Saturday, January 2, 2010

The factory farm

We no longer chase and hunt animals to kill them for food. Instead we keep them captive and, in this age of factory farms, we cramp them together behind bars and treat them like machines. The wealthy animal industries are owned by people, the “1%’ers”, who from the 1920s devised the intensive system.
I quote from J.S. Foer’s Animal Eating, “Modern industrial agriculture has asked what hog farming might look like if one considered only profitability – literally designing multitier farms from multistory office blocks …”. The ruthlessness of these designs reflects the worst imaginable outcome for the animals themselves.
The wealth of the animal industries comes from the “99%’er” customer, who has “gone along with it” and doesn’t want to know too much detail. Humans have conspired with the use of industrialised methods in farming. We, the customer, have allowed agribusiness to wield the same powers as lords of the manor have done in the past. They’ve woven us into a maze that seems inescapable. We shop, they profit.

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