I’ve often come across environmentalists and animal
advocates, of varying degrees, who are thoroughly opposed to the practice
of factory farming – and thus oppose this practice by boycotting
industrialized animal production and instead consuming meat from organic
and free range family farms. While I applaud their decision to become more
conscientious consumers; I’d like to ask – where does making the switch to
consuming organic and free range family farmed meat lead us?
Imagine if all of the factory farms were left in ruins,
yet we were still a society comprised primarily of animal product
consumers who obtained our meat from organic and free range family farms.
Intensive animal agriculture, or factory farming, makes animal flesh so
inexpensive to the consumer, that, in the U.S., we can put “a chicken in
every pot” – but without factory farms, we could only put chicken in the
pots of those who could afford it. Imagine our society raising chickens,
by the billions, in organic free-range farms. The locus of power in the
animal agriculture industry would be shifted; and the former rural
production plant managers of corporations like Smithfield and Tyson would
likely become self employed family farmers - with the same exploited
migrant workforce doing the least pleasant labor. Imagine billions
of food animals being raised, now for only those who could afford to eat
them – animal flesh would become an even more desirable commodity than it
already is and its consumption would revert to being a symbol of financial
success. People would say, “that family can really put meat on the table.”
Imagine billions of animals on free range and organic farms, taking up
more precious land than they did under the factory farming system, yet
still producing just as much excrement that ends up getting washed into
the water supply. Imagine family farmers now playing by the rules of
organics and the free range, yet still putting animal welfare on the
backburner in order to compete in a market that demands inexpensive animal
flesh. If we were to become a society of animal flesh consumers who
obtained our meat from organic free range family farms – where would it
lead us? Would the Earth, humans, or other animals be any better off than
we were with the system of factory farming? I think not.
It is not our culture’s lack of concern for the health of
the Earth or of the welfare of animals that has created the factory farm -
instead it is the desire to consume animal flesh that makes intensive
farming methods the inevitable outcome. Therefore, if we are opposed to
factory farms, then the only way that we will abolish them is for us to
eliminate the culturally constructed desire to use chickens, pigs, and
cows as human food sources - by going vegan!
Go on to Empty Cages
Conference
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