Moral Implications
Dr. Michael Greger, director of public health and animal agriculture for the Humane Society of the United States, insists that “factory farms represent the most significant change in the lives of animals in 10,000 years. This is not how animals were supposed to live” (qtd. in Sayre 3). So what exactly is a factory farm? According to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), “a factory farm is a large-scale industrial operation that houses hundreds or thousands of food animals in extremely cramped conditions and treats them as non-sentient economic commodities” (1). The inhumane practices employed by factory farms are shockingly numerous. Strictly controlled light cycles, intended to simulate longer or shorter days, confuse the animals’ bodies into unnatural growth responses; mutilating alteration of animals’ bodies prevent them from acting on the anxiety and aggression caused by living in such extreme confinement; unnaturally accelerated rates of reproduction cause stress, exhaustion, and early deaths (ASPCA 1). To make matters worse, the transportation of livestock to slaughterhouses is so rough that many animals are too sick or injured to walk off the truck. These animals, referred to as “downers,” are often forced onto slaughter trucks with a bulldozer (ASPCA 1). An editorial from The New York Times affirms:
The mantra of industrial farming has always been efficiency, but efficiency has come to mean a pregnant sow — millions on them — confined in a gestation crate barely 2 feet wide and only as long as she is. It means veal-calves rendered virtually immobile in crates barely large enough to contain their bodies. It means endless rows of laying hens kept in battery cages so small that the birds cannot even stretch their wings. No philosophy can justify this kind of cruelty, not even the philosophy of cheapness. (1)
William Crain suggests that “if we do open ourselves to animal suffering, we are likely to want to do something about it. In particular, we are likely to try a vegetarian diet” (4). Crain continues by emphasizing the horrified reactions of most children upon discovering the origin of meat. “As children grow up in the Western world, they find that their deep feelings for animals aren’t shared by their dominant culture,” Crain adds (3). Crain outlines the detachment mechanisms used by the majority of Western culture in order to avoid facing the subject of animal cruelty head on. Such mechanisms include beguiling language (“pork, not pigs; veal; not calves; meat, not flesh”), outright denial, and media blackout (Crain 3). Australian utilitarian and author of Animal Liberation, Peter Singer, notes that “becoming a vegetarian is not merely a symbolic gesture. Nor is it an attempt to isolate oneself from the ugly realities of the world … Becoming a vegetarian is a highly practical and effective step” (168-9). In the words of Leo Tolstoy, “a man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is immoral” (qtd. in Konviser 1).
