How factory farming took over America — and why it isn’t going away anytime soon

A Vox reader asks: Why is factory farming still around?

Factory farming — the intensive confinement of chickens, pigs, and cows on a massive scale — developed in the second half of the 20th century to feed a growing, and increasingly prosperous, post-World War II America. It was made possible by a “set of economic, genetic, chemical, and pharmaceutical innovations” as my colleague Marina Bolotnikova has written.

Those innovations include technologies that enabled meat companies and farmers to breed bigger, faster-growing animals; antibiotics to keep those animals alive in overcrowded farms; chemical fertilizers and pesticides to produce abundant, cheap livestock feed; higher-tech tractors to harvest that feed; and a host of federal subsidies and loan programs to help farmers finance it all. Advancements in refrigeration and shipping helped too.

It’s put an astonishing amount of meat on our plates — some 265 pounds annually per American in 2021, a 55 percent increase compared to the early 1900s.

But as factory farming became America’s dominant form of livestock production, awareness about its problems grew. Starting in the 1990s, undercover investigations by animal rights activists exposed egg-laying hens stuffed into tiny cages and piglets crammed into dark warehouses, shocking an animal-loving public. In 2006, the United Nations identified animal agriculture as a top driver of climate change and deforestation. Public interest groups increasingly railed against factory farms’ social ills, like concentrated pollution in rural communities, meat monopolies that killed the independent farm, and the dangers of slaughterhouse work.

Today, almost three-quarters of Americans report discomfort with factory farming and consider it one of the most pressing social issues. So, why do these facilities still exist, why are they getting bigger and bigger, and why has factory farming spread around the world? Numerous books have been written to answer this question, but I’ve boiled it down to four big reasons.

1) It’s efficient — by some measures

For all of factory farming’s problems, it can claim superiority on a few key metrics when compared to more traditional farming, where slower-growing animals are given ample space and outdoor access.

In factory farms, the animals are packed indoors or on feedlots, so they require less land, and breeding them to grow bigger and faster on less food has brought down meat’s carbon footprint on a per-pound basis. These aspects — combined with the other ways the industry cuts corners on animal welfare, and sustainability and labor protections — have made meat cheaper. And price is often priority number one for consumers: Look at recent discourse over inflation and the cost of eggs, or the 1910 and 1973 nationwide meat boycotts over rising prices.

But for all the efficiency gains the meat industry has made in recent decades, they have been partly squandered by Americans eating a lot more meat and dairy than previous generations. It’s what’s called the Jevons paradox: Increased efficiency can lead to increased consumption.

And this takes a narrow view of efficiency. Plant-based protein, such as lentils, tofu, beans, and plant-based meat, typically require less land and have much smaller carbon footprints than animal-based protein.

Factory farming has also created a new set of problems — what you could call inefficiencies — that Americans, and animals, ultimately pay for.

2) Agriculture plays by its own set of rules

Packing thousands or millions of animals together in one facility creates concentrated air and water pollution that harms rural Americans’ health and fouls US waterways. Slaughterhouse workers risk losing a finger or limb every day they go to work. The millions of pounds of antibiotics used to keep factory-farmed animals alive puts us all in danger by making these lifesaving drugs less effective. Certain practices, such as locking animals in cages for years or slicing off their body parts without anesthesia or even painkillers, are considered standard “animal husbandry” when done to farmed animals, but torture when done to pet dogs or cats.

The livestock industry gets away with all of this because of a concept called agricultural exceptionalism: the idea that because food is essential, the agriculture sector should be exempt from the laws that other industries must follow.

Farm pollution is largely exempt from the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, while farmed animals are exempt from the Animal Welfare Act and most state anti-cruelty laws. The few federal laws that do provide some (meager) protections for farmed animals exempt chickens and turkeys, who account for almost 99 percent of the country’s livestock.

Take these exemptions away, and factory farming is suddenly not so efficient nor affordable. In this way, factory farming’s advantages are somewhat of an illusion, as the system relies on the American public, the environment, and farmed animals to absorb its inefficiencies.

Efforts to remove these exemptions and pass major industry reforms have largely failed because the meat and dairy sectors have amassed enormous political power on Capitol Hill and in state legislatures to block them.

3) Animals don’t have rights

Social progress starts with a problem’s victims sharing their stories and calling for change. But in the case of factory farms, its most immediate victims — chickens, pigs, cows, and fish — obviously can’t do so. While some fight back in their final minutes at the slaughterhouse, and a lucky few even manage to escape, farmed animals can’t lobby Congress, write op-eds, or organize demonstrations to protest their abuse to gain even the most basic rights.

In this sense, animals are perhaps the most politically disenfranchised group, which gets at the core of why factory farming is still around: In our legal system, you can do pretty much whatever you want to an animal so long as they’re raised for food.

Animals rely on a tiny, underfunded movement to push for change. Its efforts to institute common sense reforms, like banning cages, mutilations, low-welfare breeding practices, and overcrowding — and requiring things like more space, outdoor access, and enrichment — face strong pushback from industry.

Consumers also bear some responsibility.

Many Americans, and people in other high-income countries, are avowed animal lovers and say they oppose factory farming yet continue to eat meat — virtually all of it from factory farms — anyway. This seeming contradiction can be explained by the “meat paradox.” A group of Australian psychologists coined the term in 2010, defining it as the “psychological conflict between people’s dietary preference for meat and their moral response to animal suffering.” As I wrote a few years ago in a story about the meat paradox:

When faced with that dissonance, we try to resolve it in a number of ways. We downplay animals’ sentience or make light of their slaughter… we misreport our eating habits (or dismiss personal responsibility altogether), or we judge others’ behavior so as to claim the moral high ground…

On top of all this, consumers face a sea of mis- and disinformation, from meat companies lying about how they treat animals, to Elon Musk falsely stating that agriculture doesn’t contribute to climate change, to industry-funded front groups slandering their competitors — plant-based meat companies — in the court of public opinion.

Deriving nearly all of our meat, dairy, and eggs from factory farms wasn’t inevitable, but rather the end result of thousands of choices made by thousands of policymakers, farmers, and corporate leaders — and millions of choices made by consumers — over the last century. Better choices can undo it, and there are glimmers of hope that over the next century, factory farming could come to an end.