Modern Animal Farming: Medieval Ethics at Scale
Factory farming represents the marriage of quasi-modern industrial practices with medieval values. Progress in this industry is measured by the speed of the kill line and how much profit can be squeezed out of a living being as quickly as possible without regard for the innate value of those living beings or their capacity for suffering. When technology and progress are decoupled from morality, when we are driven by profit and greed and are working within a framework that sees other living beings and the natural world simply as resources to be exploited, a framework which lacks an awareness and understanding of the dignity and value of living beings and the environment, that lacks an understanding of the deep interconnection of humanity with the natural world, one that is fundamentally unconcerned about the suffering of others and indifferent to its impacts on other beings and the environment, we end up with an inherently unethical industry scaled up to cause truly unfathomable, widespread harms and massive suffering. We can, and must, do better.
Today’s society reflects an idea that efficiency and economic growth are synonymous with progress. But true progress is about expanding the good life, creating a more equitable and just society. And while on one hand humanity has, over the centuries, gradually expanded rights and empathy to a wider circle of beings, even as our empathy for the animals themselves has risen, our treatment of them, and the suffering we are causing them, continues to increase exponentially.
The ready availability of cheap packaged meat, dairy, and eggs is a relatively recent product of industrialization. A facet of modern life most of us take for granted. One we don’t much question and which the industry’s marketing teams go to great lengths to shroud in secrecy, euphemism, and outright false advertising, like the truly perverse images we see of happy rosy -cheeked piglets holding forks and knives outside the local bar-b-que restaurant, or commercials featuring happy cows grazing on green pastures under blue skies, healthy looking chickens roaming free. Lies. All lies. The pigs are not happy to be eaten. The dairy cows are not out grazing. They are confined in filthy factories where they have their babies stolen. They are hooked up to machines that steal their milk before they are trucked off to an early death when their milk production declines. Truly free-roaming chickens make up less than 1 percent of the industry, and they are still sent to slaughter as 6-8 week old babies who don’t even have the benefit of a humane slaughter, as all birds are exempt from the Humane Slaughter Act.
We tend to believe that eating animals is natural and normal, that eating animals is just part of what it means to be American, to be human. All the people sitting in those lines that wrap around the block at Chick-fil-As in cities across America probably don’t think too much about the provenance of their chicken sandwiches. The truth is that fast food chicken sandwiches, nuggets, fingers are a very modern invention, a feat of marketing gurus and ruthless, profit-worshiping late-stage capitalists who played the system and cashed in at the expense of the rest of us.
Modern animal farming is the largest system of violence and exploitation not just in our own time but in the whole of human history. It is also a major driver of climate change, contributing a minimum of 18% of all greenhouse gasses. It is an inefficient, unsustainable system that cannot feed a growing global population, and a major polluter of our air and water. This is an industry that harms everything and everyone it touches from the small farmers it uses up and spits out like serfs on their own land, to the public, whose health it puts at risk through food poisoning, the creation of antibiotic resistant superbugs, and pathogens with pandemic potential (e.g. swine and bird flus), to the trillions of animals who are its greatest and most direct victims.
Why are we supporting this system? Why are we letting them destroy our world? We accept all of these costs for what? As the Greek philosopher Plutarch said thousands of years ago “But for the sake of some little mouthful of flesh we deprive a soul of the sun and light, and of that proportion of life and time it had been born into the world to enjoy.” How much more tragic the disconnect now that we are talking about lives by the trillion, lives that aren’t just snuffed out but who are subjected to what amounts to psychological and physical torture throughout their short lives, and thanks to the mass scale of the industry, for this “little mouthful of flesh,” we are also destroying our whole world.
Most of us go through life just accepting the status quo and mindlessly consuming what’s on the shelves. The greedy corporate executives and corrupt politicians who profit the most from this system rely on our indifference and apathy to keep the machine running. They rely on our staying asleep, keeping our blinders on. Somehow, surreptitiously, the horrors of this industry have been normalized. They are simultaneously hidden, euphemized, and accepted. It’s the sort of thing we don’t want to see, but we all know is happening. And yet, we seek out the comforting lies of happy animals and humane slaughter. Mostly we just block it out. Semi-trucks bound for slaughterhouses pass us on the highway as banally as if they were loaded with widgets or legos, except for the bits of pink flesh, the snouts, feathers, eyes, of which we sometimes get just a blurred passing glimpse, and for a moment, they force us to confront a dark truth most of us don’t want to think about.
For those of us born post 1950s, this truly is the way it’s always been. And it is these sorts of systems that have always been part of our world, these sorts of practices normalized by the societies into which we are born, that are the hardest to question, the hardest to get enough distance from to even recognize that they ought to be questioned. Most of us just go along with it, never seriously considering that there is another way, that we as a society simply took a wrong turn, and rather than continuing on a road that will lead us all off a cliff, we can and should slam on the brakes and change course before we do any more harm.
In truth, it has not always been this way. Before the 1950’s there were no factory farms (which is not to say that small farms are any better- they’re not. It’s just that factory farming has scaled up the horrors inherent to animal farming). And the industrialized slaughter of sentient beings for food is the largest mass scale, systematic cause of suffering perpetrated on earth. It is sustained by ignorance, greed, cruelty, indifference, apathy, and craving. Globally, every single day, we kill 900,000 cows, 1.4 million goats, 1.7 million sheep, 3.8 million pigs, 12 million ducks, 202 million chickens, and hundreds of millions of fish. Every single day. Annually, the total number easily reaches into the trillions. Each one an individual who suffered throughout his or her life and whose last minutes of life were characterized by terror and pain. Each one no different in any way that matters from any dog or cat we’ve ever loved.
To be clear, the problem is not just that the system is massive (which poses its own problems), it is also inherently diabolical. Chickens are so genetically manipulated that many become too lame to walk before they are shipped to slaughter as still peeping babies only 6-8 weeks old. They live their whole lives in windowless sheds, never feeling the sun warm their bodies, never breathing fresh air, never allowed any opportunity to express their natural instincts or experience the joy of which they are capable. Pigs are crammed into small pens where they stand on metal slats, their waste falling into massive manure pits beneath them. Mother sows are kept in such intensive confinement they will spend most of their lives unable to even turn around. They literally go insane, as any intelligent being would- (and although this undoubtedly undervalues their actual intelligence, scientists tell us pigs are smarter than three year old human children. So imagine confining a three year old child to a box in which they couldn’t turn around for their whole lives.) Dairy cows, who are actually lactating mothers, have their babies torn away so we can consume the milk that nature intended for her baby. Chickens on egg farms have their beaks, tender with nerve endings, seared without pain relief so that they won’t kill each other when they peck at one another inside their tiny metal cages- so small they can’t spread their wings- for the duration of their lives. The males of the egg industry are simply macerated or gassed, and this is true whether we buy the cheap eggs or the expensive organic so-called humane eggs. Farmed fish live lives of equal misery, overcrowded in filthy waters, exposed to sea lice and infections that cause painful sores, and killed in painful ways that include suffocation.
Treating animals in these ways might make sense if we still had the medieval idea that animals were not sentient beings and the corresponding ethical view that our treatment of animals doesn’t matter, views which gave rise to many horrifying practices like cat burning, which as Steven Pinker recounts in his “Better Angels of Our Nature,” was a common past time in 16th century France. But over the centuries as science has evolved, so has our understanding that non-human animals feel pain and can suffer not just physically, but also psychologically. Our sentiments towards the animals have grown and expanded alongside our scientific understanding so that almost all (97%) of people living with companion animals consider them family and 66% of US households include companion animals. The disconnect, however, is stark in our treatment of farmed animals, who are just as sentient as these beloved companion animals.
Rather than confront the brutal reality, most of us cleave to the lies the industry feeds us. Cows, pigs, chickens, fish, these are animals we eat. It’s ok that they live and die in factories. They are different from the animals like dogs and cats whom we see as friends, as family. Farmed animals are for eating. They are inherently different from the animals we’ve allowed into our moral circle. It’s just how it is. And there is undoubtedly a tremendous force to the status quo. The status quo masquerades as if it were a moral force. If pressed, we can even come up with quasi moral arguments to support it. “God gave us dominion over the animals. We’re meant to eat them.” “Our ancestors ate animals.” Or simply “It’s just a chicken,” to which many people will agree, “right, it’s just a chicken,” as if this were a moral argument, as if it's just plain to see that these animals are so inherently unworthy of moral consideration that no more even needs to be said. If pressed further, many people will conjecture that these animals lack the capacity to suffer. It’s harder to defend the view that they can suffer but that their suffering doesn’t matter. Any legitimate moral framework will recognize that the ability to suffer triggers some moral duty to do what we can to prevent that suffering.
Even if we are able to see the reality for what it is and agree that this system is truly diabolical and indefensible, we may feel that such a massive system would be impossible to end. That it's just not practical to think we can end it. So, better to just accept the world as it is. Toughen up. Move on. The exploitation of animals for food and other products is so prevalent it can seem inevitable, inextricable from the fabric of human society.
But we need to remember that it hasn’t always been like this. We took a wrong turn and then plowed full steam ahead. It’s time we put on the brakes and find a new path forward, a path forward where we can feed the world without destroying the planet or causing suffering for trillions of sentient beings who in reality are in fact not inherently different from our dogs and cats. And to anyone who believes their God would sanction the brutality and abject deprivation, fear, and pain to which we subject them, I propose they have either misunderstood terribly what their God wants or they aren’t worshiping a God at all but a Devil.
We’ve ended other massive systems of oppression and injustices, so we know it can be done. The entire U.S. southern economy was largely based on slavery. By 1860, there were 4 million human beings enslaved in the South. These slaves provided free labor for an economy based on cotton and other cash crops. But the moral wrongs of slavery were too clear to be denied, and, though it took a civil war to abolish the institution of slavery, followed by a long and often painful Reconstruction period, we did abolish slavery and transform the economy. There was a moral imperative to do so; so, we found a way.
I believe we’re in the midst of our own moral evolution and reckoning with our relationship with animals, that the moral imperative to stop exploiting, oppressing, and murdering them is equally clear, and we too must find a way. And I am not alone. A 2017 study found that 49% of people in the U.S. would support a ban on factory farms, and 47% would support a ban on slaughterhouses. Yet only about 5 % of the U.S. population is vegetarian, and only 1% vegan. That gap represents a massive disconnect between our values and our behaviors. Animal agriculture is woefully out of step with modern values.
Moral and technological progress are not separate. Our killing machines are faster and more efficient than ever, but this is not progress. Unless we have chosen to completely disconnect from the world news, the world feels chaotic and violent and dangerous in so many ways. Much of the anxiety around the state of the world comes from a sense of powerlessness about it. The world is on fire (and thanks to climate change it is literally on fire in many cases). There is war and climate change, rising forces of totalitarianism (though kudos to Britain and France for recent elections rejecting the far-right), threats to a democratic order that seemed unthinkable a decade or two ago. And most of us just don’t even have animal agriculture on our radar let alone see it at the center of these problems, but truly it is there, hiding in plain sight. We sit at tables around the world eating chicken sandwiches and bacon double cheeseburgers lamenting the problems of the world without seeing the violence and injustice we are consuming, without realizing that we are eating our future, and that of myriad other species with whom we share our earth home.
There is indeed something we can do. It starts with boycotting this death industry. Consuming a diet free from animal products is a revolutionary act. It is the foundation for a better, more just, more compassionate, more equitable, and compassionate world for all. It is the diet that best reflects our moral evolution. It is the diet of the future if we are going to have a future. What we do, and eat, today will determine that future.
Making this shift will require readjustment, transformation. But the structure of a new sustainable, just, and compassionate food system is already being built. Small farmers aren’t benefiting from our modern vertically integrated animal farming system. There are a small handful of executives at major multinational food corporations like Cargill, Tyson, JBS, and Smithfield Foods who benefit. I have no consolation prize for them. But small farmers need not fear. We all still need to eat. Small farmers can reclaim their independence and their dignity by transitioning to growing plants, either plants that we eat directly, or plants that can be used for the new wave of plant-based meats. There are already farmers making these transitions and non-profits like The Transfarmation Project helping them. Animal agriculture consumes 50% of the earth's land mass. Transitioning to a plant-based food system would free up tremendous amounts of land, which could be rewilded to restore ecosystems and wildlife. Without the toxic waste and chemicals which are the by-product of animal farming, we would see our air and water quality improve immediately. And because methane (animal ag is the leading contributor of atmospheric methane) leaves the atmosphere so quickly, much quicker than carbon dioxide, as soon as we stopped farming animals, we would see global warming reverse. With cell-based meat companies developing meat without animals, people can still eat meat if they want to, without all the harms of animal farming. And there are sanctuaries around the world who could take in the last generation of farmed animals and give them the beautiful life all sentient beings deserve.
As we rebuild a new food system, we should do so rooted in real progressive values that reflect our moral evolution, and our highest human potential, ensuring fair labor standards and human rights for workers, protecting our environment, making sure there is equitable access to healthy food, and extending our moral consideration and compassion out to embrace all sentient beings. This is the way of progress. This is the path to a bright future for us all. It can be done. We are the ones who can make it a reality.