Why manufacturing unit farms produce nearly all of America’s meat, dairy, and eggs

A Vox reader asks: Why is manufacturing unit farming nonetheless round?

Manufacturing facility farming — the intensive confinement of chickens, pigs, and cows on an enormous scale — developed within the second half of the twentieth century to feed a rising, and more and more affluent, post-World Conflict II America. It was made doable by a “set of financial, genetic, chemical, and pharmaceutical improvements” as my colleague Marina Bolotnikova has written.

These improvements embody applied sciences that enabled meat firms and farmers to breed larger, faster-growing animals; antibiotics to maintain these animals alive in overcrowded farms; chemical fertilizers and pesticides to provide plentiful, low-cost livestock feed; higher-tech tractors to reap that feed; and a bunch of federal subsidies and mortgage packages to assist farmers finance all of it. Developments in refrigeration and delivery helped too.

It’s put an astonishing quantity of meat on our plates — some 265 kilos yearly per American in 2021, a 55 p.c improve in comparison with the early 1900s.

However as manufacturing unit farming grew to become America’s dominant type of livestock manufacturing, consciousness about its issues grew. Beginning within the Nineties, undercover investigations by animal rights activists uncovered egg-laying hens stuffed into tiny cages and piglets crammed into darkish warehouses, stunning an animal-loving public. In 2006, the United Nations recognized animal agriculture as a prime driver of local weather change and deforestation. Public curiosity teams more and more railed towards manufacturing unit farms’ social ills, like concentrated air pollution in rural communities, meat monopolies that killed the unbiased farm, and the hazards of slaughterhouse work.

At the moment, nearly three-quarters of People report discomfort with manufacturing unit farming and contemplate it probably the most urgent social points. So, why do these amenities nonetheless exist, why are they getting larger and greater, and why has manufacturing unit farming unfold world wide? Quite a few books have been written to reply this query, however I’ve boiled it right down to 4 massive causes.

1) It’s environment friendly — by some measures

For all of manufacturing unit farming’s issues, it might declare superiority on a couple of key metrics when in comparison with extra conventional farming, the place slower-growing animals are given ample house and outside entry.

In manufacturing unit farms, the animals are packed indoors or on feedlots, in order that they require much less land, and breeding them to develop larger and quicker on much less meals has introduced down meat’s carbon footprint on a per-pound foundation. These elements — mixed with the opposite methods the {industry} cuts corners on animal welfare, and sustainability and labor protections — have made meat cheaper. And value is commonly precedence primary for shoppers: Have a look at current discourse over inflation and the price of eggs, or the 1910 and 1973 nationwide meat boycotts over rising costs.

However for all of the effectivity positive factors the meat {industry} has made in current many years, they’ve been partly squandered by People consuming much more meat and dairy than earlier generations. It’s what’s referred to as the Jevons paradox: Elevated effectivity can result in elevated consumption.

And this takes a slim view of effectivity. Plant-based protein, similar to lentils, tofu, beans, and plant-based meat, sometimes require much less land and have a lot smaller carbon footprints than animal-based protein.

Manufacturing facility farming has additionally created a brand new set of issues — what you possibly can name inefficiencies — that People, and animals, in the end pay for.

2) Agriculture performs by its personal algorithm

Packing hundreds or tens of millions of animals collectively in a single facility creates concentrated air and water air pollution that harms rural People’ well being and fouls US waterways. Slaughterhouse staff threat shedding a finger or limb each day they go to work. The tens of millions of kilos of antibiotics used to maintain factory-farmed animals alive places us all in peril by making these lifesaving medicine much less efficient. Sure practices, similar to locking animals in cages for years or slicing off their physique elements with out anesthesia and even painkillers, are thought of customary “animal husbandry” when accomplished to farmed animals, however torture when accomplished to pet canine or cats.

The livestock {industry} will get away with all of this due to an idea referred to as agricultural exceptionalism: the concept that as a result of meals is crucial, the agriculture sector ought to be exempt from the legal guidelines that different industries should comply with.

Farm air pollution is basically exempt from the Clear Air Act and the Clear Water Act, whereas farmed animals are exempt from the Animal Welfare Act and most state anti-cruelty legal guidelines. The few federal legal guidelines that do present some (meager) protections for farmed animals exempt chickens and turkeys, who account for nearly 99 p.c of the nation’s livestock.

Take these exemptions away, and manufacturing unit farming is all of the sudden not so environment friendly nor inexpensive. On this means, manufacturing unit farming’s benefits are considerably of an phantasm, because the system depends on the American public, the setting, and farmed animals to soak up its inefficiencies.

Efforts to take away these exemptions and go main {industry} reforms have largely failed as a result of the meat and dairy sectors have amassed huge political energy on Capitol Hill and in state legislatures to dam them.

3) Animals don’t have rights

Social progress begins with an issue’s victims sharing their tales and calling for change. However within the case of manufacturing unit farms, its most rapid victims — chickens, pigs, cows, and fish — clearly can’t achieve this. Whereas some battle again of their remaining minutes on the slaughterhouse, and a fortunate few even handle to flee, farmed animals can’t foyer Congress, write op-eds, or set up demonstrations to protest their abuse to achieve even probably the most primary rights.

On this sense, animals are maybe probably the most politically disenfranchised group, which will get on the core of why manufacturing unit farming remains to be round: In our authorized system, you are able to do just about no matter you need to an animal as long as they’re raised for meals.

Animals depend on a tiny, underfunded motion to push for change. Its efforts to institute frequent sense reforms, like banning cages, mutilations, low-welfare breeding practices, and overcrowding — and requiring issues like extra space, outside entry, and enrichment — face robust pushback from {industry}.

Shoppers additionally bear some duty.

Many People, and folks in different high-income international locations, are avowed animal lovers and say they oppose manufacturing unit farming but proceed to eat meat — just about all of it from manufacturing unit farms — anyway. This seeming contradiction might be defined by the “meat paradox.” A bunch of Australian psychologists coined the time period in 2010, defining it because the “psychological battle between individuals’s dietary choice for meat and their ethical response to animal struggling.” As I wrote a couple of years in the past in a story in regards to the meat paradox:

When confronted with that dissonance, we attempt to resolve it in various methods. We downplay animals’ sentience or make mild of their slaughter… we misreport our consuming habits (or dismiss private duty altogether), or we decide others’ habits in order to assert the ethical excessive floor…

On prime of all this, shoppers face a sea of mis- and disinformation, from meat firms mendacity about how they deal with animals, to Elon Musk falsely stating that agriculture doesn’t contribute to local weather change, to industry-funded entrance teams slandering their opponents — plant-based meat firms — within the court docket of public opinion.

Deriving almost all of our meat, dairy, and eggs from manufacturing unit farms wasn’t inevitable, however reasonably the top results of hundreds of decisions made by hundreds of policymakers, farmers, and company leaders — and tens of millions of decisions made by shoppers — during the last century. Higher decisions can undo it, and there are glimmers of hope that over the subsequent century, manufacturing unit farming may come to an finish.