The Meat Industry

There is a thick odor of feces, urine, and sweat in the air, accompanied by loud groans and cries of cattle packed into small grid-like corrals. They are knee deep in their own excrement as they try to push their way around to find space to breath. Many of them are sick, collapsed in the brown clay-like waste that fills the miles and miles of the only “home” these creatures have ever known.
The commercials we see on TV show “happy cows” roaming around beautiful green pastures, taking in the sun and the air. Unfortunately, this is not reality. Factory farming has become one of the biggest industries in the world, as people have been convinced through propagated media to eat as much meat as possible. For many people, eating meat for every meal is a given, a standard of every-day life. But the meat industry has hundreds of dirty little secrets behind their highly profitable system of slaughter.
This essay will show how capitalism and the meat industry walk hand in hand in the commoditization of both human and non-human animals. Various questions arise when one delves into the complicated schema of how this industry runs: First of all, why are factory farms more profitable than small scale, family farms? How do factory farms and mass meat consumption affect the rest of the world? How do humans relate to other non-human animals? And should our ethical system be extended to non-human animals?
So, why are factory farms so damn profitable? First of all, those behind factory farming regard life as commodity—useful only to be exploited for profit. The animals imprisoned in these camps are not viewed as individuals or forms of life, but seen only as their cash value. Animals in these concentration camps are not properly cared for—more labor means more paychecks to write, thus less profit. Many die of disease, infection, or serious injuries caused from other animals. Hormones and antibiotics are used to force animals to gain weight faster and yield more meat. Chickens are often de-beaked at very young ages and hooked up to feeding machines as liquid grainy pastes full of chemicals are pumped into their stomachs. Their growth rate is so fast that their legs often break because they cannot support their weight. Factory farm animals are also re-fed other animals that were slaughtered—the internal organs, bones, hooves, beaks, and other “undesirable” body parts are ground up and mixed into their feed. This is a very cheap way to feed animals, but it results in very serious consequences, mainly the fast spread of disease. Tom Philpott, Grist’s food editor writes:
“Here's how industrial meat production works: you stuff animals into pens, feed them genetically modified, nutritionally suspect corn and soy (along with growth hormones), and force them to wallow in their own waste while keeping them alive with regular lashings of antibiotics. Then you haul them to vast death factories, where de-skilled, low-paid workers, under immense time pressure, dismember them and pack their flesh into little shrink-wrapped Styrofoam packages.”

The de-skilled, low paid workers Philpott refers to are very often illegal immigrants who are secretly hauled into the United States by these factory farms. They are promised living wages and good living conditions, yet they are met with abuse, extremely low wages, drug persuasion to work longer hours, and high risk of injury due to faulty equipment and insufficient training. Lost limbs are somewhat common in these facilities and are simply ground up with all of the other meat. Once the meat is in the machine, it is impossible to get it out and separate its contents.
The “final product” is then shipped off to fast food chains who turn over huge amounts of profit—the country is addicted to meat consumption while they have no idea what is behind their tasty chicken nuggets and cheeseburgers.
Factory farming also has a huge affect on the rest of our world. It’s funny that in his “An Inconvenient Truth” Al Gore left out the fact that factory farming is one of the biggest contributors to global warming. Could the reason be because his family owns various factory farms?
“According to a new report published by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the livestock sector generates more greenhouse gas emissions as measured in CO2 equivalent – 18 percent – than transport. It is also a major source of land and water degradation” (FAO Newsroom). Animal waste and feed cropland dump more pollutants into our waterways than all other human activities combined. It is cheep and easy to dump waste into our waterways than actually taking care of it—thus more profit! Also, meat-based diets require 10-20 times as much land as plant-based diets– nearly half of the world's grains and soybeans are fed to animals. If humans consumed less meat, we could feed our grains and soy to humans who are starving in other countries. It is such a great extent that, if just the U.S. alone curbed meat intake by 10%, we could feed the millions of starving humans in the world. “Livestock farming contributes carbon dioxide from burning forestland to create animal pastures and from combustion of fossil fuels to operate farm machinery, factory farms, transport vehicles, and slaughterhouses. It releases methane from the digestive tracts of cattle and nitrous oxide from animal waste cesspools” (Farmusa). Overall, factory farming is ridiculously hard on our environment and it supplies tons of foods to slaughterhouse animals instead of the starving people in different countries.
A mass destruction and reduction of natural biodiversity is also a major consequence of factory farming. In order to gain higher profit, the animals raised in these huge farms are “standardized” as single adaptable breeds (mono cultures). This gives a uniform product resulting in high yields of profit, but it leaves greater risk for quick spread of disease.
The practices behind factory farming raise a great deal of ethics based questions. The cruelty towards both animals and humans in the industry that allows for heightened profit margins is unacceptable for many who are aware of the situation at hand. Why is it considered “right” or “good” to harm other living beings in order that humans can eat meat for every meal?
Peter Singer, an Australian Philosopher, best known for his book “Animal Liberation”, writes on this topic. He uses the idea of utilitarianism—“the greatest good for the greatest number”—and extends that ethical centering to animals as well as humans. He also goes over the consequences of factory farming, showing how insufficient this practice is. He writes, “one pound of steak from steers raised in a feedlot costs five pounds of grain, 2,500 gallons of water, the energy equivalent of a gallon of gasoline, and about thirty-five pounds of eroded topsoil. More than a third of North American is taken up with grazing, more than half of US croplands are planted with livestock feed, and more than half of all water consumed in the United States goes to livestock" (Singer 166-167). He mainly discusses our prejudices that lie behind our present attitudes towards animals. At the beginning of the book, he writes about how sexism and racism were once social norms, but as people gained heightened conscious, they extended ethics to people of color and women. Singer argues that animals have the capacity to suffer, just like humans. He coins a new term describing the treatment we give animals today, “Speciesism… is a prejudice or attitude of bias in favor of the interests of members of one’s own species and against those of members of other species” (Singer 6). He describes the prejudices we hold with a background of their histories and implications. Religion has caused much of our skewed thought process concerning animals—the idea that man was made in God’s image and that “beasts” are the opposite of that perfect image.
There are many ways to combat the horrible institution of factory farming. Eating less meat is the first way to do so. Singer writes, “The point of altering one’s buying habits is not to keep oneself untouched by evil, but to reduce the economic support for the exploitation of animals, and to persuade others to do the same” (Singer 232). Unfortunately, in our world today, where we spend our money matters greatly. If we spend less money on factory farmed meat, then overall less cattle will be bred and slaughtered, less natural resources will go into that process, and less harm will be done.
For some people, reducing their meat intake is not enough. Veganism is the most extreme practice of denying the use of animal products. The term “vegan” started in the U.K. in 1944, along with the creation of the Vegan Society, but the practice of not eating animal products began long before that. Vegan 2000 describes the vegan diet: “Veganism is a strict form of vegetarianism. A vegan is one who does not consume any animal products including all dairy products and eggs. Many vegans do not believe in using leather, wool, honey, or any products which contain slaughterhouse ingredients. In addition most vegans prefer to use shampoos, cosmetics, and cleaners that have not been animal tested. Although it is very hard to eliminate all products that contain animal substances, vegans strive to find alternatives” (Vegan 2000). By practicing a vegan lifestyle, big business factory farms, animal testing enterprises, and fur houses are denied further monetary support from the individuals who choose this route. I chose to be vegan because I was so fed up and disgusted with the industries involved in the commoditization of animals. If a being has the capacity to suffer, why make it suffer? We don’t need to eat meat for every meal, we don’t need to wear fur coats to stay warm, and we don’t need to use hair products that were injected into bunnies until they died. Humans need to be a bit nicer to the other creatures on this planet! We need to be nicer to the planet herself!

To end on the same quote as last paper: “As long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seeds of murder and pain cannot reap the joy of love” (Leonardo Da Vinci).