Factory Farming

Hunting and gathering was Homo sapiens’ food system for almost 90 percent of human history. Following the last ice age, a changing climate offered favorable conditions for the dawn of agriculture, and humans in the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East began domesticating wild animals – ancestors of domestic sheep, goats, cows, and pigs. In the following millenia, agriculture spread and independently arose across the world, leading to a shift from hunter-gatherer to agrarian societies.

Following Christopher Columbus’ first voyage to the Americas in 1492, European colonists brought people they enslaved to the New World, as well as diseases and animals, in what is known as the Columbian Exchange. The initial eight pigs, twenty-five horses, and other animal species brought by Columbus and subsequent voyages became populations of millions of new animals in the Americas in a matter of decades.

Colonial society in the Americas became economically dependent on a livestock-based farming model, in contrast to indigenous people’s traditional relationship to food, being far less centered on domesticated animals. This livestock-based farming model required extensive use of land and was a driving force in further colonization and expansion.

The middle of the 17th century in Britain saw the start of a progression of discoveries and innovations known as the British Agricultural Revolution. Among these changes was the widespread adoption of a more intensive crop rotation system, which in turn increased productivity and made it feasible to feed and produce larger numbers of animals.

The Industrial Revolution – a period which emphasized increasing profit and productivity – saw the innovation of technologies for mass production and set the stage for the future industrialization of animal agriculture. Agriculturalists Robert Bakewell and Thomas Coke developed selective breeding of animals in agriculture, creating sheep who grow unnaturally long wool and cows who grow unnaturally large.

After seven weeks going undercover at meat processing plants in Chicago, Illinois, author Upton Sinclair published The Jungle to expose the dangerous working conditions for laborers and cruelty towards animals in the industry. Instead, the public became infuriated over the details surrounding food quality, as his work also pointed out the extremely unsanitary practices involved. As put by Sinclair, “I aimed at the public’s heart and by accident I hit it in the stomach.”

Public outcry about food safety in 1906 had led to the passage of the Federal Meat Inspection Act and Pure Food and Drug Act, which mandated inspection of food products and animals used for food but did not address labor conditions nor animal welfare. The Meat Inspection Act was assigned to the Food Safety and Inspection Service under the USDA. The Pure Food and Drug Act was assigned to the Bureau of Chemistry, which was renamed the FDA in 1930.

The discovery of antibiotics in the early 20th century made its way to application in the agriculture sector in the U.S., first being marketed for use in animals in 1938. The ability to drastically reduce the spread of disease in farmed animals led to higher productivity and even greater intensification in animal agriculture.

The U.S. government began to strongly endorse industrialized farming as a means of production. As new technologies continued to intensify agriculture, legislation granting federal monetary support aided this growing level of production. The first of these bills was the 1933 Agricultural Adjustment Act, a price-support program designed to sustain agricultural production post-WWI and during the Great Depression.

Toward the end of the 20th century, the general structure of industrialized agriculture we see today was established and the relationship of our food system to animals, rural communities, consumers, and agricultural workers had radically changed.

After documenting abusive practices of the animal agriculture industry through undercover investigations, Farm Sanctuary was founded in 1986 as a national nonprofit dedicated to exposing and challenging these practices and working to change the way society views and treats farmed animals.

From 1950 to 1997, U.S. farms on average doubled in size and the number of farms was halved. Animal agriculture shifted from many small farms with few animals, to fewer and larger farms with thousands of animals. Agricultural labor went from employing 47% of the U.S. population to 2%.

The 2009 swine flu (H1N1) pandemic made its way across the world, killing an estimated 150,000-575,000 people. An earlier strain of the virus had been identified in U.S. factory farms in the 1990s and circulated throughout pig farms over the following decade before making the jump to humans. A combination of high-density animal confinement and poor regulation likely fostered an environment conducive to the spread of the virus.

Factory farming in the U.S. represented 99% of animal agriculture. By the end of the decade, the annual number of animals slaughtered neared 10 billion. Agricultural subsidies became disproportionately allocated to commodity crops. Corn and soy production alone, grown predominantly as feed for farmed animals, received over 45% of U.S. agricultural subsidies. Less than 1% of U.S. agricultural subsidies went toward the production of non-commodity crop vegetables and fruits.

A broad-based movement of anti-factory farming advocacy organizations, representing the interests of workers, rural communities, animals, the environment, and public health, have mobilized to shine a light on the dark realities of industrialized farming and advocate for legal and structural change, including models for a community-centered, plant-based food system and an end to all animal agriculture.