From Farm to Fridge (Animal Factory)
The point of factory farming is cheap meat, made possible by confining large numbers of animals in small spaces. Perhaps the greatest hidden cost is its potential effect on human health. These are social and sentient beings that live short, miserable lives that end in a violent death — all in the name of convenience and the satisfaction of our taste buds.
The problem is the system that enables cruelty and a lack not just of law enforcement but actual laws. Because the only federal laws governing animal cruelty apply to slaughterhouses, where animals may spend only minutes before being dispatched. None apply to farms, where animals are protected only by state laws.
The biggest problem of all is that we’ve created a system in which standard factory-farming practices are inhumane, and the kinds of abuses are well documented. If you’re raising and killing 10 billion animals every year, some abuse is pretty much guaranteed.
There is, of course, the argument that domesticating animals in order to kill them is essentially immoral; those of us who eat meat choose not to believe this.
