Factory Farming
Animal Ethics
JULY 31, 2008
I agree with Nicholas Kristof that factory farms will eventually be banned by law. I also agree that it will be a good thing. Addendum: Here are comments on Kristof's column.
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Animal Ethics
JULY 31, 2008
I agree with Nicholas Kristof that factory farms will eventually be banned by law. I also agree that it will be a good thing. Addendum: Here are comments on Kristof's column.
Animal Ethics
MARCH 16, 2009
Ever wonder how the animals you eat are treated before they become your dinner? You can find out tonight by watching HBO's new documentary, "Death on a Factory Farm." Death on a Factory Farm" chronicles an investigation into alleged abuses that took place at a hog farm in Creston, Ohio.
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Animal Ethics
JULY 31, 2007
Here is a New York Times editorial opinion about factory farming. I have added the Factory Farm Map to the blogroll.
Animal Ethics
FEBRUARY 3, 2009
From the perspective of the land ethic, the immoral aspect of the factory farm has to do far less with the suffering and killing of nonhuman animals than with the monstrous transformation of living things from an organic to a mechanical mode of being.
Animal Ethics
MARCH 14, 2007
Notice that the author is not opposed to the use of nonhuman animals as resources for human consumption. Here is a New York Times op-ed column about pork production. She simply wants to minimize their suffering before they are killed (painlessly?) and their bodies dismembered and processed.
Animal Ethics
FEBRUARY 1, 2012
Their interests are primarily protected, if at all, through archaic state anti-cruelty statutes that were not passed in contemplation of the factory-farm or genetic engineering. Though factory-farming and biotechnological techniques massively violate the moral rights of farm animals, they have no remedy.
Animal Ethics
JUNE 12, 2012
That individuals can be harmed without knowing it has important implications for the proper assessment of the treatment of animals. Modern farms (so-called factory farms), for example, raise animals in unnatural conditions.
Animal Ethics
JULY 15, 2009
We can thank factory farming for yet another antibiotic-resistant supergerm: Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA). All evidence points to factory farms. Factory farms are concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) where animals are raised intensively and permanently confined in warehouses and sheds.
Animal Ethics
DECEMBER 7, 2008
This, however, is precisely what factory farming does. By forgoing meat in our diets, we can reduce, if not eliminate, this massive suffering of animals, merely through bringing market forces to bear upon factory farming.
Animal Ethics
JANUARY 23, 2007
This is one of the best essays I have read on the subject of animal ethics. Thanks in advance for the essay.
Animal Ethics
MARCH 26, 2007
See here for an editorial opinion by The New York Times.
Animal Ethics
JULY 21, 2010
Inhumane confinement, illegal anticompetitive practices and factory farming hurt animals, the environment, the consumer, the public health and the farmer.
Animal Ethics
APRIL 29, 2009
As the world moves toward raising the majority of animals in the unnatural setting of factory farms, it is likely that more, and worse, such pathogens will arise. What will it take for us, and our public health leaders, to question our addiction to meat and tolerance of factory farming?
Animal Ethics
JULY 24, 2012
Because animals are sentient (i.e., can experience pleasure and pain) and because they not only have but can act on their preferences, any view that holds that pleasures or pains, or preference-satisfactions or frustrations matter morally is bound to seem attractive to those in search of the moral basis for the animal rights movement.
Animal Ethics
JANUARY 15, 2007
I must advocate on behalf of the animals in other ways. Animal Ethics helps me formalize my position so I can be a more effective advocate. My temptation when dealing with others was to simply say, "hey look this is what modern factory farming is all about," and voila people would make the change.
Animal Ethics
JULY 19, 2011
A factory-farmed egg-producing hen’s lifespan is less than two years. The use of wire cages isn’t being addressed, but should be in the future. We are headed in the right direction, but need to fight to push the changes through. It could take up to 18 years for them to be phased in, if the law should pass.
Animal Ethics
NOVEMBER 16, 2008
11, 2008 To the Editor: We are seeing environmental ruin because of factory farming. Besides depleting the ocean’s supply of fish for those animals normally feeding on them, the factory farming of cattle, pigs and chickens uses excessive water and pollutes our land. Danielle Kichler Washington, Nov.
Animal Ethics
SEPTEMBER 24, 2009
To the Editor: It’s mind-boggling that in spite of overwhelming evidence that the consumption of animal products is directly responsible for a host of human diseases , greenhouse gas production and indescribable animal suffering, the general public continues to satiate its taste buds and support factory farming.
Animal Ethics
AUGUST 25, 2010
At our farm sanctuary, we see how much chickens rescued from factory farms delight in these experiences. Like humans, animals have a right to enjoy life. 15, 2010 The writers are co-founders of Safe Haven Farm Sanctuary. They will still lack the freedom to engage in natural behaviors like foraging and nesting.
Animal Ethics
FEBRUARY 4, 2011
His call for the end of factory farms (concentrated animal feeding operations) is courageous. Better food creates better health. And yet our government is perversely encouraging food habits that negatively affect our health and our environment.
Animal Ethics
NOVEMBER 7, 2008
An enormous volume of material has already appeared on the conditions under which animals live and die on factory farms, and more is almost certainly on the way. What the vegetarian wants, surely, is that we should stop eating meat even if our liking for it exceeds our revulsion at the suffering endured on factory farms.
Animal Ethics
AUGUST 5, 2007
To the Editor: “ A Factory Farm Near You ” (editorial, July 31) does not mention any issue of the morality of factory farming—treating living beings as factory products. Cruelty to animals on such a scale should be the centerpiece of any discussion on raising animals for food.
Animal Ethics
SEPTEMBER 18, 2007
The wrongness of factory farming is overdetermined. Why does it not call for the abolition of factory farming? Animal rights is neither progressive nor conservative. See here for one sufficient ground. By the way, the editorial board of the New York Times is progressive (as opposed to conservative).
Animal Ethics
SEPTEMBER 22, 2007
18 editorial about the abuse of antibiotics in industrial hog farms. It not only brings light to a serious issue, but also begins to make the connection between factory farm practices and consumer choices. To the Editor: I applaud “ Antibiotic Runoff ,” your Sept. Hamilton Mill Valley, Calif., 18, 2007
Animal Ethics
APRIL 4, 2008
Here is a New York Times story about traditional farming, which is a darn sight better for animals than factory farming.
Animal Ethics
JANUARY 24, 2008
Not all meat eaters are cold, cruel, selfish individuals insensitive to animal suffering. Many, if not most, of the meat eaters I know are deeply concerned about the fact that the animals they eat are raised in factory farm conditions. They realize that factory farming is inhumane.
Animal Ethics
FEBRUARY 22, 2010
In this film, we see farmers interacting with the animals they will eventually transform into food (chickens, pigs and cattle). The farmers in the film confront very difficult questions posed by the filmmaker about why they think their approach to processing of meat is different than that of factory farming.
Animal Ethics
JANUARY 24, 2007
Most people are shocked and appalled when they first read descriptions of factory farming and learn about the horribly inhumane conditions in which the billions of animals destined for dinner tables are raised, and they are even more appalled when they first see documentary footage of the institutional cruelties inherent in factory farming.
Animal Ethics
NOVEMBER 9, 2009
To replace factory-farmed meat without further tropical forest destruction is impossible. In any case, globally, only 8 percent of all meat is produced in natural grazing systems, and there is little available unforested land suitable for such systems.
Animal Ethics
DECEMBER 18, 2006
Currently, I am very interested in social and political philosophy and ethical issues. I felt a strong sense of connection to the ideas of Peter Singer while taking Ethics from Keith. I find animals to be valuable for a number of reasons, one of which is for their aesthetic value.
Animal Ethics
FEBRUARY 6, 2007
The column, which you can read here , is a call to arms to factory farmers to fight back against those individuals and organizations working to protect farm animals from the abuses inherent in factory farms. To learn more about Arizona's precedent-setting victory for farm animals, see here.
Animal Ethics
AUGUST 10, 2007
To the Editor: “ A Factory Farm Near You ” (editorial, July 31) is in a time warp. Yes, concentrated animal feeding operations, or “factory farms” as you call them, are a key feature of modern agriculture. But today these livestock operations don’t have to be unwelcome neighbors in their communities.
Animal Ethics
AUGUST 2, 2008
And thanks to federal corn and soybean subsidies, factory farms saved an estimated $3.9 It’s time that our tax dollars no longer finance the inhumane conditions—for workers and animals and the climate—of factory farms. I have visited many of the grotesque factory farms that now corrupt our rural landscapes.
Animal Ethics
AUGUST 31, 2008
My view, then, is not that which it has often been taken to be in discussion and which Singer, Regan, Clark, and others blast in their work; I am not suggesting that, because they lack language, animals can be factory farmed without suffering.
Animal Ethics
APRIL 23, 2008
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Catholic catechism affirm that compassion for animals is a matter of human dignity. The Episcopal Church embraces a resolution that specifically addresses puppy mills and factory farms. The Catholic Church is not alone among major religions on this issue.
Animal Ethics
FEBRUARY 8, 2007
But is it any more revolting than factory farming? Bob Smith sent a link to this. My first reaction was revulsion.
Animal Ethics
NOVEMBER 6, 2009
Dogs were bred to be companion animals; pigs and cows are raised as food. To suggest that eating one and not the other represents a conflict of ethics is preposterous. However, I agree with Mr. Foer that factory farming has to go. Rather than eating dogs, we all ought to eat exclusively small-farmed, free-range meat.
Animal Ethics
JANUARY 26, 2007
Someone might argue that there is no incompatibility between (1) working to decrease animal suffering and (2) working toward the abolition of factory farming. But doesn't decreasing animal suffering make abolition less likely?
Animal Ethics
FEBRUARY 6, 2008
All it establishes is that we should eat far less meat so that factory farms become obsolete and that, in conjunction with this, arable land should be turned over to the production of high-protein crops, where possible, so that world hunger can be alleviated somewhat. But even this fails to establish a case for vegetarianism.
Animal Ethics
DECEMBER 31, 2008
This sympathy can be a basis for revising one's moral principles so as to take animals into account. Have you visited a factory farm or a slaughterhouse? Perhaps the sympathetic impulse would be activated if people saw how their meat is produced. Have you taken the time to investigate this?
Animal Ethics
OCTOBER 13, 2008
There is thus something profoundly incoherent (and insensitive as well) in the complaint of some animal liberationists that the "natural behavior" of chickens and bobby calves is cruelly frustrated on factory farms. It would make almost as much sense to speak of the natural behavior of tables and chairs.
Animal Ethics
JANUARY 30, 2008
Animals turn grass, a k a sunlight, into high-quality proteins, minerals and fats that are an ideal food for humans. What is wrong is factory farms. Do not confuse the garbage output of confinement animal feeding operations with healthy meat. Meat is an excellent source of food and far higher quality than just plants.
Animal Ethics
APRIL 16, 2009
The meat and dairy industries want to keep their operations away from the public’s discriminating eyes, but as groups like PETA and the Humane Society have shown us in their graphic and disturbing undercover investigations, factory farms are mechanized madness and slaughterhouses are torture chambers to these unfortunate and feeling beings.
Animal Ethics
FEBRUARY 25, 2008
And it is not just at the slaughterhouses but at the factory farms where these animals are tortured from the very beginning of their lives to the horrible end. What we do to animals shows how we feel about other species. Peters Paso Robles, Calif., Indeed, we have not come far from Upton Sinclair’s “ Jungle.”
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