I'm going to try to set my vegan ethics to the side for a moment, and empathize with the plight of the family farmer.
Here goes . . .
The terms "
factory farm" and "
family farm" are being thrown around in livestock agriculture and animal rights activist circles like. The two terms really encompass one issue in my opinion:
What is happening to "farms" in the 21st century?
I keep getting asked, "
what is your definition of a factory farm?" on #farm365
Well, what approach does one take in answering this question? "
A factory farm is _____," is just too black and white. There is much confusion over the the term, over the existence of factory farms, over the reality that our "food" is coming from these monstrosities. There is so much misdirection, misinformation and redirection that the issue has become completely convoluted, and I find farmers are the most confused of all (much to their detriment, and the detriment of their valued 'family farm' way of life, I would think).
Consumers are somewhat aware, and becoming more aware all the time. Vegans are very aware. Farmers are somewhat aware, but they seem to be in denial. And why wouldn't they be? The very industry they're a part of wants them lulled into thinking everything is fine and continue to promote the idea of their quaint, little
family farms. It's great marketing for the agricultural industry to promote the old-fashioned, out-of-date, bad-for-business family farm, while raking in the dough with these monstrous factories that are maximizing profit and destroying the pipe-dream of family farmers.
The idea of factory farms threatens the industry they're a part of, plain and simple. It's ugly, really ugly, disturbingly ugly (google 'factory farm'). It tarnishes their image and paints a very inhumane and environmentally unfriendly picture that neither them, nor the consumer, wants to be a part of.
No consumers = no income = no livelihood.
The reality though, is that farmers
should be finding out more, and they
should be worried if they want to save the few 'family run' farms that exist. A lot of farmers take great pride in their work, this much I understand. Factory farms are taking the old-world idea of being directly involved with your farm, living on your farm and raising your family there, into a cold, dead environment full of living, suffering and dying animals who are treated as commodities, where nothing matters but the bottom line.
A factory farm is full of employees who clock in, clock out, and leave their emotional investment at the door.
A factory farm is one that maximizes profit at the expense of the animals and the environment. It's all about the money, business. It's about innovation and mechanization and technology. It's about maximizing the amount of profit per square foot (cramming as many animals into a space as is possible). Factory farming is synonymous with '
animal intensive farming'.
All of this, is where the value of a life, of life as a whole, becomes lost. The individual no longer matters.
". . . any place manufacturing a uniform product regardless of individuality." A
factory.
I once heard the definition above for a
factory and it struck me in relation to factory farms specifically. Factory farms are just that: Producing uniform products (lives) regardless of their individuality. What makes an individual? Are
you an individual? Do you matter simply because you're an
individual? What if we were all the same--clones--would any of us matter then?
In the world we live in, factory farms are a (very unsustainable) necessity (
unless we change our ways). The human population has exploded to over seven billion people and is growing exponentially, as has our reliance on animal foods and products.
We're killing 55 BILLION livestock animals per year. 150 BILLION animals are dying if you include aquatic life too. The industry has grown out of control.
Businesses have so many tiers, they're so top-heavy and completely removed from the font-lines where the work actually gets done. They have no idea what moral dilemmas exist for the people actually doing the work, and they don't care. At the bottom, there are just numbers, not people. Profit, not ethics. Dollars, not lives. All they see at the top is money at the bottom and they can disconnect as much as they need to to maximize that.
They've stuck a little death and carnage in everything we touch nearly, and it's completely unnecessary. Things you would never expect to have animals and death in them, do, and it's only getting worse. (i.e., sugar, hair dye, tattoo dye, tires . . . )
In a society with little time to spare and even less time to care, finding out the truth, and working around it, can be a difficult thing to do when you're a vegan.
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No. Vegan isn't all or nothing. Vegan is knowing that perfection
does not exist. Vegan is the pursuit of perfection, and minimizing suffering
and death as much as possible in pursuit of the perfect idea that we can
eradicate it all together. It's about trying to be better and to do better. |
That begs the question,
does vegan exist? I've had numerous people telling me, "You're not a vegan, vegan doesn't exist", as though that's reason enough to not care. My response to them is always the same, "
You don't know what being a vegan is about." And only
then do they ask questions and stop judging, usually, hopefully. It's about minimizing pain, suffering and death wherever possible. It's about
trying, not about perfection.
Perfection doesn't exist, we all know that, but we still have ambition. Anti-vegan-advocates are essentially that to me:
haters of ambition.
Back to the topic of factory farming versus family farming. So, family farming
is directly threatened by the industry that it is a part of. Farms are holding more and more animals (bovine, chickens, pigs, etc.) and getting smaller at the same time. The more individuals there are in a given space (increased population density) the fewer those individuals matter. This applies to factory farms where and the level of 'caring' has diminished immensely. So,
the industry sets 'standards', but those 'standards' are always in favour of business, of profit, because the people setting them are removed from the actual business of caring. It's like having top-heavy management in a corporation: you're just a number if you're at the bottom, and we all know and feel that because no one cares. It's a phenomena many of us are familiar with.
And just in case the standards and regulations get in the way, most factory farms are not fitted with windows (most factories in general have few--think about it) so no one can see inside. The undercover footage that has escaped these hell holes are some of the worst things I have ever seen in all my life . . .
Caring and money cannot exist simultaneously: conflict of interest.
And so, as one farm converts its operation into a more profitable one with the latests developments, so in turn must their neighbour. In business, if you don't innovate, you fall behind, and you go out of business. There really is no option, and there hasn't been for a long time, for decades.
"
According to the Worldwatch Institute, as of 2006, 74 percent of the world's poultry, 43 percent of beef, 50 percent of pork, and 68 percent of eggs were produced this way." (wikipedia)
The statistic above was derived from almost a decade ago. It is estimated now, that:
"99.9% of chickens ... 99% of turkeys, 95% of pigs, and 78% of cattle are raised in factory farms." (
huffingtonpost)
That statistic is derived from the United States, but it matters not. The two industries are deeply intertwined, as is
all global agriculture (look at where the food you purchase comes from the next time you're at the grocery store).
One other distinction that
must be made to help one see through the word play: No matter how many 'family farms' there are compared to the amount of 'factory farms',
factory farms hold significantly more animals.
That is the pont of them. So, saying ___% of farms are 'family farms' doesn't say how many animals (products/lives/deaths) are being
produced in them. Nor does saying ____% of farms are family farms differentiate between potato farms, cucumber farms, apple orchards, chicken farms or pig farms. It's misinformation and redirection of your thoughts leaving you barren of the truth.
Throughout the #farm365 campaign, I've seen a few farmers tweet that, "
98% of farms in Canada are family farms." Every time I hear this, I ask them where they got this statistic. I've been pointed to two references on numerous occasions. Neither one is an independent study, both are from farmers or the agriculture industry (biased, right?). Both are advocating eating meat, so really, can we believe this? Here are the links:
1) an 'educational pamphlet' put out by "Canada's Farmers," called, "The Real Dirt On Farming". It can be found here: http://www.realdirtonfarming.ca/assets/docs/flipbook2014eng/#p=4
This article says, on page four: "Farming is still a family owned business. Over 97 per cent of Canada's farms are family owned". Let's just dissect this for a second . . . "owned", not "operated". One single person can own a factory, and that puts the factory in a family's name. It does not mean a family lives on that farm or runs the farm. The Walton family owns Walmart, but that is not a family "run" business. Most factory farms were converted, over time, into what they've become today. It's the industry and innovation that have made them what they are.
Also, when they say 97% of Canada's farms are family owned, they're not just talking livestock farms, there's corn, apples, wheat, strawberries, cucumbers, potato farms and many more. You can't really factory farm any of those - yet (they're working on it).
2) beefadvocacy.ca put out a very misleading infographic that does anything
but inform. It creates confusion, when you really start thinking about the numbers, and just leaves holes everywhere. We know that factory farms exist, and yet it's making it seem like Canada is somehow exempt from the laws of business:
innovate or die. When I went to their website, I had to become an advocate for the beef industry to find out more. Only beef advocates were privy to their knowledge. No . . . No thanks.
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| The original infographic provided by beefadvocacy.ca |
 |
"Cow/calf, backgrounding and feedlot operations in Canada
are primarily family run businesses". The numbers just
don't add up. When I went to their website, I couldn't find
any clarification to help me understand this better. |
So, I hope we've realized that yes, factory farms do dominate the industry. The saying, "
Kill or be killed," kind of comes to mind, in an ironic, tragic sort of way.
In order to stay afloat in the world of business, farmers had to find a way to kill more and kill them faster to feed the growing demand created by the industry's mass marketing of animal products, animal protein (that in such excess, are killing us rapidly) and growing human population.
The question that I, personally, always come back to when the debate of family/factory farms arrises is this:
Does it even matter?
(There's the vegan in me summing this all up in the bigger picture. She can only stay quiet so long.)
Factory farm or not, livestock farming in general just isn't necessary. We have the ability to eat a wholesome, healthy diet that has been praised as one of the healthiest in the world, and we can do it easily. Farming is killing our planet at an alarming rate. Certainly, if we don't need it at all, then we can do less at the very least.
Livestock farming is the main cause of deforestation, habitat loss, global warming, pollution, environmental degradation, mass extinctions, and more.
The majority of the food we grow through crop agriculture doesn't feed us, it feeds the 55 billion livestock animals on Earth right now. If we all went vegan, there would be a massive surplus of food and an excessive amount of agricultural land we could return to nature.
Not to mention, that even the most 'humane' (and I use that word only because it's what the industry has chosen to use--humane slaughter just doesn't exist) farms create massive amounts of suffering, pain and death. Consider the dairy industry for example:
"The industry practice is this: In order to get milk, cows must be constantly artificially inseminated to bear calves. Calves are a byproduct of the milk industry, and the females go back into the industry to replace their mothers, the male calves either go to slaughter for veal (after being stolen from their mothers and confined, alone, in tiny calf huts), or into the beef industry. Cows normally live about 20 years, but when dairy cow's milk production starts to wane around 3-5, they too are sent to slaughter (beef). All cattle end up slaughtered.
Beyond that, look up the negative correlations to human health when it comes to drinking another species milk, especially into adulthood. Cow milk is meant for baby cows."
Our health, the health of our planet, and our hearts could all drastically benefit from the eradication of livestock farming. A pipe-dream at this point in our evolution, but a goal for us nonetheless.
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