Is it Ethical to Raise Livestock in a Factory Farm?

When talking about farms, most of us have images of green meadows. The farmers spend most of their time grazing on pastures, but this idyllic painting is only a thing of the past. Since the 1930 's, small farms have been exhausted in the USA, and have given way to a larger, more mechanized factory farm. It all goes back to the rapid growth of McDonald's and fast food restaurants (Food, Inc 2008). Fast food restaurants are successful because they can produce delicious dishes at low cost.

"Factory Farm" is a farm in which animals are used for food or animal products regardless of the animal health condition or living conditions. The focus of the industrial agricultural process is to gather as much livestock as possible in the available space to produce as many products as possible. The most common factory agriculture concentrates on the production of meat, eggs, milk for human consumption. Animals are kept on outdoor meadows and farms before they have a factory ranch. Animals will be taken care of for what they can produce until they no longer produce them. For example, chickens are kept outdoors and housed in poultry houses. When the chick stops laying eggs, they are slaughtered and can be eaten. When an animal is injured, there is a high possibility that meat like beef will be produced. It is not just slaughtered in 4 to 5 months.

I will take up factory agriculture as an example. Industrial agriculture is related to scale. On a typical factory farm, livestock is characterized by typical industrial plants. To maximize yield, animals breed in a small space. When they become food they go through the "processing" system from birth to end. The government calls these facilities centralized or restricted animal husbandry, CAFO for short. This is no longer a typical picture book farm, a green meadow, and a red barn in American myths. In fact, according to CAFO definition of the US Environmental Protection Agency, "There is no grass or other vegetation in restricted areas during normal growing season" (Source)

Industrial agriculture is the process of cultivating large amounts of livestock in a high density environment while operating a farm as a factory rather than a small farm. Animals are considered to be products rather than individuals with perceptual creatures, and operators are aiming to maximize production at the lowest possible cost. The factory farm includes cattle and pig business, laying hen facility, dairy farm, but it is not limited to these. Today, most domestic animals in the United States are raised in the factory farm environment.