Factory farming is an inhumane intensive form of animal agriculture. It is not only cruel but also detrimental to the environment and to society.

For many reasons, some of them no doubt from the Christian and Humanist traditions, we believe that other creatures exist only for our benefit and that we may use them as we please. Factory farming takes this licence to an extreme and visits unspeakable cruelty on our fellow animals—severe confinement, debeaking of chickens, tail docking of cows and pigs, etc. These practices are far beneath basic levels of decency and are morally indefensible.

Factory farms are extremely input intensive. They typically use corn and soy grown on deforested land as feed. The feed needs to be shipped in and the waste shipped out all using fossil fuels—our favourite form of energy. The manure, which could be fertilizer under different circumstances, is now a concentrated pollutant that has to be discharged into nature. Factory farming does not have a pretty environmental footprint. Proponents might argue that intensive agriculture allows us to meet global food demand in a smaller amount of land leaving us free to rewild the rest. But this argument is a ruse. This can never happen in a capitalist economy. In practice, intensivization reduces prices and causes demand to rise thus causing overall consumption to rise. This rebound effect is called Jevons paradox. Rising global meat consumption is ample evidence for this effect.

Factory farming proponents might argue that it is the only way to meet global food demand or produce food at affordable prices. But this is another distraction. Why does food poverty exist in the first place? It is because of our capitalist economic system and the inequality it generates. The prevailing dominant ideology would have us take capitalism for granted and patch up its failings with techno-fixes. The real problem is not that we don't produce enough food but that we don't distribute it equitably. The mind-blowingly obvious answer is to share what we have with all people and all nations. The fact that this simple answer seems unthinkable to us speaks volumes about our global culture. And before you dismiss me as a hopeless idealist, I should point out that this idea has historical precedent. Less than a century ago, during the Second World War, this very country (the United Kingdom) rationed food to its people. And, as a result, people actually lived longer and were healthier on average. The rich were better off because could no longer eat too much. And the poor were better off because they finally had enough.