Why do so many people think that intensive animal farms (factory farms) are bad?

Question

One simple fact.....an unhappy animal does not produce. obviously then, there is an economic benefit for the farmer to care properly for the animals. My family has been in intensive egg production for 55 years, continually good production due to better quality feed, better technology, better bird welfare, as subject to Australian laws.

Answer 1

looks like jail
sounds like jail
must be....

Answer 2

Wow; I am kinda on the fence with this one. I have free range sheep, ducks, turkeys and chicken, they have access to fresh air, sunshine, fresh water, certified organic hay and pasture. I try to manage my farm as holisticly as possible. My sheep, the girls, all have names, get treats, go for long pasture walks with me, get lots of special attention and the best care. Same for the ducks, turkeys and chickens, the special care that is.
I am a Celiac (genitic problem that doesn't allow me to digest wheat, rye or barly, I can skip the bread it's the beer that I miss). So I need to find protein,( women should not eat soy, check out the Winston Price Foundation) I raise my own food and enough to support part of my operation.

There are a couple of large scale family farm operations not far from me. Sigh. Well it's not my cup of tea, but it's what it takes to feed this country.

At these farms the animals are well cared for, their health and the quality of feed is important to the quality of the product. They are not feed, by law, any animal by-products or animal based protein. So contrary to another answer cows are not fed dead cows. They are not abused, what gain is that?

We also have a large diary, I have personally toured it and watched it in action. The dairy cows have a wonderful open sided shelter, access to fresh water, fresh air and sunshine and a specially formualted cow feed. They are not chained up, they move about at will. The manure is pumpe via pipeline to the local hay fields where it fertilizes and waters the alfalfa fields. Great care is taken not to hurt the ground water and re-use as much of the by-product as possible.

Sorry this is so long, but not all factory farms are bad, most of the badly run ones are going away, the movement is toward organic farming. There is way too much at stake to make mistakes.

Answer 3

Intensive or traditional farms, for me both are bad. The reason is very simple. If you look at the animal point of view (yes, an animal can have a point of view, can think, feel, etc..) it is a terrible suffering in any case. Freedom to live must be for everyone. Intensive farms are worst because the suffering is bigger.
If you look only on the "economic" point of view, for sure... intensive is good. But is economic more important than all other values? Hope not....

Answer 4

Besides the animal abuse inherent in factory farming, there are also many environmental costs. Waste from factory farms leaches into the groundwater. Cows excrete massive amounts of methane, a greenhouse gas, into the air every day. It takes several pounds of plant food to produce a pound of animal food. It takes far more water and far more fossil fuels to produce animal foods than it does plant foods--and a pound of meat doesn't go nearly as far as a pound of vegetables or grains.

Plus, when animals are so intensely confined, they are more likely to develop diseases -- and you eat the disease. You ingest the antibiotics and hormones they are given. Slaughterhouses move at such great speeds, it's almost impossible to determine which animals are unfit for consumption.

Answer 5

If you ever go to an intensive animal farm, you will find out - what you will see is shocking. A hundred pigs squashed together with barely an inch between them in a blacked out shed with no daylight, almost standing on each other because they have no room to move. It's clearly evident that they are in distress, and this is their entire existence. Cows kept indoors in rows, like battery hens, chained up so that they can not move at all, just eating until they can be slaughtered. You can see their nervousness and mental distress in their behaviour. Battery hens in horrendous conditions, where they can not move an inch, unable to walk because they are not used to walking. I have seen this myself on a university trip to a farm. It's very sad.

Answer 6

Because a lot of people see that humans and animals are very much a part of one another, and a lot of people realize that these factories are entirely unsustainable...the animals there are being fed terrible food, making them unhealthy, making us less healthy. If they were raised happy then they'd have better energy from living a happy life and from eating healthy foods. We are what we eat. They are what they eat. Think about it. We're injesting the death. If you do research, you will see that eating dead food actually makes our bodies perform functions that are abnormal for humans. This isn't going to be nationally recognized any time soon.

Answer 7

Empathy.

I think as humanity evolves (survival instincts will not be needed as we move more to a peaceful and harmonious nature of living), the intuitive emotions will start to take center stage. Empathy is one of the foremost emotions to surface. Of which, the thought of animals being caged and tortured will be aberrant to our nature and thus judged to be bad.

Many people think this now because they have already evolved to the next level of humanity and evolution. But not everybody is on board . . . . yet.

Answer 8

Then please post pics of these happy hens that you speak of.

Answer 9

They aren't all bad but they choose to show the abusive ones on PeTA films. Some, especially chicken, have the animals housed by the thousands and they sit in their own ****. I know personally of several though, that are very conscientious.

Answer 10

See for yourself:
http://www.chooseveg.com/animal-cruelty.asp

Answer 11

the animal welfare groups are constantly blowing things out of preportion, the same with GM, in the UK the restrictions on farmers are so tight its inpossible to do anything the animal rights groups accuse us of. and anyway the breed that suffer the most is the farmer.