This paper examines the intricacies of factory farming by analyzing its social, political, economic, and environmental impacts in an age of capitalist consumption. Factory farming has become a pervasive institution with which most Americans engage on a daily basis by consuming meat and other animal derivatives. This mode of food production has vastly exacerbated the effects of climate change while creating a plethora of health, ecological and social problems. My research utilizes sentiment analysis to reveal the nature of factory farm discourse. Understanding the use of rhetoric is important because it brings to light the incongruity between action and speech. Oftentimes, institutional actors use carefully crafted rhetoric in order to shape public opinion in their favor. As such, the issue of factory farming can only be fully understood when we take care to assess the actors’ language. This approach helps illuminate how institutional actors deal with animal welfare and environmental concerns. In order to accomplish my goal, which is to explain the role of politics and discourse within the realm of factory farming, I apply a data-oriented approach by using natural language processing in Python to investigate institutional documents. My findings suggest that corporations and NGOs treat factory farming largely in positive terms, given their sentiment score. On the other hand, governmental bodies’ results show nearly neutral scores as they discuss the issue both in negative and positive terms. This reveals the potential for external variables which may influence the way in which these actors approach their discourse. Ultimately, I argue that this discursive analysis can inform the truth behind factory farming, while suggesting possible alternatives that value both human and animal wellbeing.
The topic of factory farming has come to be a very complex matter. Involving a plethora of actors and producing profound social, economic, health and environmental consequences, the subject holds relevance in many fields of study. Thus, my research will combine critical analysis and discursive study in order to examine the issue of factory farms. Moreover, I intend for this research to shed some light on the available literature as well as the institutional actors at play. However, prior to the details, I will provide some general background knowledge to set the scope of this paper. Throughout the paper, the terms factory farms and CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) will be used interchangeably. As such, The Cambridge Dictionary defines factory farming as, “a system of farming in which a lot of animals are kept in a small closed area, in order to produce a large amount of meat, eggs, or milk as cheaply as possible” (Factory Farming, n.d.). The advent of factory farms marked a prolific point in history due to the resulting production of massive quantities of food for a growing human population. However, it has enabled very costly ramifications for the environment and humans alike. Likewise, there are a variety of actors involved in this process, namely corporations, NGOs, governmental bodies, and lobbying groups. Therefore, I inquire, “What degree does the language of these actors reflect their true intentions? Moreover, what sentiment does each actor demonstrate in relation to CAFOs, and what other institutional factors may be at play?”
Of course, one must ask, “Why are these questions important in the first place?” They are important because language is a discernible marker of how actors attempt to portray themselves to the public. Likewise, asking these questions allows us to see how these major players view the issue (or non-issue) of factory farming and its subsequent effects. Ultimately, these questions are significant because their responses reveal the true extent of the alignment between the actors' underlying intentions and their public story. We must have a way to evaluate this relationship, which is precisely why I implement sentiment analysis, an objective form of data inquiry. This is done with the hope that we can highlight the institutional factors at play and their role in policy-making. This is a multifaceted issue, and my analysis attempts to bring various factors together. Ultimately, discourse and policy are intimately related, which makes language a powerful analytical tool. Thus, I will begin my analysis with a formal literature review and follow this with the research itself.As the prevalence of animal agriculture has increased in modern times, it has severely exacerbated the effects of global climate change. The primary evidence for this impact is through greenhouse gas emissions. Cole et al. (2009) note that, “meat and dairy products contribute more than 50% of the total GHGs emitted from the food chain,” (p. 162). Meanwhile, the FAO of the United Nations reports a figure of “18% as the global contribution of the animal farming sector to GHG emissions (Steinfeld et al., 2006)” (Cole et al., 2009, p. 162). While this is not as significant as the energy sector, it marks an important contribution to the global climate. This is precisely why Garnett (2009) says, “[M]eat and dairy products are the foods carrying the greatest environmental burden” (p. 491). Moreover, this problem has proliferated at an accelerated rate because of the very structure of the capitalist system. Mass-scale efficiency is prioritized over smaller, sustainable modes of production. While the United States enjoys unprecedented outputs of food, it risks environmental calamity as climate change continues to worsen. GHG emissions are far from being curtailed, one study reporting that “[global] emissions could increase by a further 17 percent by 2050 (Bennetzen et al., 2016)” (Garnett, 2017, p. 33). Furthermore, accelerated climate change is not the sole consequence of factory farming.
With the increased demand for meat output, the animals themselves require increased input. This has resulted in detrimental environmental impact, as the farmed animals (specifically cattle) demand large quantities of soy and grain for feeding. Unsustainable practices such as the continuous production of corn and soy cause the land to become arid (Garnett, 2009, p. 493-494). Likewise, this endless production has caused vast swathes of forest land to be cleared (Garnett, 2009, p. 494). This is done on a massive scale, all for the raising and production of livestock (Garnett, 2017, p. 39). Coupled with overgrazing, this has caused desertification, which has effectively reduced the amount of usable land (Horrigan et al, 2002, p, 447). Animal agriculture has indirect impacts on water quality as well. Cassuto (2010) explains, “Worldwide, such livestock-related land use changes as deforestation and overgrazing cause desertification, ground water and soil contamination, and other environmental problems” (p. 9). CAFOs cause a myriad of environmental harms, each problem linked to another, such as sea level rise, increased natural disasters and loss of biodiversity. Of course, factory farms are only exacerbating these impacts. This is precisely why the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005) called factory farming the “largest threat to biodiversity and ecosystem function of any single human activity” (as cited in Weis, 2010b, p. 136). Overall, the ecological footprint of CAFOs is potentially devastating if it continues at such massive rates. If we wish to prevent the worst of the consequences, we have to ask, “How has this problem manifested in the first place?” I argue that we must examine the nature of capitalism in order to answer this question.
Now that the link between factory farming, environmental degradation, and climate change has been established, I address the economic foundation that allows for it. Capitalism has achieved something amazing in that it revolutionized the means of production, so much so that we have evolved into a massive consumer society. Now more than ever, we can get anything we need with the upmost rapidity. However, this comes with a dire cost; there are severe biophysical consequences for such increased production (Weis, 2010a). This massive level of consumption requires an equally large amount of input, namely through natural resources. Thus, the capitalist class accumulates capital by exploiting the environment for its resources. A quintessential example of this exploitation is the burning of fossil fuels to produce energy. As Weis (2010b) points out, “The failure to account for the atmospheric burden associated with fossil energy, and its impact on the Earth’s climate system, represents one of the most fundamental biophysical contradictions of industrial capitalism” (p. 318-319). This contradiction is a fundamental aspect of our current climate crisis. There is an inherent conflict between the way in which the capitalist system produces mass goods for a consumer society and the way in which capital overuses the environment (Moore, 2016). Interestingly, this is why Moore (2016) claims that the world is not in the age of the Anthropocene, but the “Capitalocene.” He explains that world history is in “the ‘Age of Capital’—and the era of capitalism as a world-ecology of power, capital, and nature” (p. 6). Therefore, capitalism pursues its power through the co-production of nature by transforming it into a commodity. Although, it seems that the environmental consequences of production will eventually prevent the further accumulation of capital because these ramifications will create a limited supply of resources and fundamentally alter Earth’s climate system, thereby making it harder to produce goods.
Thus, we have found ourselves in a scenario akin to the tragedy of the commons. As corporations take natural resources or pollute the Earth so much so that we can no longer obtain resources, the system will hit an inescapable point of collapse. In theory, capitalism provides the best allocation of resources which in turn produces economic growth and social prosperity (Magdoff, 2015). However, the system does not function this way—capitalism has overexploited and endangered its very foundation of power. The Age of Capital relies on nature for its success, but if capital accumulation relies on the unsustainable depletion of natural resources, capitalism runs on a damning contradiction (Magdoff, 2015). The consequences for both the Earth and the future accumulation of wealth are disastrous. Referring to the tragedy of the commons, Magdoff (2015) states, “A rational economic decision for each individual farmer goes against the supposed capitalist economic logic and ends up being irrational for the entire group of farmers together” (p. 13). Similarly, as Weis (2010a) argues, all of the rational capitalists have overexploited in order to accumulate massive amounts of capital. Unfortunately, this has resulted in an irrational outcome for the entire group. Weis (2010a) states, “[T]he deceptive efficiency of industrial capitalist agriculture and its manifestation in cheap, bountiful food have long overshadowed the instability and inequalities of the system” (p. 317-318). So, the question that we must inevitably ask is this: “Can Capitalism solve a crisis of its own making?”
Unfortunately, the answer that I provide is not very optimistic. I say this because the United States’ excessive consumption and increased reliance on factory farms may make a capitalistic solution impossible. High rates of consumption contribute to growing levels of greenhouse gas emissions from the animal agriculture industry (Cole et al., 2009). Thus, I must analyze the issue of animal agriculture in relationship to the greater issue of mass consumerism.
To begin, Lavin (2009) argues that industrial animal agriculture rose to prominence as it integrated “the mechanization, division of labor, and intensified regulation of activities endemic to industrial manufacture” (p. 72). More so, the advent of factory farming came with the increased demand for meat and dairy while capitalist production continued to accelerate. In this way, farming became a factory system because its sole purpose was to exponentiate the production of goods for consumers (Lavin, 2009). Moreover, Lavin marks a second driving factor of consumption: capital concentration (p. 73). While the factorization of food production certainly sounds like an appropriate solution for a growing population, the incentive to factorize has been driven by the desire for more wealth. Lavin makes a compelling point as he analyzes various critiques of factory farming. Namely, “the common theme of these critiques, similar to others of industrial life, is that the pursuit of efficiency causes great harm to people, animals and the environment” (p. 76). Therefore, industrial life does not just produce negative outcomes for the animals, but also for the environment and the humans in it.
Perhaps the most important factor when it comes to the rise of animal agriculture in the age of consumption is the commodification of animals. Capitalism has transformed living beings into products that are bought and sold on the market. This fact is crucial to understanding the United States (and global) food system because it reveals the way in which capital can control what the public eats. As such, Gunderson (2013) explains that “the primary purpose of rearing livestock today is not to create food, but to make money – or, for exchange values, not use values” (p. 261). This is precisely why authors have been raising awareness about the possible health concerns associated with industrial animal agriculture (Horrigan et al., 2002). Production for exchange value is not a new thing, but rather, a historical fact of production that has emerged in tandem with mass consumerism. Likewise, this is not unique to factory farming. In fact, capitalism has relied on the categorization of exchange value as its basis for capital accumulation. Unsurprisingly, Marx pointed this out long ago: “Use-value, not exchange-value, is the purpose of the whole system of production, and use-values accordingly cease to be use-values and become means of exchange, or commodities, only when a larger amount of them has been produced than is required for consumption” (as cited in Gunderson, 2013, p. 261). Evidently, mass consumerism is only a new stage in the process of capital accumulation.
The process of commodification has accelerated over the years, resulting in unprecedented levels of meat and dairy consumption. As Lavin (2009) demonstrates, the power of food production now lies in the hands of corporations. Not only does this have ramifications for the animals themselves, but also for the consumers. Lavin explains how in becoming a consumer society, the burden of discipline now falls onto the consumers instead of producers (p. 85). It is no longer the obligation of corporations to engage in ethical production; this notion comes with a plethora of quandaries and injustices. This newest stage of commodification enables corporations and producers to move the blame to consumers. Meanwhile, Lavin argues that this has marked a transformation in the way corporations control their workers and the public. Quoting two prolific authors, Hardt and Negri, Lavin explains, “Now, individuals are monitored and regulated not only when they visit the factory, schoolhouse, or hospital, but also in more prosaic and ubiquitous ways in their daily activities; disciplinary power spreads across this space, with the result that coercive authority organizes subjects ‘in the totality of their activities’” (p. 84). Hardt and Negri demonstrate how corporations intervene by accumulating information on us. This is no surprise in the age of big data. However, the individual’s information is now collected in a more casual manner, through the products one consumes. It is this buying history that informs corporations about each person in society.
Furthermore, Lavin (2009) goes on to show the intense effects of mass consumerism. He states, “My position in cultural politics depends not on my status as worker or owner, but my preference for NASCAR or lattes. This is surely why the factory metaphor travels to so many domains of life: the concerns about alienation and control that inhere in the metaphor are not anachronistic in an age of casualized labor; they are instead generalized to work, leisure, and politics” (p. 85). In this sense, commodification has bled into all aspects of society, including politics. Corporations can now control consumer life through indirect and untraceable means. Likewise, commodification is intimately connected to the discourse corporations use to attract consumers. Under modern capitalism, this is the only means of control that corporations need. Corporations dominate the consumer narrative, selling people the idea that they need to eat more meat. They shape discourse in a way that appears to shift decision-making onto the consumers, while masking their true intentions. Gunderson (2013) explains how the notion of ethical consumerism is simply a means to defer decision-making to the individual without effecting significant change. “‘Ethical consumerism’ is a reflection of bourgeois market ideology that alienated individuals are expected to subscribe to,” he says. “The problem is that individualist ethical consumerism is not only limited and ineffective in the face of larger socioeconomic forces, but it also halts social justice movements from pursuing radical means of altering society because they have been co-opted” (p. 269). The author makes it incredibly clear that not only is the promotion of ethical consumerism a calculated move by capitalist powers, but it is also an extremely ineffective tool when it comes to creating meaningful change. Instead of trying to change the system that allows this, ethical consumerism reduces actions to the individual level. As we will later find out, this is reinforced by a manipulative rhetoric, furnished by corporations and rich investors to further their agenda.
Of course, many still argue that capitalism is not the cause of this crisis. Green investors and the like try to argue that a free market solution is just beyond the horizon. Corporations have now “greened” themselves by transitioning to more sustainable energy usage and more environmentally friendly practices. However, authors have rightly pointed out that these individuals are simply trying to capitalize on the downfall of fossil fuels. While the capitalists may be taking measures that seemingly benefit everyone, they are only attempting to gain wealth for themselves. Regardless of their prerogative, capitalism’s goal is endless growth, and that can never be compatible with sustainability (Guerrero, 2018). Likewise, Big Green (highly influential environmental organizations like the NRDC, Greenpeace, Nature Conservancy etc.) are not a great option either. All of these entities attempt to address symptoms of the climate crisis rather than the root of the problem: capitalism. Furthermore, Naomi Klein (2014) claims that these Big Green organizations are actually linked to fossil fuel companies. They attempt to implement policies that are seemingly better for the environment; meanwhile, they are sympathetic towards corporations (Klein, 2014, p. 198). This is no surprise considering Big Green has often taken funding from fossil fuel corporations. Klein goes on to explain that “several of these groups have consistently, and aggressively, pushed responses to climate change that are the least burdensome, and often directly beneficial, to the largest greenhouse gas emitters on the planet” (p. 198-199). Thus, environmental NGOs are attempting to institute a green capitalism that will only result in austerity and further environmental degradation.
This form of “sustainable capitalism” is an oxymoron in itself. Guerrero (2018) argues, “A growth-driven and market-dependent system is incompatible with environmental security” (p. 43). In actuality, corporations simply try to disguise their actions as green and eco-efficient so they can build public support while continuing their exploitative actions. For this reason, Magdoff and Foster (2010) assert that “a system that has only one goal, the maximization of profits, has no soul, can never have a soul, can never be green, and, by its very nature, it must manipulate and fabricate whims and wants” (p. 19). This two-faced nature of capitalism is seen in corporate rhetoric which disguises its sentiment towards factory farms as positive. The truly unsettling part is that many of these claims are nothing but ploys, just a means of masking the unethical exploitation. In fact, Clark (2012) explains, “[W]hat is perhaps most troubling of all about these practices is that an even shrewder, more calculating, and more ruthless efficiency is being celebrated as ‘ecoefficiency,’ greenwashing the underlying violence” (p. 120). This is in complete accordance with capitalism’s nature; it has always tried to hide its unjust and unethical practices. The oppression of animals and workers alike is simply a byproduct of capitalism. Just as I pointed out previously, the heart of this problem lies in the inherent contradiction between capital and the environment. This being said, the most significant aspect of green capitalism is not its contradiction, but the façade it creates. Capitalism has managed to co-opt discourse and maintain power by manipulating what the public hears.
While actions are a key indicator of how an actor regards a particular issue, discourse can be much more useful in showing how an underlying sentiment may define those actions. Therefore, I spend a considerable amount of time detailing the actions of factory farm stakeholders and highlighting how these various actors’ decisions are intertwined with one another. This coupled with a discursive analysis can reveal the political alignments of the actors as they pertain to animal agriculture. In other words, I will reveal the underlying coalitions that form around the issue of factory farming and greater environmental problems such as climate change. Moreover, this will help explain how our system comes to make decisions and whether confounding factors (such as increased capital) disrupt ethical policymaking. This section will fulfill two important roles within my analysis: it will establish the significance of discourse in politics, and it will demonstrate how current authors interpret rhetoric surrounding issues of the environment and animal welfare.
Foremost, I want to provide a discursive basis for why discourse within politics is even worth examining in the first place. Therefore, I will employ elements of Michel Foucault’s approach to discourse as a means of showing discourse’s power to shape society. Freeman (2009) helps offer some insight into Foucault’s philosophy as she explains, “Foucault felt discourse serves to define the limited ways that were suitable to talk about, treat, or engage the topic so its meaning is comprehensible to a society” (p. 83). It is important to understand that this has powerful political implications, as institutional agents have the means to decide how this information is conveyed to the public. In many ways, agents such as corporations, governmental bodies and NGOs have the power the shape perception and opinion. Furthermore, these actors can work to formulate a dominant ideology which controls how we view an issue. In this way, discourse analysis can be a very useful tool for delineating what constitutes suitable engagement or rhetoric when it comes to factory farming. Likewise, Leipold et al. (2019) believe that discursive analysis is especially useful for understanding why things happen and what sort of political motivations lie behind them. So how does this apply to our endeavor? Well, the way in which society approaches animal production is determined by how institutional actors talk about the issue (Freeman, 2009, p. 84). In addition, the public often adopts the same sentiment as its institutions through the things it reads. Thus, discourse acts as an important identifier of both actor and public attitude towards structures such as factory farms.
In order to better establish the role of discourse in politics, Leipold et al. (2019) offer the following explanation: “[T]hese patterns also determine the understanding of specific practices and events in the policy process, they are fundamental to the formation and expression of political truth claims, the engagement in, as well as the self-positioning of individuals and collectives for or against policy change” (p. 447). This seems especially pertinent to the issue at hand, as a careful analysis of the rhetoric of these actors reveals the underlying patterns of their attitude. Even more important, the discourse they use determines what policies are implemented and whom the policy decisions favor. Leipold et al. go on to explain, “The contributions to this special issue demonstrate that discourses can affect change or inertia at various levels of policy making – from discourse itself and its rules to policy outcomes and institutional settings (p. 452). Of course, all of this is contextual, and the rhetoric of an individual actor is largely dictated by the perception they want to create. Regardless, discourse has a clearly discernable impact on policy and on the associated decision-making. The way society’s various institutions treat factory farming informs the status quo and any potential alternatives to the current state of politics.
Unfortunately, language can have some negative effects in terms of policymaking and its consequences. While this discursive analysis is meant to shed light on the types of sentiment expressed by these actors, I must bring up prior assumptions that can help form my hypotheses. Firstly, as Glenn (2004) recognizes, corporations, and the U.S. government for that matter, tend to treat animals as objects rather than living beings. As the author states, “It is a recognizable discursive move that removes the ‘beingness’ or subjectivity of animals and replaces it with a word that morphs a subject for its own purposes into an object for consumption” (p. 69). As I suggested earlier, a corporation will employ positive rhetoric to create a benevolent persona that truly cares about the animals it kills. Meanwhile, this may prevent the public from realizing the truth – in other words, positive sentiment makes it less likely that people will recognize the animals’ pain (Glenn, 2004). Of course, one would expect this from corporations as they attempt to maintain their positive image and continue their profit-making. However, the position of NGOs is much different from that of the government. While I would expect the government to try to remain neutral on this position as it tries to provide just the facts, environmental NGOs are much more likely to be critical of the issue. This difference is predominantly because each of these actors occupies a different position within institutional politics. Accordingly, each employs a unique discursive strategy – though I do not suggest that this investigation is completely black and white, as the actors blend into one another at times.
I will undergo this research with the aforementioned expectations in mind. There is no doubt that actors of different categories have competing interests, which leaves them in a clash of discourses and public effect. Each category provides a different interpretation of factory farming. This is largely because each comports itself differently with regard to the issue. Moreover, each occupies a different perspective and has a unique goal when it refers to factory farming. For example, a corporation likely perceives CAFOs as a means toward profit, something that must be kept according to current regulations. However, corporations also want to retain public support to create more business; thus, they try to win over the public through their discourse. Manipulation of discourse allows them to paint the issue in their own terms while gaining public support. Alternatively, the government has no such agenda; its discursive strategy is to state the facts and explain the topic in its apparent truth. In doing so, government agencies provide an objective position based on the evidence they have. What is key is that the government is not attempting to win over the public with its discourse. NGOs are an interesting case because they certainly have an agenda, but one that is significantly different from corporations. They may try convincing the public that the issue of factory farming is important and needs comprehensive reform. Therefore, they depict CAFOs in a negative light, possibly highlighting their environmental harm in order to make the public see CAFOs as negative. Consequently, this creates a clash of discourses as one agent tries to make factory farming seem positive, the other negative, while the government remains ambivalent. Thus, with these discursive elements in mind, I formulate my hypotheses as such:
In order to undergo this discursive analysis, I will analyze a total of 62 documents, produced and published publicly by the actors outlined below. I haven noted a range of actors that hold salient information pertaining to industrial animal agriculture. As such, I have divided the actors into four categories: corporations, governmental agencies, lobbying groups, and non-government environmental organizations. These categories are thought to represent the actors’ goals as they pertains to factory farming. I should note that all these actors reside in the United States. Accordingly, I have chosen several from each category:
List of actors, by category, from which documents were taken for the purposes of this discursive analysis.
Furthermore, I have chosen these specific actors for differing reasons based on their category. The corporations were chosen based on their impact and levels of production in the animal agriculture industry. In short, these are the companies who produce the most meat and dairy for consumption in the United States (Sharma, 2018). Alternatively, the various government agencies were chosen based on their relation to the issue, the most pertinent being the FDA and USDA since they had the most available information. Similarly, there was a narrow range of lobbying groups that I could have used for this analysis, so I have chosen the few that have a measurable impact on Congressional lobbying. Finally, the environmental NGOs were chosen based on available literature related to factory farming as well as their discernable impact on U.S. politics.
In establishing the most relevant actors of this study, I will now move on to why I have chosen the outlined documents for my sentiment analysis. I should preface this by saying that I searched for specific buzz words that are related to the issue at hand, namely, words such as “factory farming,” “animal agriculture,” “climate change,” “industrial agriculture,” and “animal welfare.” For the purposes of this inquiry, I sifted through open access documents furnished by each actor on its respective website. In the case of the government agencies, I used their database of documents as it pertains to the issue of animal agriculture. The NGOs and corporations were rather different because they did not provide a list of their documents as PDFs. As such, I often resorted to referencing their webpages, as this provided a concrete (yet concise) depiction of their communications meant for the public. In each scenario, the documents detail the actor’s discourse as it approaches the issue of factory farming. Even at first glance, the actors’ discourses vary greatly according to their various institutional positions. Therefore, the following section outlines my approach to evaluating these texts through Nature language processing and text analysis.
To analyze the data, I use sentiment analysis in the coding language Python. Sentiment analysis is a branch of data science that uses natural language processing and text analysis to extract information from a given piece of text. This is predominantly used to categorize specific words in the text and assign them sentiment values which will ultimately determine the writer’s (or actor’s) attitude toward the topic. This method is incredibly useful for a variety of fields, and I believe it to be especially applicable to this one. Hutto and Gilbert (2014) provide insight on the cross-disciplinary nature of sentiment analysis, stating, “Sentiment analysis is useful to a wide range of problems that are of interest to human-computer interaction practitioners and researchers, as well as those from fields such as sociology, marketing and advertising, psychology, economics, and political science” (p. 216). Consequently, sentiment analysis is a very valuable tool to test my hypotheses because it will allow me to inspect documents from each individual actor and compare sentiment scores. Likewise, each of these actors is likely attempting to produce a distinct sentiment in its writing, which will become evident through this study. In undergoing this analysis, I will examine the discursive elements behind the actors’ language and consider what these elements mean for their attitudes toward factory farming.
I utilized Python with a variety of packages to facilitate this endeavor. However, the most important and integral of these is VADER (Valence Aware Dictionary for Sentiment Reasoning) (Hutto and Gilbert, 2014). This acts as the core sentiment identifier for this project by utilizing its lexicon to determine a positive to negative compound ratio. Hutto and Gilbert (2014) explain how they “use a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods to produce, and then empirically validate, a gold-standard sentiment lexicon that is especially attuned to microblog-like contexts” (p. 216). I should note that the VADER is a tool designed especially for social media contexts. However, there are three reasons why VADER is a sufficient mode of analysis for this project. Firstly, Hutto and Gilbert acknowledge that this engine can be used “across several domain contexts,” as this tool is extremely accurate in identifying sentiment regardless of the text’s origin (p. 216). Additionally, the authors note that VADER has been found to be even more accurate than individual human raters – the model has a 0.96 classification accuracy as opposed to 0.84 (p. 216). Finally, the focus content of this inquiry is very similar to that of the original VADER subject matter. These documents were produced for public eyes on an online domain, and the sentiment of each individual word is likely to remain consistent across platforms. With that being said, I will now provide a brief explication of the coding process.
I began by importing all the necessary packages, the most important being NLTK (Natural Language Toolkit), VADER, pandas, matplotlib and wordcloud. Next, I loaded the document (according to the category of actor) into Python and downloaded the VADER-specific lexicon. Then, I implemented the basic steps of completing sentiment analysis, in the following order: I tokenized the data (splitting it into individual words), put all words into lower case, stripped the text of punctuation, and eliminated all stop words. Next, I lemmatized the data, a process which removes plural forms and groups like words together (e.g. “great” and “greater”). Subsequently, I took the lemmatized text and removed characters that were not needed, such as numbers and any other forms of punctuation that may have slipped by. Finally, I created an Excel sheet to organize the list of sentimented words with their scores into a data frame using pandas. From here, I was able to obtain the list of sentimented words with their corresponding compound score as well as information about the dataset such as the mean and standard deviation. My final steps correspond to the way in which the data has been visualized, which includes an assortment of graphs and word clouds. For more information, the entire script is listed below in Appendix A.
From this analysis, we have gained several insights into the sentiment value of the cleaned words for each of the four categories. This includes the means, along with other notable data features as displayed in Table 2.1. The average value is the combined sentiment score of all sentimented words, which ranges from a score of -1 to 1. These words and their values were determined by the VADER lexicon and are further detailed in Hutto and Gilbert’s paper. As rendered below, one can see that all of the sentiment averages are on the positive side, ranging from 6.8% to 24%. This indicates that some types of actors were attempting to create more positive images in their rhetoric than others. Of course, corporations and lobbyists have the highest positive mean scores, which coincides with Hypothesis One. Likewise, the government discourse was positive but very close to 0, indicating that it has taken a near neutral stance with a slight lean toward positive. This supports Hypothesis Two. The one category that was predicted to be negative, however, yielded a positive score of 14.4%. The NGO score reveals that these actors were using predominantly positive language, but I believe this result must be examined with more context.
: The average sentiment score for each of the following categories (including all combined), along with the subsequent word count, standard deviation, maximum and minimum.
In an attempt to provide more details for these sentiment scores, Table 2.2 shows the top five negative and positive words used by each category. This is followed with each category’s corresponding word count and sentiment score. I should note that I omitted several words for being clearly unsentimental but high in count (“energy” under the “All” category (previously second most frequent), “energy” under “Lobbyist” (previously first) and “number” under “Government” (previously second)). While I believe the words in this table to be a strong indicator of the actors’ tones regarding CAFOs, it is possible that the positive words used by NGOs exist within a negative context. It is likely that the sentiment analyzer was unable to pick up on the underlying meaning behind longer strings of words. As such, I have manually gone through the documents, searching for these words, in order to discover the context in which they are used. I have taken ten random samples of each of the top five negative and positive words used by NGOs, using the random integer function on the TI-84. I placed these sentences into the sentiment analyzer and determined an average sentiment score. This data is displayed in Table 2.3, indicating each positive word and its nth use in the document along with its sentiment score. The averages are provided below. Contrary to expectations, these sentences are predominantly positive given their context. Thus, the results indicate that Hypothesis Three cannot be supported. I will provide further commentary on why this may be in the following section.
: A comprehensive list of the top five negative and positive words for each type of actor.
: This table was exported from Excel and shows the sentence number (generated randomly) with its corresponding sentiment compound score.
Furthermore, I have provided a set of histograms and word clouds at the end of the paper in order to better exemplify the data. Figure 1.1 shows the distribution of sentiment across the word counts for each category of actor. All four categories are displayed side by side to better represent the differences in their distribution. As one may notice, there is a significant difference in the frequency of negative words. Corporations and lobbyists have substantially more positive words with very limited instances of negatives. Not surprisingly, the government’s results are much more interesting, demonstrating a near balance in the spectrum, as is shown by its bimodal distribution. Alternatively, the NGO distribution is much less even, with a strong preference for positive words but with some examples of negative, thus lowering its average score. Additionally, Figure 1.2 provides more explicit detail for Table 2.2, representing the dominate words used by each category, calculated by frequency of usage. While they possess many words in common, the word clouds reflect each category’s unique sentiment toward factory farming. As such, the government tends to have a more even distribution of positive and negative words. Meanwhile, the other categories show that positive words dominate the word cloud with few instances of negative words.
Through this discursive analysis, we have revealed the true sentiment behind the rhetoric that is publicly used by various stakeholders in the factory farming system. This being said, what do these results indicate for meaningful change of the status quo and the state of policymaking? Well, I argue that these results support two of my initial hypotheses and provide evidence for the arguments asserted in the preliminary theory. Corporations and lobbyists are undoubtedly exhibiting a positive persona in order to garner public support while obscuring their actions. It is no surprise that these actors have such high sentiment scores, as their discourse is likely intended to show the benefits of their actions rather than the negative outcomes. By using positive language, corporations are able to overshadow the oppressive and exploitative nature of their production. Furthermore, the government has remained largely neutral on the issue of factory farming, providing both positives and negatives regarding the advent of CAFOs. This was to be expected, and it reveals the way in which the government attempts to maintain the appearance of objectivity and avoid staking value judgements. I believe this could be the case for many reasons, such as the desire to maintain scientific credibility or to mask the influence of corporate power and wealth – most likely a mix of both.
Finally, NGOs have exhibited surprisingly positive attitude, showing relatively little negative sentiment toward the issue of factory farming, a subject that they typically oppose. This could be because the organizations want to provide an optimistic outlook while envisioning and exploring the potential for a future that relies on alternative means of food production. However, I believe there may be another explanation for this positive tone: it is simply a disguise for the NGOs’ unequivocal support of market solutions, which ultimately favor corporations. In fact, I believe this sentiment analysis explains how these actors engage in a discourse dominated by green capitalism and its evident lack of solutions toward the issue of factory farming. This belief is supported by the various organizations’ use of market-oriented language when discussing solutions. Likewise, while much of their rhetoric presents factory farming as an issue, it lacks a coherent critique of the status quo, preferring neutral language to evaluate the problem and positive language in reference to solutions. The NGOs use words such as “improve” and “increase” to denote a need for change, but their calls for action reside within the market system. Throughout these instances, the organizations refer to policymakers as needing to improve sustainable production and practices; however, the language sounds eerily similar to the rhetoric expressed by green capitalists. On the other hand, much of their negative language is used in reference to market impacts —I note words such as "loss," "low," and "risk." These words are used largely in the context of economic consequences of the system of factory farming. Meanwhile, the NGOs often discuss CAFOs in a negative lens but fail to truly condemn the actions of any one institutional actor. Rather, the organizations utilize ambiguous language that leaves corporations and governmental bodies free from real criticism. I found that the NGOs’ discourse only analyzes factory farms on the surface level, mentioning a few problems that CAFOs create but nothing more. Likewise, they give no indication of how CAFOs became an issue, though corporate greed was their creator. Finally, the non-profits focus their rhetoric on superficial solutions that are seen as positive but only treat symptoms of the problem, not the issue itself. This is coupled by the fact that the NGOs only criticize an anonymous evil creator of CAFOs while failing to attack specific corporations or leaders. Thus, the organizations provide green capitalist solutions while making factory farms seem much more positive than reality proves them to be.
As I have suggested throughout the literature review, factory farming and the discourse surrounding the topic is largely dictated by power and wealth. Unfortunately, this discourse has significant ramifications for the way in which policy is produced. The sentiment of various actors regarding CAFOs is largely positive, which indicates that these actors do not realize the severity of the consequences. While factory farming creates an obvious ethical dilemma, it also manifests profound economic, environmental, and health risks. If society and its primary actors treat the issue as if it has predominantly positive implications, it endangers everything in the process. This is precisely because factory farming exacerbates a host of environmental problems while reproducing an inherently unethical hierarchy of labor. The animals themselves suffer as corporations and the like amass incredible profits. Yet, this wealth does not go toward supporting the local communities or solving the consequences it has caused. Rather, the wealth remains in the hands of those whose objective is to accumulate it. Capitalism enables this idea that endless growth and efficiency is more important than the environment itself. Meanwhile, the powerful are able to mislead the public by painting a positive image of animal welfare and profiteering, all in the name of green efficiency. I believe this sentiment analysis provides evidence for my claim. Corporate actors and the like attempt to convince the public of their “green” production, and this positivity is reflected in their language. In each case, the predominant actors favor capitalistic solutions that are insufficient to solve the true crisis we face. Thus, with my argument in mind, I will raise a few solutions with the hope that we can ultimately move toward a more sustainable means of food production.
While I advocate for many solutions, I choose none in particular because any approach to changing our food system and addressing issues of climate change must come from multiple sources. There is no one fix; although, some solutions may prove to be more effective than others. It is my aim to lay out options that policymakers could implement. As such, the most revolutionary and transformative change would come with changing the economic system. While this could take on many forms, I predominantly refer to reshaping the nature of capitalism and the power dynamics that it creates. The government ought to engage in a redistributive politics that diminishes the relationship between power and wealth. An obvious example of such a policy is a corporate and wealth tax which eliminates a portion of the profit associated with factory farms. This money could then be put toward the revitalization of the communities most harmed by CAFOs. Moreover, this must be coupled with a people-centered approach. This would provide the people a greater say in the political realm, allowing them to gain the power taken away from the wealthy. Of course, this solution may work in tandem with the promotion of small farms, which have become nearly extinct as industrialized farming takes over. I believe small farms will engage in far more ethical practices that are more beneficial for the environment and human health alike. Accordingly, the government may be able to assist in this process by providing increased subsidies and tax benefits to small farms. Meanwhile, the federal government can implement stronger regulations on factory farms. This could include more stringent animal welfare laws, as well as proper control of waste management and a carbon tax which accounts for the farms’ increasing emissions. This will allow small farms to become more integrated into the world economy while improving environmental health and reducing the power of corporations.
Finally, any solution must be accompanied by a change in the discursive narrative. This will be a gradual change, encouraged by constant awareness and correction of the language we use. If nothing else, this paper has demonstrated the façade that these actors create in order to make factory farming seem more positive than it is. This façade only hides the unethical practices and consequences of CAFOs. It is this truth that helps change the discourse. Likewise, the public must push institutional actors to treat animals as living beings rather than commodities that are to be sold on a market. As a result, the corporations ought to have a higher sense of accountability. Furthermore, the environmental damage from factory farms should be present in the media and public news. This environmental degradation cannot be hidden forever, and to continue to hide it is to cause greater harm. Lastly, rather than looking toward corporations, the public should look toward professionals, such as health experts or environmental officials, for information. People need to know what they are eating, and the ramifications associated with it. This requires a transparency that corporations do not provide. Ultimately, the dominant discourse is determined by how we treat the issue of factory farming, and that can be changed by pushing institutional actors to promote transparency and accountability.
I have used this paper to provide a comprehensive analysis of the current literature on factory farming and its subsequent relation to capitalism. Likewise, I have described the clear link between discourse and policymaking. Concurrently, sentiment analysis has revealed the true intentions of institutional actors and their disposition toward CAFOs. They try to portray a positive picture of factory farming in order to further their own agenda or to simply deny the truth of their actions. I find that this form of analysis is widely untapped and offers plentiful options for future research. Likewise, I argue that this approach is novel in that it combines the fields of computer science, discourse, and politics. Moreover, sentiment analysis allows one to find a deep and substantive comparison between actions and speech. I used this technique on a topic that has rarely been analyzed in these terms. The issue of factory farming is one that is intimately related to discourse and provides useful insights into the institutional framework of animal agriculture. In this sense, my research has utilized sentiment analysis in a field of study that has otherwise failed to acknowledge the potential benefits of its application. We must acknowledge the need for change in our food systems as well as in the rhetoric we use in relation to food. This is an incredibly complex matter, but the goal of this analysis is to shed light on the issue of factory farming and its surrounding discourse.
My approach certainly has its own limitations. Namely, the sources of data were limited to the information provided by the actors, which oftentimes was quite narrow in scope. Likewise, these documents were rather similar across specific entities within each category, which means there is relatively little diversity in the dataset. This is not to say that individual actors did not have their own unique aspects, just that the content of any one actor was of similar sentiment to the content of other actors of the same category. Alternatively, the lexicon of words and their correlating sentiment scores were limited by the VADER package and its predetermined categorization. While I believe the lexicon is accurate and effective, it may not be as nuanced and specific as a lexicon that was made specifically for this endeavor. Although, something of that stature would take much more time and research, likely an entirely new project. Finally, the last limitation I would like to acknowledge is the range of actors used in this paper. There are likely more types of institutional actors involved in the process of factory farming, such as state agencies, agricultural experts, and international bodies. These and many more most certainly play a role in navigating the discourse and policymaking when it comes to CAFOs and their environmental impact. Unfortunately, including all of these categories of actors in my research would have been incredibly demanding, and there are likely too many to account for, so I chose to limit my search to the main four. With that being said, these are only limitations of my methodological scope and do not take away from the validity of the process or results.
Despite these innate limitations, I have discovered that there is still a lot to learn from discursive analysis. In analyzing the language used by institutional actors, we can begin to understand the relationship between action and dialogue. Moreover, sentiment analysis acts as an important tool for analyzing language without the restrictions of manual linguistics. By automating the process, we have found valuable results, showing how corporations and lobbyists attempt to manipulate public discourse through positive sentiment. Of course, NGOs also show this, indicating that there are many factors that may hold more or less influence than the desire to paint an honest portrayal of factory farms. If anyone were to see the real conditions of CAFOs, they would be very amiss to call them positive. Moreover, this sentiment analysis is incredibly important for policymakers, who must recognize the inherent contradiction in the use of language versus action. In my literature review, it became very clear that this issue has exacerbated a host of environmental problems and is propagated by an economic system solely motivated by profit. Sentiment analysis has provided evidence for these conditions, showing that these leading actors will do whatever they can to protect their enterprise and downplay the actual effects of CAFOs. Finally, and most importantly, this process has revealed the importance of changing the way in which we all approach the food system and incorporate it into our discourse.
Ultimately, I think the field of sentiment analysis is ripe for further research and exploration. Its potential for application is expansive and can lead to unprecedented findings across many different academic fields. Likewise, there is much more to be learned on the topic at hand. This analysis of factory farming could be broadened to include a variety of other actors, as well as additional documentation on the issue. Further research could develop a methodology that analyzes the broader system of food production and includes research on countries other than the United States. The way in which a society produces food affects every person and may be examined within a variety of disciplines. With this being said, I believe there are still many unknowns, which are awaiting further research.
The article was written and researched by myself (Cael Jones), and copy edited by a fellow student, Sarita Gara. My mentor and advisor for this project was Professor Ramiro Berardo at The Ohio State University.
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Lavin, C. (2009). Factory farms in a consumer society. , (1/2), 71–92. Retrieved from JSTOR.
Leipold, S., Feindt, P. H., Winkel, G., & Keller, R. (2019). Discourse analysis of environmental policy revisited: Traditions, trends, perspectives. , (5), 445–463. https://doi.org/10.1080/1523908X.2019.1660462
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Weis, T. (2010). The accelerating biophysical contradictions of industrial capitalist agriculture. , (3), 315–341.
Weis, T. (2010). The ecological hoofprint and the population bomb of reverse protein factories. , (2/3), 131–152.
Clark, J. L. (2012). “Greening”of thefactoryfarm. (4), 21.
Cole, M., Miele, M., Hines, P., Zokaei, K., Evans, B., & Beale, J. (2009). Animal foods and climate change: Shadowing eating practices. , , 162–167.
Factory Farming. (n.d). In . Retrieved from
Freeman, C. P. (2009). This little piggy went to press: The American news media’s construction of animals in agriculture. , (1), 78–103.
Garnett, T. (2009). Livestock-related greenhouse gas emissions: Impacts and options for policy makers. , (4), 491–503.
Garnett, T. (2017).Livestock and Climate Change. In D'Silva, J., & Webster, J. (Eds.), (pp. 31-51). Retrieved from
Glenn, C. B. (2004). Constructing consumables and consent: A critical analysis of factory farm industry discourse. , (1), 63–81.
Guerrero, D. (2018). The Limits of Capitalist Solutions to the Climate Crisis. In Satgar, V. (Ed.). (pp. 30-46). Wits University Press. https://doi.org/10.18772/22018020541
Gunderson, R. (2013). From cattle to capital: Exchange value, animal commodification, and barbarism. , (2), 259–275.
Horrigan, L., Lawrence, R., & Walker, P. (2002). How sustainable agriculture can address the
environmental and human health harms of industrial agriculture. (5), 445-456.
Hutto, C.J., & Gilbert, E. (2014). VADER: A parsimonious rule-based model for sentiment analysis of social media text. .
Kim, B., & Neff, R. (2009). Measurement and communication of greenhouse gas emissions from U.S. food consumption via carbon calculators. , (1), 186–196.
Klein, N. (2014). 191-293.
Lavin, C. (2009). Factory farms in a consumer society. , (1/2), 71–92. Retrieved from JSTOR.
Leipold, S., Feindt, P. H., Winkel, G., & Keller, R. (2019). Discourse analysis of environmental policy revisited: Traditions, trends, perspectives. , (5), 445–463. https://doi.org/10.1080/1523908X.2019.1660462
Magdoff, F. (2015). A rational agriculture is incompatible with capitalism. , (10), 1.
Magdoff, F., & Foster, J. B. (2010, March 1). | What every environmentalist
needs to know about capitalism. Retrieved February 26, 2019, from Monthly Review website:
Parenti, C., & In Moore, J. W. (2016). 1-11. Retrieved from:
Sharma, S. (2018, April 10). . Retrieved from:
Weis, T. (2010). The accelerating biophysical contradictions of industrial capitalist agriculture. , (3), 315–341.
Weis, T. (2010). The ecological hoofprint and the population bomb of reverse protein factories. , (2/3), 131–152.
Jones, C. (2021). "Problems and Solutions in Factory Farming: The Role of Institutions, Capital, and Rhetoric." , (01). Retrieved from
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Jones, Cael. 2021. Problems and Solutions in Factory Farming: The Role of Institutions, Capital, and Rhetoric. 13 (01),
JONES, C. 2021. Problems and Solutions in Factory Farming: The Role of Institutions, Capital, and Rhetoric. [Online], 13. Available:
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PROBLEMY EKOROZWOJU – Problems of Sustainable Development, 2016, Vol. 12, No. 1, 143-156
14 Pages Posted: 21 Oct 2016
Independent
Date Written: October 20, 2016
The thesis examined in the article is the argumentation against a popular belief that industrialised agricultural systems and intensive agriculture are beneficial. Objective facts, reports and commonly available data confirm such argumentation. Intensification in animal farming – in a long-term and multi-faceted approach – turns out to be a practice which not only abuses ecosystems and livestock, but also our health. When we consider all moral, medical and ecological controversies, it seems is meaningful and necessary to express doubts regarding the economic value of factory farming.
Keywords: factory farming, intensive agriculture, monocultures, fishmeal industry
JEL Classification: O13, Q20, Q32, Q41, R11, M14
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
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John Flesher, Associated Press John Flesher, Associated Press
AKRON, Iowa (AP) — In recent years, Fred Zenk built two barns housing about 2,400 hogs between them — long, white, concrete-and-metal structures that are ubiquitous in the Midwestern countryside.
The Iowa farmer didn’t follow state requirements to get construction approval and file a manure disposal plan. But Zenk’s operation initially flew under the radar of regulators, as have many others across the United States because of loopholes and spotty enforcement of laws intended to keep the nation’s air and water clean.
Beef, chicken and pork have become more affordable staples in the American diet thanks to industry consolidation and the rise of farms with tens of thousands of animals. Yet federal and state environmental agencies often lack basic information such as where they’re located, how many animals they’re raising and how they deal with manure.
The animals and their waste have fouled waters. The enclosures spew air pollutants that promote climate change and are implicated in illnesses such as asthma. The stench of manure — stored in pits beneath barns or open-air lagoons and eventually spread on croplands as fertilizer — can make life miserable for people nearby.
READ MORE: Does modern society worsen allergies and asthma? Ask the Amish
For most of the nation’s history, meat and dairy products came from independent farms that raised animals in barnyards, pastures and rangeland. But the system now is controlled by giant companies that contract with farmers to produce livestock with the efficiency of auto assembly lines inside warehouse-like barns and sprawling feedlots.
The spread of corporate animal farms is turning neighbor against neighbor in town halls and courtrooms. Iowa, the top U.S. producer of swine and egg-laying chickens, has been a major battleground.
“It’s a fight for survival,” said Chris Petersen, who still raises pigs in outdoor pens.
Michele Merkel, a former EPA attorney who quit over the agency’s reluctance to punish polluting mega-farms and is co-director of the advocacy group Food & Water Justice, said the industry “has avoided any effective regulation and accountability for a long time.”
Industry groups say there are plenty of regulations and livestock agriculture is simply adapting to improved technology, equipment and methods.
“We’re responding to what the market is giving us,” said Brady Reicks, whose company runs numerous large hog structures in northeastern Iowa. “We’re doing it responsibly; we’re passionate about doing it. It increases growth in rural Iowa and it helps feed the world.”
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency began to count the nation’s factory farms during the Obama administration but retreated when industry groups sued. Instead, the agency uses state data to produce annual statistics about only the biggest operations.
As of 2018, the nationwide EPA tally was about 20,300 — a roughly five-fold increase over nearly four decades.
WATCH: How these Massachusetts farmers are turning manure and food waste into power
Yet it’s a tiny fraction of all confined animal operations. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates there are more than 450,000, most too small for inclusion in the EPA count.
Iowa has 80 million farm animals and 3 million people. Yet in 2017, regulators didn’t know how many livestock farms were in the state. Under federal pressure, the Department of Natural Resources pored over aerial photos, discovering 4,200 previously unknown facilities.
Zenk’s Plymouth County farm was among them.
“We knew nothing about his operation,” said Sheila Kenny, an environmental specialist with the state agency.
Zenk acknowledged breaking the rules but said no harm was done. He paid a $4,500 fine.
“You think you can get by with something once in a while and you can’t,” he said, strolling among his barns, tractor and feed bins.
To state regulators, such discoveries mean the system works. Critics say the Iowa experience shows how easily livestock operations can escape detection.
Putting thousands of animals in one enclosure produces huge amounts of manure. Unlike human sewage, which is treated and released to waterways, animal waste is stored, then spread on croplands as fertilizer.
Farmers insist they are careful.
“We take soil tests, we decide how much manure it needs and that’s how much we apply,” Reicks said.
Environmental groups say fields often can’t handle the volumes of manure produced, leading to runoff. Such pollution is exempt from regulation under the 1972 Clean Water Act, even though agriculture is the biggest contaminator of rivers and streams, according to the EPA.
READ MORE: How more organic farming could worsen global warming
In Emmett County, Iowa, small farmer Gordon Garrison sued a nearby operation with 4,400 hogs, contending manure from its croplands fouls a creek that runs through his property and feeds the Des Moines River.
“They’re using me for a waste disposal site,” Garrison said.
Livestock farms generate about 70% of the nation’s ammonia emissions, plus gases that cause global warming, particularly methane. Yet they aren’t required to get permits under the Clean Air Act. The government hasn’t decided how to measure emissions from barns, feedlots, storage lagoons and croplands.
And under President Donald Trump, EPA has exempted livestock operations from requirements under other laws that industries report significant releases of air pollutants including ammonia and hydrogen sulfide.
Critics say yesteryear’s barnyard whiffs were nothing like the overpowering stench from today’s supersized operations.
“You don’t want to be anywhere near them,” said Brad Trom, a crop producer in Minnesota’s Dodge County, who lives within three miles of 11 structures housing 30,000 swine. He says he’s been staggered by powerful odors barreling across his fields.
Farmers say they’re trying to reduce the smells but contend they’re a normal part of country life.
“I’ve never lived on a farm that didn’t have nature’s fragrances on it,” said Gary Sovereign, a swine producer in Iowa’s Howard County.
Research has linked proximity to factory farms to various health risks. But scientists acknowledge it’s nearly impossible to pin someone’s illness on a certain polluter.
Jeff and Gail Schwartzkopf say after a hog mega-barn was built a quarter-mile from their home in northern Iowa, they developed burning and itching eyes, throat soreness and body rashes. They fear the manure odors are making them sick and ruining their home.
“Nobody’s going to want to buy it. We’re stuck,” Jeff Shwartzkopf said.
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Animals and influenza, antibiotic resistance, animal cruelty and public policy.
Jonathan Anomaly, What’s Wrong With Factory Farming?, Public Health Ethics , Volume 8, Issue 3, November 2015, Pages 246–254, https://doi.org/10.1093/phe/phu001
Factory farming continues to grow around the world as a low-cost way of producing animal products for human consumption. However, many of the practices associated with intensive animal farming have been criticized by public health professionals and animal welfare advocates. The aim of this essay is to raise three independent moral concerns with factory farming, and to explain why the practices associated with factory farming flourish despite the cruelty inflicted on animals and the public health risks imposed on people. I conclude that the costs of factory farming as it is currently practiced far outweigh the benefits, and offer a few suggestions for how to improve the situation for animals and people.
Factory farming involves raising livestock in densely populated environments often called ‘concentrated animal feeding operations’. 1 Common practices include packing pregnant pigs into gestation crates so small they cannot turn around, placing egg-laying hens in cages stacked on top of one another in massive enclosed buildings and raising cows on feedlots rather than the grass pastures many of us associate with ruminants. 2 Because of the stress induced by these conditions, including the constant frustration of their natural instincts, many animals develop compromised immune systems, and without a steady course of antibiotics, many more would become sick and die of bacterial infections. Thus, antibiotics are often used to compensate for conditions that would otherwise make it impossible to raise animals ( Alliance for the Prudent Use of Antimicrobials, 2010 ).
The practices that comprise factory farming evolved as a result of competition between firms to produce commodities—mainly milk and meat—at minimal cost. Competition usually benefits consumers. Factory farming has lowered the price of animal protein, and this is a real boon for poor and middle-class consumers. But there are at least three moral problems with factory farming, and none of them is factored into the price of the animal products they create. These include the spread of pathogenic viruses, the diffusion of antibiotic-resistant bacteria into our shared microbial environment and the immense cruelty suffered by animals in confined conditions.
Experts agree that most (and perhaps all) strains of the influenza virus that infect human beings originated from contact with other animals, especially domesticated birds and pigs in Asia ( Crawford, 2000 : 95). The advent of animal agriculture brought a steady supply of protein to people, but it also increased the transmission of viruses carried by animals, and spurred the evolution of existing viruses.
There are several reasons factory farms seem to elevate the risk of novel viral outbreaks—especially variations of avian and swine flu. First, crowding animals together in close confinement can induce stress and suppress their immune systems, raising parasite loads and making animals more susceptible to infections; second, as all of us have learned after catching a cold in school or at work, viral transmission is facilitated by animals being kept in proximity to one another; third, close contact between different species of animals gives viruses a continuous opportunity to mutate and reassort to create new strains; fourth, many factory farms confine animals to indoor spaces that lack adequate sunlight or ventilation, which allows viruses to survive longer without a host; and finally, because animals on factory farms are often genetically similar, they can be more susceptible to specific parasites ( Crawford, 2000 ; Greger, 2007 ).
The situation on factory farms is in some ways analogous to that of overcrowded prisons ( Schmidt, 2009 ). Infectious diseases flourish in prisons for some of the same reasons: high stress and poor nutrition can impair people’s immune systems, and crowding permits a quick transfer of microbes and a continuous supply of hosts. This is one reason many experts believe pathogenic viruses like hepatitis have spread more rapidly in crowded prisons than in the surrounding population ( Bick, 2007 ).
Most people already understand that crowding can spread sickness, and compromised immunity makes people more susceptible to infection, but few people understand how crowding different species together—as occurs on factory farms and in live animal markets—might hasten the evolution of new strains of virus. According to Dorothy Crawford, ‘[b]ird viruses usually lack the receptor binding protein needed to infect human cells, but some domestic animals like pigs and horses are susceptible to both bird and human strains. So gene swapping between human and bird strains often occurs in pigs or horses, causing a major genetic change in the virus make-up called an antigenic shift . Occasionally after this mixing a “new” virus strain emerges that can infect and spread in humans, and as the population is completely naïve to this “new” strain it can spark a pandemic’ ( Crawford, 2007 : 205).
Viruses have long jumped between species, but the advent of animal agriculture increased opportunities for viral transmission between animals and humans. The Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, which infected half of the world’s population and killed tens of millions of people, is thought to have arisen in farm animals. Although this particular strain cannot be blamed on practices that began in the late 20th century, our current practices increase the risk that new versions of existing viruses will emerge. It should be emphasized that in most cases, it is impossible to track the exact origin and evolutionary progress of any particular strain of flu. Scientists instead look for patterns of correlation between sites of initial infections, and rely on general knowledge about the conditions that facilitate the emergence and transmission of viruses.
Regardless of the origin of specific outbreaks of swine and avian flu, the general trend seems to implicate factory farming as a significant cause of many new strains: ‘there is no doubt that we are in the midst of the worst ever recorded flu pandemic in birds. The [H5N1] virus started life as a harmless infection in the intestines of wild birds and jumped to domestic chickens in the 1990s, where modern intensive farming techniques gave it the opportunity to adapt and evolve … . And now this virulent strain has not only crossed back into wild fowl but has increased its host range to include other birds … and even some mammals such as cats’ ( Crawford, 2007 : 208).
Although I have focused on different strains of influenza, animals share many other viruses, even if only a small number induce death or disease when they jump species. The morally interesting question is whether we can justify practices that increase the likelihood of new viral epidemics.
It is conceivable that new strains of viruses that arise on factory farms will eventually lose their virulence and strength. When viruses are confined to a specific population, they tend to become weakened as they co-evolve with the animals that host them. This occurs because from the virus’s standpoint—from the standpoint of the ‘selfish’ genes that comprise viruses—a host is better alive than dead, as a live host can create more copies of the virus and spread it to more people.
However, it can take many years for a virus to become benign ( Crawford, 2000 ), and in the intervening period, it can decimate populations. So the fact that in the long run viruses tend to lose their virulence—their ability to cause disease or death in the animals that host them—does not suggest that we should continue to allow factory farmers to house their animals in extreme confinement. 3
In recent years, awareness of the problem of antibiotic resistance has grown as bacterial diseases ranging from tuberculosis to gonorrhea have become increasingly costly or difficult—and in some cases, impossible—to treat by existing antibiotics ( United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2013 ). Many people now understand the basic evolutionary principle that our increasing use (and misuse) of antibiotics fuels the evolution and dispersion of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. But fewer people are aware of the connection between the widespread use of antibiotics in livestock and the emergence of new patterns of antibiotic resistance in people.
Resistance to antibiotics arises in farm animals for the same reason it does in people. For billions of years, bacteria have been competing with each other and with plants, fungi and animals for scarce resources. Although most of these relationships have become mutualistic (beneficial to both parties) or commensal (neither harmful nor beneficial to both parties), some are parasitic relationships in which bacteria benefit at the expense of their host. When bacteria parasitize other organisms, natural selection rewards genetic mutations and immune responses that allow their victims to fight back. The arsenal that organisms have evolved to defend themselves against exploitation includes chemical weapons that destroy bacteria, and enzymes that disrupt DNA synthesis to prevent their replication. Bacteria have responded in kind by developing sophisticated defenses, including membranes that block antibiotic absorption ( Delcour, 2009 ), enzymes that degrade the efficacy of antibiotics ( Wright, 2005 ) and efflux pumps that eject antibiotics that have already been absorbed ( Kumar and Schweizer, 2005 ).
One might think that organisms with an adaptive immune system would eventually find a way to resist bacterial exploitation. To some extent this occurs, which explains the existence of endogenously produced antibiotics in many organisms, and natural immunity to the deleterious effects of some bacteria in others. But bacteria have responded with a creative way of evolving quickly. Horizontal gene transfer through conjugation and transduction allows bacteria to acquire genes from other bacteria, from phage viruses that parasitize them and occasionally from unwilling hosts. This allows bacteria to exploit mutations and gene sequences that arise in other organisms, which is one reason most scientists see no way of developing an antibiotic that permanently removes the threat of harmful bacteria. The challenge instead is to find specific antibiotics that kill harmful bacteria, undermine their virulence or prevent them from replicating long enough for an immune system to clear them from an animal’s body.
Nearly half of all antibiotics worldwide are given to farm animals to promote growth and prevent diseases in the crowded quarters in which livestock are increasingly kept, and in the US, an estimated three quarters of all antibiotics go directly to livestock on factory farms ( US GAO, 2011 ). For many years, public health experts have warned about the dangers of using large quantities of antibiotics in farm animals, especially when they are used at sub-therapeutic doses over long periods, as this creates an ideal environment for bacteria to evolve and spread resistance to antibiotics ( Gorbach, 2001 ). Antibiotics are administered at low levels because they can speed the growth of some animals by increasing nutrient absorption and preventing infections in cramped conditions ( McEwen and Fedorka-Cray, 2002 ). Using antibiotics for non-therapeutic purposes gives farmers a small but significant advantage over those who decline to use them, thus creating a negative sum game in which the rational profit-maximizing choice for each farmer gives no farmer any particular advantage over others, but leaves nearly all animals and people worse off.
Animals are worse off because of the cruel conditions in which they are kept. Farmers are no better off using antibiotics for non-therapeutic purposes if their competitors are also permitted to use them. People are worse off because antibiotic-resistant bacteria often find their way into human hosts.
Antibiotic-resistant bacteria that arise on factory farms can spread to human hosts in a number of ways. First, those who work on farms and handle animals or raw meat can pick up antibiotic-resistant bacteria from animals who have it, and transfer it to other people; second, some bacteria survive in meat even after it is cooked, and are transferred directly to those who eat it; third, animal waste from factory farms that contains antibiotic-resistant bacteria is often used to fertilize crops, and some of these bacteria infect people who either work with crops or consume them; and finally, as bacteria do not respect physical or biological borders, some are transferred to animals and streams around factory farms ( McEwen and Fedorka-Cray, 2002 ; Casey et al. , 2013 ).
In a recent overview of antibiotic resistance on US farms, the Environmental Working Group found that among the most common meats bought in US supermarkets, 81% of turkey, 69% of pork chops, 55% of ground beef and 39% of chicken contained antibiotic-resistant bacteria ( Undurraga, 2013 ). By themselves, these numbers should not be alarming, as many bacteria have been carrying antibiotic-resistant genes for millions of years. It is possible for resistant bacteria to spread from animals to humans, or from humans to animals, so the misuse of antibiotics among people may be (at least partly) responsible for recent increases in resistance among bacteria that colonize farm animals ( Singer, 2003 ). However, recent increases suggest that factory farming practices are largely responsible for antibiotic resistance among farm animals, and thus in the meat that derives from them. While experts argue about whether most resistance comes from the misuse of antibiotics (such as their use for growth promotion), or whether it comes simply from the total quantity used, there is clear evidence that more use in people or animals creates more resistance in the bacteria that colonize them (Wegener, 2003a), and that reducing their use in farm animals in countries like Denmark has led to less resistance (Wegener, 2003b).
Although it is necessarily imprecise, we can measure the increased prevalence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria over time. For example, between 2002 and 2011, multidrug-resistant Salmonella in raw chicken in the US has increased from ∼20 to 45%, and in turkey during the same period, it increased from ∼20 to 50% ( Undurraga, 2013 ). Human deaths from multidrug-resistant Escherichia coli derived from poultry are on the rise, and this is likely to be true for many pathogenic bacteria derived from farm animals ( Collignon et al. , 2013 ). Unfortunately, withdrawing antibiotics from animal feed does not work especially quickly. Just as it takes time for bacteria to acquire and spread genes that confer resistance, it often takes time for them to lose these genes when antibiotics are withdrawn ( Lenski, 1998 ). This is because although genes that confer resistance are costly to carry, the costs are often minimal and some genes can encode for the conditional expression of resistance, so that resistance genes are only phenotypically expressed in bacteria when antibiotics are present ( Andersson and Levin, 1999 ). And although the prevalence of resistance genes typically falls over time when antibiotics are withdrawn, it takes a long time to approach 0. So when antibiotic use is resumed, even a small number of bacteria with antibiotic-resistant genes can spread rapidly within and between different bacterial populations ( Salyers and Amabile-Cuevas, 1997 ). This suggests that it may take considerable time before removing antibiotics in agriculture restores their efficacy.
While most European countries have phased out the sub-therapeutic use of antibiotics in livestock over the past decade, the US and other countries have been slow to respond—presumably because there are significant upfront costs to changing the way farm animals are fed and housed, and because farmers with lobbying power fear losing market share to less scrupulous farmers in other countries who continue to use factory farming techniques that necessitate antibiotics.
Philosophers argue about whether animals have rights, and if so where these rights come from. These are important arguments to have, but any plausible theory will hold that sentient creatures capable of feeling pain and frustration have interests that deserve protection. The problem is that the interests of animals and people can come into conflict. People have an interest in advancing medical research and consuming cheap protein, and animals have an interest in being able to exercise their instincts, or at least being free from gratuitous pain and frustration. When interests collide, the differences between various theories of animal rights will come to the fore. However, we can start with the assumption that any theory of animal welfare worth taking seriously will include a pro tanto obligation not to inflict cruelty on animals without sufficient justification.
Some think that rationality or consciousness is a necessary condition for moral standing. 4 Others suggest that sentience is sufficient for moral standing, so that all sentient animals deserve to have their interests protected. The claim that animals are equal in the sense of having their interests equally considered does not imply that they should be treated the same. Instead, the idea is that having an interest means that moral agents should take these interests into account when deciding what to do. The fact that a pig has interests does not imply that it should be given the right to own a home or drive a car, but rather that we should minimize unnecessary pain and frustration ( Singer, 1976 ), perhaps by according it legal rights, and by requiring farmers to abide by certain animal welfare standards.
There is no characteristic, or reasonably small set of characteristics, that sets some creatures apart from others as meriting respectful treatment. That is the wrong way to think about the relation between an individual’s characteristics and how he or she may be treated. Instead we have an array of characteristics and an array of treatments, with each characteristic relevant to justifying some types of treatment but not others. If an individual possesses a particular characteristic (such as the ability to feel pain), then we may have a duty to treat it in a certain way (not to torture it), even if that same individual does not possess other characteristics (such as autonomy) that would mandate other sorts of treatment (refraining from coercion). [ Rachels, 2004 : 169].
Some find this view unsatisfying because it fails to draw clear lines or to list off a single set of obligations that we owe to all creatures with moral standing. But the fact that our moral universe is more complicated than we would like it to be does not imply that pluralism is false. Regardless of their differences, pluralists like Rachels and consequentialists like Singer agree that farm animals should be guaranteed minimally decent treatment, and that using them as mere means to our ends is wrong.
Farm animals, such as domestic cattle, horses, sheep, swine and goats that are used for traditional, production agricultural purposes are exempt from coverage by the AWA [emphasis added]. Traditional production agricultural purposes include use as food and fiber, for improvement of animal nutrition, breeding, management or production efficiency, or for improvement of the quality of food or fiber. 5
The federal government has delegated this responsibility to state governments, and many states have created animal welfare laws designed primarily to protect the interests of meat producers, and companion animals like dogs and cats, while excluding farm animals of similar or greater sentience from similar protection. Most states make it difficult to prosecute violations of animal welfare laws, and have relatively weak anti-cruelty provisions, which count a practice as unacceptably cruel only if it violates existing practices.
In a rapidly growing trend, as farming practices have become more and more industrialized and possibly less and less acceptable to the average person, the farmed-animal industry has persuaded the majority of state legislatures to actually amend their criminal anticruelty statutes to simply exempt all ‘accepted’, ‘customary’ or ‘normal’ farming practices ( Wolfson and Sullivan, 2004 : 212).
These provisions would be considered outrageous if applied to humans. Imagine a world in which some humans are considered the property of others, and the question is how the property owners should be allowed to treat their subjects. Some owners argue that it would be costly to improve the already awful standards, so we should only regard acts as cruel if they violate practices that already exist. While there are clear differences between human and non-human animals, defining morally acceptable practices by reference to whatever is currently done is morally perverse, and it precludes virtually any improvement in existing standards.
In recent years, some states have extended more protection to farm animals. For example, in 2008, California voters passed the Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act, which requires that ‘calves raised for veal, egg-laying hens and pregnant pigs be confined only in ways that allow these animals to lie down, stand up, fully extend their limbs and turn around freely.’ 6 While this is a slight step forward, it may also induce farmers to move to other states to continue their cruel but cost-saving practices. States like Nevada have made significant efforts to lure farmers out of California. 7
In contrast to the US (and much of the rest of the world), the EU has enacted strong protections for farm animals, and some individual states have passed laws that exceed these standards. For example, while the entire EU has banned the use of gestation crates for pigs and battery cages for hens, Germany has banned cages and crates for all farm animals. In Germany, farmers are required to raise hens in large barnlike aviaries, to allow other animals to move around with some degree of freedom, and to have straw or grass bedding, rather than sleeping on concrete floors surrounded by metal cages ( Wolfson and Sullivan, 2004 ).
An advantage of the EU’s approach to animal welfare is that it establishes minimally acceptable requirements that states and farmers are free to exceed. Therefore, it reduces the collective action problem in which farmers who would prefer to provide an enriched environment for animals fear that other farmers will exploit this concern by using cheaper techniques that externalize the moral costs of production.
It might be argued that if people are concerned about the treatment of animals, or the threat of zoonotic epidemics and antibiotic resistance, they should change their consumption rather than using the power of the state to force producers to alter their production practices. While I agree that people who understand the costs of factory farming have a moral obligation to change the way they shop for meat (for example, to look for labels like ‘certified humane’ and ‘free range’), and that some people who do not understand the moral issues surrounding factory farming are culpably ignorant and have an obligation to familiarize themselves with the issues, I do not think we should simply assume that consumers will voluntarily change their habits.
First, some ignorance of morally repugnant practices is, in the economic sense, rational. Because we have limited time, and information is costly to gather and process, consumers are often rationally ignorant about how their actions and consumption choices affect other people and animals. It is difficult, and arguably undesirable from a social standpoint, to expect consumers to know everything about how the products they consume are made. In fact, this is the point of prices in a well-functioning market: consumers and producers do not need to understand how everything is made to act in ways that tend to make others better off ( Hayek, 1945 ). But this is only true when prices capture most of the costs and benefits generated in producing pencils and paperclips, and other consumer goods. When milk and meat are produced in such a way that the costs to people and animals are not factored into the price of production, we are not necessarily better off, and our ignorance can lead us to make choices that we would not make if we were aware of the harm they impose on others.
Second, the core function of a liberal government is to produce public goods and prevent people from imposing unwarranted harms on each other. Giving people the discretion to consume factory-farmed foods allows them to inflict cruelty on animals, and to inflict significant health costs—even death—on other people. While the harm to animals is direct, the harm to other people is probabilistic and diffuse. Each person’s consumption of meat from factory-farmed animals merely contributes to a process that significantly elevates the risk of harm to other people in the form of antibiotic-resistant infections, or new viral infections that arise in birds and pigs.
Since some people will continue to consume factory-farmed products because it is cheaper than the alternatives, or because they are ignorant of the harms associated with these products, we cannot rely solely on social norms and moral outrage to drive farmers to alter their practices, nor can we rely on farmers to voluntarily phase out factory farming, as most farmers who act this way will be driven out of business by less altruistic competitors. 8 Instead, governments should require factory farmers to change the way they raise animals.
An obvious starting point is for the rest of the world to follow the EU in banning the use of battery cages for hens (which typically involve stuffing half a dozen hens into cages so crowded they can barely move) and gestation crates for veal and sows. By requiring farmers to use straw or other bedding for animals and increase roaming space and access to fresh air, we can marginally increase their comfort and decrease the stress that leads to compromised immunity. This alone would significantly increase welfare and reduce the risk of zoonotic viral infections. It would also reduce the need to administer antibiotics to prevent infections brought on by crowding.
The US should also follow Europe in banning the sub-therapeutic use of antibiotics to promote growth in farm animals ( Lessing, 2010 ), and should tax the use of antibiotics for therapeutic purposes, using the revenue to fund research into new vaccines and new antibiotics ( Vagsholm and Hojgard, 2010 ; Anomaly, 2013 ). One study suggests that when we tax pollution—in this case, the use of antibiotics that leads to antibiotic resistance—and use the revenue generated from the tax to address the source of pollution or compensate victims, public support for the tax increases ( Kallbekken et al. , 2011 ). It is also arguably more efficient and fair to tax practices that produce social costs rather than activities that are socially beneficial ( Anomaly, 2010 ).
At the very least, the US and other countries should prohibit the use of all medically important antibiotics when they are used simply for the purposes of growth promotion, or as a way of compensating for crowded and unhealthy conditions on factory farms. This is what the US Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act proposes, although even if it eventually passes, there is some worry that it may not go far enough because sometimes resistance to non-medically important antibiotics can also confer resistance to medically important ones. 9 Because we share a microbial environment, the overuse of antibiotics aimed at particular bacteria can increase the prevalence of antibiotic resistance among other bacteria that are likely to affect human health. Thus, instead of allowing farmers to decide on the kind and quantity of antibiotics to give to their animals, we might at least require veterinary oversight. Allowing farmers to administer antibiotics indiscriminately is tantamount to allowing them to decide how much harm they would like to inflict on other people.
One potential problem with banning antibiotics for growth promotion, and requiring veterinary supervision and prescription for administering antibiotics to sick animals (or as prophylaxis for potentially sick animals), is that farmers might pressure veterinarians to prescribe antibiotics when they are not really needed. More plausibly, in the absence of other requirements like increased roaming space, farmers might actually need antibiotics for sick animals—not because animals naturally get sick a lot, but because the conditions on factory farms ensure that animals will be infected with pathogenic bacteria. 10 This suggests the need to impose a complementary package of requirements on farmers that both improves animal welfare and decreases the transmission of disease.
It is impossible to say with precision what the total cost of imposing new requirements on farmers would be. If the cost was large, this could be a real loss for people with less income. But the argument from cost is not decisive.
Evidence from Europe indicates that the cost of complying with more stringent rules may not be as high as farmers anticipate. For example, in Denmark, the extra cost so far of implementing standards that increase animal welfare and decrease antibiotic use is estimated at $1 per pig ( Wegener, 2003b : 448). It is likely that forcing farmers in the US and China to switch from intensive methods would impose greater costs, as both countries currently use much more confinement and antibiotics than Denmark ever did. The problem with estimating the cost of changing methods is that organizations representing animal welfare advocates and factory farmers give different estimates, and it is too early to know precisely how new provisions in Europe and California will impact prices, as they are just beginning to come into effect.
Another reason to think the argument from cost is not decisive is that although meat has been a cheap and sometimes necessary source of high-value protein for humans throughout much of our history, a nutritionally adequate diet does not require the consumption of meat, and certainly does not require the amount of meat consumed by people living in Japan or the US ( Smil, 2013 ).
Finally, when the relative price of meat increases, markets will reward research into synthetically created meat, derived from stem cells, which may eventually be healthier and cheaper than ‘naturally’ created meat. 11
The argument that phasing out factory farming would unfairly harm the poor by increasing the cost of meat is not a sufficient reason for failing to act. Many poor people around the world would still be able to consume humanely raised animal products, and people in destitute poverty may have to turn to grains and legumes for most of their protein (as they already do). But being forced by circumstance to consume less meat than one would like does not give people the right to consume or produce food in a way that inflicts unwarranted harm on other people or animals.
1. According to the EPA, a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) is a farm in which ‘animals are kept and raised in confined situations. CAFOs congregate animals, feed, manure and urine, dead animals and production operations on a small land area. Feed is brought to the animals rather than the animals grazing or otherwise seeking feed in pastures, fields or on rangeland.’ http://cfpub.epa.gov/npdes/home.cfm?program_id=7 [accessed 10 October 2013].
2. For a more thorough description of conditions on factory farms, see Singer and Mason, The Way We Eat ( 2006 ), the HBO documentary, Death on a Factory Farm (2009), and Wolfson and Sullivan, ‘Foxes in the Henhouse’ ( 2004 ).
3. My point here is more about the degree of animal confinement, or stocking density, rather than the size of the farming operation. It may be that larger animal farms that enclose the animals from contact with wildlife are safer, and make disease surveillance more cost-effective, than backyard chicken or pig farms.
4. Immanuel Kant is generally thought to have held this view, although he did acknowledge indirect duties toward non-rational animals.
5. http://www.aphis.usda.gov/animal_welfare/policy.php?policy=17 [accessed 10 January 2014].
6. http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/California_Proposition_2,_Standards_for_Confining_Farm_Animals_%282008%29 [accessed 10 January 2014].
7. http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB126334191947626965 . Wall Street Journal [accessed 26 November 2013].
8. The biggest flaw in current US policy is that it sets recommendations rather than binding requirements for farmers to limit their use of antibiotics, and to alter their practices to increase animal health ( United States Government Accountability Office, 2011 ).
9. http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/113/hr1150 [accessed 10 January 2014].
10. There is some evidence that in Denmark, where non-therapeutic antibiotics were banned in 2000, farmers have steadily increased the use of antibiotics for therapeutic purposes, although net use is still down significantly ( United States Government Accountability Office, 2011 : 40). This problem could be minimized by requiring veterinary prescription, and by imposing modest taxes or fees on the use of antimicrobials. If the taxes were too high, this might lead to an increase in easily preventable animal suffering. But even a modest tax could deter superfluous use, force farmers to keep animals in better conditions and raise revenue for research into alternatives to existing practices, including the development of new kinds or classes of antibiotics.
11. The latest version of synthetic meat is being bankrolled by Google co-founder Sergey Brin: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2384715/At-tastes-meat–Worlds-test-tube-artificial-beef-Googleburger-gets-GOOD-review-eaten-time.html [accessed 21 September 2013].
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Research and design of a hybrid dv-hop algorithm based on the chaotic crested porcupine optimizer for wireless sensor localization in smart farms, 1. introduction.
3. materials and methods, 3.1. farm wireless sensor network model, 3.2. hybrid optimization dv-hop algorithm based on the improved crested porcupine optimizer, 3.2.1. dv-hop algorithm design, 3.2.2. hop count optimization based on the rssi algorithm, 3.2.3. distance optimization based on polynomial averaging, 3.3. optimization based on the chaotic crested porcupine optimizer, 4. simulation results and analysis, 4.1. modeling set-up and assessment of indicators, 4.2. impact of beacon node ratio, 4.3. impact of communication radius, 5. conclusions, author contributions, institutional review board statement, data availability statement, conflicts of interest, abbreviations.
the path loss at distance | |
the path loss at the reference distance | |
the path loss exponent | |
the Gaussian error term | |
the average hop distance of beacon node | |
the coordinates of beacon node | |
the coordinates of beacon node | |
the minimum hop count from beacon node to | |
the total number of beacon nodes in the WSNs | |
the estimated distance from unknown node to beacon node | |
the minimum hop count from unknown node to beacon node | |
the approximate solution when reaches its minimum value | |
the communication radius of beacon node | |
any positive integer in the range [1, 5] | |
beacon node receives the RSSI value from an unknown node | |
, , , , and | the polynomial coefficients |
the lower bound of the solution space | |
the upper bound of the solution space | |
the random sequence generated by iterating the circle map 1000 times | |
the fitness function of the CACPO algorithm | |
the -axis coordinates of the -th generation population individual | |
the -axis coordinates of the -th generation population individual | |
the current population size | |
the current generation number | |
the position of the -th individual in the -th generation | |
the position of the -th individual in the -th generation | |
a random number following a normal distribution | |
a random number in the interval [0, 1] | |
the position of the best individual in the -th generation | |
the position of the predator after iterations | |
a randomly chosen integer in the interval [0, N] | |
a binary vector composed of 0 s and 1 s | |
a random number in the interval [0, 1] | |
, | randomly chosen integers in the interval [0, N] |
the odor diffusion factor | |
the search direction parameter | |
the defense factor | |
a random vector with values in the interval [0, 1] | |
a random value in the interval [0, 1] | |
a small value to avoid division by zero | |
the convergence speed factor | |
, | random values in the interval [0, 1] |
the average force of the -th predator | |
a random vector with values in the interval [0, 1] | |
the normalized average localization error of the positioning algorithm | |
the total number of unknown nodes | |
the actual coordinates of unknown node |
Click here to enlarge figure
Simulation Parameters | Numerical Value |
---|---|
interval size | 1000 m × 1000 m |
total number of nodes | 240 |
ratio of beacon nodes | 20% |
communication radius | 200 m |
initial population size | 100 |
minimum population size | 80 |
number of iterations | 100 |
cyclic variable | 4 |
convergence rate | 0.2 |
trade-off ratio between third and fourth defense strategy | 0.8 |
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Wang, H.; Zhang, L.; Liu, B. Research and Design of a Hybrid DV-Hop Algorithm Based on the Chaotic Crested Porcupine Optimizer for Wireless Sensor Localization in Smart Farms. Agriculture 2024 , 14 , 1226. https://doi.org/10.3390/agriculture14081226
Wang H, Zhang L, Liu B. Research and Design of a Hybrid DV-Hop Algorithm Based on the Chaotic Crested Porcupine Optimizer for Wireless Sensor Localization in Smart Farms. Agriculture . 2024; 14(8):1226. https://doi.org/10.3390/agriculture14081226
Wang, Hao, Lixin Zhang, and Bao Liu. 2024. "Research and Design of a Hybrid DV-Hop Algorithm Based on the Chaotic Crested Porcupine Optimizer for Wireless Sensor Localization in Smart Farms" Agriculture 14, no. 8: 1226. https://doi.org/10.3390/agriculture14081226
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Companies are working to fill the organ shortage by engineering pigs to be more humanlike in hopes of xenotransplant clinical trials. See where those pigs are raised. (AP video/Shelby Lum)
A pig stands in a pen at the Revivicor research farm near Blacksburg, Va., on May 29, 2024, where organs are retrieved for animal-to-human transplant experiments. (AP Photo/Shelby Lum)
David Ayares, president and chief scientific officer of Revivicor, looks at pigs at the company’s research farm near Blacksburg, Va., on May 29, 2024, where organs are retrieved for animal-to-human transplant experiments. (AP Photo/Shelby Lum)
Seen through a microscope, DNA is removed from a pig egg cell near Blacksburg, Va., on May 30, 2024, before a genetically modified cell is inserted. (AP Photo/Shelby Lum)
In this photo provided by the United Therapeutics Corporation, a genetically modified pig stands inside the protective barrier at the company’s designated pathogen-free facility in Christiansburg, Va., in May 2024. These pigs will eventually supply organs for clinical trials. (United Therapeutics Corporation via AP)
In this photo provided by the United Therapeutics Corporation, genetically modified pigs stand inside the protective barrier at the company’s designated pathogen-free facility in Christiansburg, Va., in May 2024. These pigs will eventually supply organs for clinical trials. (United Therapeutics Corporation via AP)
A worker at United Therapeutics’ designated pathogen-free facility in Christiansburg, Va., on May 29, 2024 retrives a UV sterilized item from behind a protected barrier within the facility. (AP Photo/Shelby Lum)
United Therapeutics’ designated pathogen-free facility in Christiansburg, Va., on May 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Shelby Lum)
Genetically modified piglets gather together at the Revivicor research farm near Blacksburg, Va., on May 29, 2024, where organs are retrieved for animal-to-human transplant experiments. (AP Photo/Shelby Lum)
PIgs stand in pens at the Revivicor research farm near Blacksburg, Va., on May 29, 2024, where organs are retrieved for animal-to-human transplant experiments. (AP Photo/Shelby Lum)
BLACKSBURG, Va. (AP) — Wide-eyed piglets rushing to check out the visitors to their unusual barn just might represent the future of organ transplantation – and there’s no rolling around in the mud here.
The first gene-edited pig organs ever transplanted into people came from animals born on this special research farm in the Blue Ridge mountains – behind locked gates, where entry requires washing down your vehicle, swapping your clothes for medical scrubs and stepping into tubs of disinfectant to clean your boots between each air-conditioned barn.
“These are precious animals,” said David Ayares of Revivicor Inc., who spent decades learning to clone pigs with just the right genetic changes to allow those first audacious experiments .
Deeper reading
The biosecurity gets even tighter just a few miles away in Christiansburg, Virginia, where a new herd is being raised – pigs expected to supply organs for formal studies of animal-to-human transplantation as soon as next year.
This massive first-of-its-kind building bears no resemblance to a farm. It’s more like a pharmaceutical plant. And part of it is closed to all but certain carefully chosen employees who take a timed shower, don company-provided clothes and shoes, and then enter an enclave where piglets are growing up.
Behind that protective barrier are some of the world’s cleanest pigs. They breathe air and drink water that’s better filtered against contaminants than what’s required for people. Even their feed gets disinfected – all to prevent them from picking up any possible infections that might ultimately harm a transplant recipient.
“We designed this facility to protect the pigs against contamination from the environment and from people,” said Matthew VonEsch of United Therapeutics, Revivicor’s parent company. “Every person that enters this building is a possible pathogen risk.”
The Associated Press got a peek at what it takes to clone and raise designer pigs for their organs – including a $75 million “designated pathogen-free facility” built to meet Food and Drug Administration safety standards for xenotransplantation.
Thousands of Americans each year die waiting for a transplant, and many experts acknowledge there never will be enough human donors to meet the need.
Animals offer the tantalizing promise of a ready-made supply. After decades of failed attempts, companies including Revivicor, eGenesis and Makana Therapeutics are engineering pigs to be more humanlike.
So far in the U.S. there have been four “compassionate use” transplants, last-ditch experiments into dying patients — two hearts and two kidneys. Revivicor provided both hearts and one of the kidneys. While the four patients died within a few months, they offered valuable lessons for researchers ready to try again in people who aren’t quite as sick.
Now the FDA is evaluating promising results from experiments in donated human bodies and awaiting results of additional studies of pig organs in baboons before deciding next steps.
They’re semi-custom organs — “we’re growing these pigs to the size of the recipient,” Ayares noted — that won’t show the wear-and-tear of aging or chronic disease like most organs donated by people.
Transplant surgeons who’ve retrieved organs on Revivicor’s farm “go, ‘Oh my god that’s the most beautiful kidney I’ve ever seen,’” Ayares added. “Same thing when they get the heart, a pink healthy happy heart from a young animal.”
The main challenges: how to avoid rejection and whether the animals might carry some unknown infection risk.
The process starts with modifying genes in pig skin cells in a lab. Revivicor initially deleted a gene that produces a sugar named alpha-gal , which triggers immediate destruction from the human immune system. Next came three-gene “knockouts,” to remove other immune-triggering red flags. Now the company is focusing on 10 gene edits — deleted pig genes and added human ones that together lessen risk of rejection and blood clots plus limit organ size.
They clone pigs with those alterations, similar to how Dolly the sheep was created.
Twice a week, slaughterhouses ship Revivicor hundreds of eggs retrieved from sow ovaries. Working in the dark with the light-sensitive eggs, scientists peer through a microscope while suctioning out the maternal DNA. Then they slip in the genetic modifications.
“Tuck it in nice and smooth,” murmurs senior researcher Lori Sorrells, pushing to just the right spot without rupturing the egg. Mild electric shocks fuse in the new DNA and activate embryo growth.
Ayares, a molecular geneticist who heads Revivicor and helped create the world’s first cloned pigs in 2000, says the technique is “like playing two video games at the same time,” holding the egg in place with one hand and manipulating it with the other. The company’s first modified pig, the GalSafe single gene knockout, now is bred instead of cloned. If xenotransplantation eventually works, other pigs with the desired gene combinations would be, too.
Hours later, embryos are carried to the research farm in a handheld incubator and implanted into waiting sows.
On the research farm, Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin’” was serenading a piglet barn, where music acclimates the youngsters to human voices. In air-conditioned pens, the animals grunted excited greetings until it’s obvious their visitors brought no treats. The 3-week-olds darted back to the security of mom. Next door, older siblings laid down for a nap or checked out balls and other toys.
“It is luxury for a pig,” Ayares said. “But these are very valuable animals. They’re very smart animals. I’ve watched piglets play with balls together like soccer.”
About 300 pigs of different ages live on this farm, nestled in rolling hills, its exact location undisclosed for security reasons. Tags on their ears identify their genetics.
“There are certain ones I say hi to,” said Suyapa Ball, Revivicor’s head of porcine technology and farm operations, as she rubbed one pig’s back. “You have to give them a good life. They’re giving their lives for us.”
A subset of pigs used for the most critical experiments – those early attempts with people and the FDA-required baboon studies – are housed in more restricted, even cleaner barns.
But in neighboring Christiansburg is the clearest signal that xenotransplantation is entering a new phase — the sheer size of United Therapeutics’ new pathogen-free facility. Inside the 77,000-square-foot building, the company expects to produce about 125 pig organs a year, likely enough to supply clinical trials.
Company video shows piglets running around behind the protective barrier, chewing on toys and nosing balls back and forth.
They were born in sort of a porcine birthing center connected to the facility, weaned a day or two later and moved into their super-clean pens to be hand-raised. In addition to the on-site shower, their caretakers must put on a new protective suit and mask before entering each suite of pig pens — another precaution against germs.
The pig zone is surrounded on all sides by security and mechanical systems that shield the animals. Outside air enters through multiple filtration systems. Giant vats hold backup supplies of drinking water. Standing over the pig rooms, VonEsch showed how pipes and vents were placed to allow maintenance and repair without any animal contact.
It will take years of clinical trials to prove whether xenotransplantation really could work. But if it succeeds, United Therapeutics’ plan is for even larger facilities, capable of producing up to 2,000 organs a year, in several places around the country.
The field is at a point where multiple kinds of studies “are telling us that there’s no train wrecks, that there’s no immediate rejection,” Ayares said. “The next two or three years are going to be super exciting.”
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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By Leanne Abraham , June Kim , Elena Shao , Julie Walton Shaver , Anjali Singhvi , Christiaan Triebert , Karen Yourish , Lazaro Gamio and Amy Schoenfeld Walker
The Associated Press; Photograph by Doug Mills/The New York Times
Former President Donald J. Trump was whisked off the stage at his rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday after gunshots were fired toward the area where he was speaking. Mr. Trump could be seen bleeding from his right ear, and officials said that the shooting was being investigated as an assassination attempt.
Location of law
enforcement
snipers on roof
Location of gunman’s body
Location of a
wounded rally
Stage where
Trump was speaking
Butler Farm
Show Grounds
Pennsylvania
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By The New York Times; Aerial image by Doral Chenoweth/USA TODAY NETWORK, via Reuters
The rally took place on the grounds of the Butler Farm Show in western Pennsylvania, about 35 miles north of Pittsburgh. On Saturday afternoon, tens of thousands of rally attendees started trickling in after the doors opened at 1 p.m.
Mr. Trump was set to begin speaking at 5 p.m., but didn’t appear onstage until about an hour later. Here’s how the next 11 minutes unfolded based on footage of the rally.
6:05 p.m. As the song concludes, Mr. Trump approaches the lectern and begins speaking. He spends the first six minutes talking about President Biden and the state of the country before focusing on immigration.
Eric Lee/The New York Times
TMX via Associated Press
Seconds later A gunshot is heard, and Mr. Trump stops midsentence and flinches. He reaches for his right ear, as another two shots are quickly fired, and ducks behind the lectern. One male Secret Service agent is heard yelling, “Get down, get down, get down, get down!”
Photo appears to
capture the path
of a projectile
Blood on Trump’s
hand after he
touches his ear
Photo appears
to capture the
path of a projectile
Photos by Doug Mills/The New York Times
Secret Service agents surround Mr. Trump as a burst of five more shots is fired. Members of the crowd are panicking, screaming and crouching down. More security personnel run onto the stage, including several heavily armed law enforcement agents.
About 42 seconds after shooting began Agents stay crouched over Mr. Trump until an agent can be heard saying, “Shooter down.” The Secret Service confirmed later in a statement that its “personnel neutralized the shooter.”
Doug Mills/The New York Times
A spectator who had been standing just outside the grounds said in an interview with the BBC that a few minutes into Mr. Trump’s speech, he noticed that someone was “bear-crawling up the roof,” clearly armed with a rifle, and that he tried to notify the police. Law enforcement officials later said that the gunman had opened fire from an elevated position outside the rally’s security perimeter.
After the shooting, the gunman’s body was seen on the rooftop of one of the buildings to Mr. Trump’s right. An AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle was recovered at the scene, according to law enforcement officials.
“I was shot with a bullet that pierced the upper part of my right ear,” Mr. Trump said in a post on Truth Social, his social media platform. “I knew immediately that something was wrong in that I heard a whizzing sound, shots, and immediately felt the bullet ripping through the skin.”
Shortly after the shooting, a spokesman for Mr. Trump’s campaign said that the former president was “fine.” Mr. Trump will still attend the Republican National Convention this week, his advisers said in a statement.
One spectator at the rally, Corey Comperatore , a 50-year-old firefighter, was shot and killed. Two others were critically injured.
Photographs by Eric Lee and Doug Mills/The New York Times
IMAGES
COMMENTS
The practices that comprise factory farming evolved as a result of competition between firms to produce commodities—mainly milk and meat—at minimal cost. Competition usually benefits consumers. Factory farming has lowered the price of animal protein, and this is a real boon for poor and middle-class consumers. But there are at least three ...
Jonathan Anomaly , Duke University. Corresponding author: Jonathan Anomaly, Duke University, 140 Science Drive, Room 208, Gross Hall, Box 90204, Durham, NC 27708, USA. Tel.: +1805. 280 8443; Email ...
Voices in Bioethics is currently seeking submissions on philosophical and practical topics, both current and timeless. Papers addressing access to healthcare, the bioethical implications of recent Supreme Court rulings, environmental ethics, data privacy, cybersecurity, law and bioethics, economics and bioethics, reproductive ethics, research ethics, and pediatric bioethics are sought.
Natural Farming vs. Factory Farming: A Review. Article ID: 44 197. Amit Raj, Mastu Patel, Aravind Kumar 3. 1 Research Scholar, Department of Agronomy, School of Agriculture Lovely Professional ...
Factory farming is an increasingly common way to raise animals for food, focusing on species such as cows, pigs, chickens, and fish. ... of space as a piece of lined paper. Female pigs used for breeding are held in gestation crates so small that they cannot turn around for the duration of their lives.
The UK-based campaign group Scrap Factory Farming has launched a legal challenge against industrial animal agriculture; the challenge is in the process of judicial review. While a fringe movement, Scrap Factory Farming has already accrued some serious backers, including the legal team of Michael Mansfield QC. The premise is that factory farming is a danger not just to animals or the ...
Author summary In public discussions, farm size is often mentioned as an important factor for good animal welfare and high environmental protection in animal farming. Scientific findings contrast this 'small-is-beautiful' perceptions by not finding such simple relationships. In this study, we analyze peoples' associations with farm sizes in order to better understand the underlying ...
New York University's Department of Environmental Studies will host a series of presentations on factory farming and its larger implications on Fri., Feb. 21, 1-6 p.m., at NYU's Hemmerdinger Hall, Silver Center for Arts and Science, 100 Washington Square East (enter at 32 Waverly Place or 31 Washington Place [wheelchair accessible]).
Throughout the paper, the terms factory farms and CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) will be used interchangeably. As such, The Cambridge Dictionary defines factory farming as, "a system of farming in which a lot of animals are kept in a small closed area, in order to produce a large amount of meat, eggs, or milk as cheaply as ...
Brenda J. Lutz and James M. Lutz. Abstract. Trade in products from intensiv e farming of livestock has the potential to lead to disputes, especially as opposition to factory farming on ethical ...
Intensification in animal farming - in a long-term and multi-faceted approach - turns out to be a practice which not only abuses ecosystems and livestock, but also our health. When we consider all moral, medical and ecological controversies, it seems is meaningful and necessary to express doubts regarding the economic value of factory farming.
This review paper presents one of the sustainable farming practices - vertical farming that could play a key role in mitigating global food security in the current uncertain world. ... (e.g. Smart farm in Fujian Province), Japan (e.g. Nuvege Plant Factory), Singapore (e.g. Sky Green Farms) and South Korea (e.g. NextOn) (Shamshiri et al ...
Factory farms provide abundant food, but environment suffers. Economy Feb 6, 2020 2:33 PM EDT. AKRON, Iowa (AP) — In recent years, Fred Zenk built two barns housing about 2,400 hogs between them ...
First Year Seminar Research Paper Implications of pig factory farming A concise study on how pig factory farms impact animals, humans, and the environment. By Tabea H. Wanninger 16th November 2011. Abstract: Factory Farms have become the norm concerning the way humans raise meat for their consumption. ...
Fordham University Institutional Repository
The global indoor farming market reached 32.3 billion USD by 2020, with over 500 PFALs being operated commercially in China, Japan, Singapore, the US, and the UK. Simultaneously, there has been intensive research on increasing the productivity and sustainability of PFALs and on producing high-quality horticultural products in PFALs in recent years.
Drawing upon research that examines neoliberal organizational practices, necrocapitalism, and the factory farming methods used in modern corporate slaughterhouses, this paper demonstrates how the art of public deception has been taken to highly advanced levels by industries that have something to hide.
Factory farming is a controversial and impactful practice that affects the environment, animal welfare, public health and food security. Learn more about the latest news, analysis and opinions on ...
Abstract. Factory farming continues to grow around the world as a low-cost way of producing animal products for human consumption. However, many of the practices associated with intensive animal farming have been criticized by public health professionals and animal welfare advocates. The aim of this essay is to raise three independent moral ...
4 pages / 1805 words. Factory farming, also known as industrial farming, is the large scale rearing of animals using intensive methods under controlled conditions. Often it involves rearing of pigs, cows and chicken in an enclosed place, in large numbers to produce poultry, dairy products and meat for human... Factory Farming.
Factory Farming Research Paper. 879 Words4 Pages. "The more exposure people have to the realities of factory farming, the more we will see people rejecting it. It's already happening" (Jonathan Safran Foer). Factory farming has been going on since the 1900's. Factory Farming is the production of livestock in large quantities for uses such ...
The efficient operation of smart farms relies on the precise monitoring of farm environmental information, necessitating the deployment of a large number of wireless sensors. These sensors must be integrated with their specific locations within the fields to ensure data accuracy. Therefore, efficiently and rapidly determining the positions of sensor nodes presents a significant challenge. To ...
On the research farm, Tom Petty's "Free Fallin'" was serenading a piglet barn, where music acclimates the youngsters to human voices. In air-conditioned pens, the animals grunted excited greetings until it's obvious their visitors brought no treats. The 3-week-olds darted back to the security of mom.
Shots rang out as former President Donald J. Trump spoke at a campaign event in Butler, Pa., on Saturday. Maps, photos and video show how the shooting unfolded.