyond their exploitation by humans.
In recent years, public understanding of animal sentience is thought to be changing in some countries, arriving at a point that is in greater alignment with science. The two biggest factors behind the continuation—and dramatic increase —of factory farming in the US and around the world are the rise in global meat consumption and the growing demand for cheap meat. Countries like the US, Brazil, and China help meet this demand by generating a surplus of animal products, which can be exported abroad.
There is big money and political power behind industrial animal agriculture pushing to keep welfare standards low, governmental subsidies high, and consumer demand soaring. Factory farming is bad for the environment, the communities near these facilities, consumer health, and animal welfare.
Below are a few key issues surrounding factory farming. Animal welfare philosophy and legislation are grounded by the Five Freedoms, a framework denoting the kind of living conditions animals should not be subjected to. The Five Freedoms are:. The conditions on a typical factory farm make it impossible for animals to fully achieve even one of these freedoms. Harsh confinement, such as battery cages and gestation crates, makes it impossible for animals to express their full repertoire of natural behaviors.
It is also notoriously difficult to discern whether a farm animal is experiencing fear, since this would require the close monitoring of every animal in an attempt to monitor their affective emotional state. The routine mutilations of debeaking, tail-docking, and other procedures are all injuries that can cause chronic pain, and they often go unmonitored.
While some factory farms have made attempts to improve welfare or align with the Five Freedoms, they largely—and arguably always—come up short. Raising animals for food is a resource-intensive activity.
One major advantage of factory farming is that it enables us to produce large amounts of quite cheap meat. You will likely see that one pound of chicken will be even less expensive than a pound of tomatoes. We are talking about an animal life here which is sold cheaper than crops from a plant.
This comparison shows how cheap meat really is in many parts of our Western world due to factory farming. Even though this might be great for consumers, it can still be regarded as quite problematic regarding ethical aspects.
Factory farming is also quite uncomplicated for farmers since most processes are standardized and also the maximum number of animals that are allowed is also determined by the state or national law. Thus, once farmers have set up their factory farming processes, they do not have to take too many adjustment efforts anymore.
Moreover, it is also quite easy to keep animals healthy since large amounts of antibiotics are used in those factory farms. Even though this use of antibiotics can be extremely dangerous to human health, it is quite convenient for farmers since they can solve almost any animal health problems through the use of those antibiotics. Factory farming also often involves high profits for farmers.
Even though they only earn a few cents per animal, due to the huge amount of meats they sell to grocery stores, factory farmers are still able to earn high profits every year. Especially in regions where there is a shortage of meat producers, profits can be huge since the profit margin for factory farmers will be higher due to less competition. Through factory farming, also the space for raising cattle and other animals is used in a quite efficient manner. Since animals are penned up and each animal only has quite limited space, a high number of animals can be raised.
Thus, from an efficiency standpoint, factory farming has an important edge over organic farming since many more animals can be raised on a given area of land. Since factory farming has been around for quite a while now, the processes around factory farming have been optimized as well over time. For instance, when animals reached their target weight, machines will recognize that and the system will inform the farmer that it is time to bring those animals to the slaughterhouse.
The slaughter will no when he has to pick up those animals and will free his capacities in order to be able to process them in time. Thus, all steps around meat production have been optimized through factory farming, which makes it not only a cheap and efficient form of meat production, it also ensures that the meat will end up in our supermarkets quite fast and therefore ensures the meat supply for a great number of people.
Since many different animals can be raised in factory farms, a large variety of different meat products can be ensured for the customer. Although some farms may only specialize in raising one animal race, there will likely be many factory farms around and the meat supply with all kinds of meat will be ensured in most regions. This not only gives the consumer high levels of freedom of choice regarding what kind of meat he or she wants to have, but it also increases the level of competition and consumer prices for meat may also drop due to that.
Through the use of specific animal food that contains large amounts of proteins and other substances that foster growth, animals on those farms can be raised at a fast pace. The life expectancy of those animals will be much lower compared to animals from organic food farms since they grow much faster and will much sooner reach their optimal weight. Also the monitoring is carried out mainly by robots that are able to detect all kinds of diseases and also determine when it is time to bring animals to the slaughterhouse.
Therefore, only a quite limited number of workers are needed and especially for jobs that are quite unpleasant, machines could substitute workers, which may benefit both the owner and the staff of those factory farms. In some regions of our planet, factory farming might also be quite an important source of income for the local population.
Especially in structurally weak areas of our planet, some farmers may rely on factory farming as their single source of income and also the local population may be dependent on the meat from those farms. Thus, factory farming may also be an important food source for many people, especially in the poor parts of our planet. These farms release huge amounts of methane gas and waste into the land, air, and sea, and their emissions are not closely monitored. There are plenty of people who oppose the goliath factory farms, so why is factory farming still around?
The answer is simple: scientists, economists, and farmers agree that factory farming is still the only way to keep up. The fact of the matter is that, while the demand for commercially produced, affordable meat may be decreasing, it is still high, primarily because there are more people on the planet than ever before.
Consumer awareness regarding the consumption of animal products is on the rise and thousands have been convinced to stop eating meat , but vegetarians and vegans are far outnumbered by the millions of people that make meat-eating a part of their daily routine. Aside from the fact that people just like meat, there are a number of logistical reasons for keeping this old technique alive. There are countless alternatives to factory farming available, but there are a few reasons that they are not being executed on a larger scale.
Organic and free-range farming is often high maintenance and costly. Allowing cows, pigs, and chickens to roam free requires much more land, water, food, labor, and other resources than factory farming. Roaming animals consume more in general than feedlot animals because they are expending energy through exercise.
Their frequent movement also makes them susceptible to changes in their fat and muscle makeup, which need to be closely monitored in order to keep the animals suitable for human consumption. Grass-fed and pasture-raised animals present similar issues.
Animals on a grass diet gain weight slower than they would if they were eating a manufactured, concentrated feed designed to encourage speedy maturation. Their bodies are even more prone to frequent changes with as much ground as they tend to cover in a day. Furthermore, rounding up and transporting roaming animals requires manpower, time, and fuel.
With an estimated 7. Large livestock farms desire high production and low cost above all else, and alternatives to factory farming are unappealing because they significantly decrease efficiency and profit. However, if you value the health of the planet, the civil rights of human beings, and you are against cruelty towards animals, there are really no ifs, ands, or buts about it — factory farming is bad. By studying ancient cultures, scientists understand that around 12, years ago, hunter-gatherers started to transition to agriculture in order to provide for themselves and their families.
With family units becoming more stationary, more complex societies began to form. What started with cultivating wild plants like peas and lentils would eventually lead to skyscrapers and iPhones.
This was not just one single group of people, though. Isolated groups of genetically diverse communities remained insular for the first few thousand years. I nstead of a melting pot, these settlements remained separate while trading tools, ideas, and communications with one another. Over the course of tens of thousands of years, humanity went from domesticating goats to consuming over million Big Mac burgers every year in the United States alone. But at what cost?
It is well documented that factory farms contain animals to cages, crates, and crowded pens. A CAFO can house thousands or millions of animals. These facilities are seemingly efficient means for packing animals together in the smallest space possible. This is done in order to garner the highest profit. Not surprisingly, these operations have extremely negative impacts on animal welfare.
For example, while the U. Female chickens are debeaked. After mutilation , they are confined to small cages. They are stuffed together so tightly that their movements are extremely constricted. They are unable to live the active and social lives that chickens exhibit naturally.
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