Factory Farm System among American Consumers (Coursework Sample)

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Factory Farm System and the Associated Anxiety among American Consumers
Factory farms have dominated the American food production industry for the last two decades. However, they employ abusive practices that are aimed at maximizing the profits for the owners at the expense of the community, individuals’ health welfare, environment and the even the animals welfare. Animals raised in these farms are viewed as commodities that should be exploited for profit maximization (Schroeder, Naugle and Schlosser 13).
Animals raised in modern factory farms and later slaughtered in slaughterhouses undergo unimaginable suffering. All through their life cycles, from raising them, transporting to new locations and slaughtering them for food. These animals suffer face intolerable cruelty from humans. On modern factory farms, animals get crammed in thousands into windowless sheds filled with filth, confined to wire cages, barren dirt lots, gestation crates and other cruel confinement systems. Schroeder et al.(9) postulates that they are blocked from doing anything natural or necessary to them like building nests, raising families, or rooting around the soil. For example, humans often house cows in individual boxes with small space. As a result, the animals are provided with little or no chance to intermingle with other cows in addition to being forced to live standing in their stool. Additionally, they are routinely castrated and dehorned without the use of pain relievers.
According to Williams (373), factory farming system strives to maximize owners’ output while minimizing costs yet this is always at the animals’ expenses. Major companies involved in this system have found out that they can maximize their profits by cramming animals into tiny spaces, even though most of these animals get sick and ultimately die. The system subjects the calves, pigs, cows, geese, ducks, turkeys and chickens to live in extremely stressful conditions. Firstly, laying chickens live in overcrowded battery cages with inadequate room for spreading their wings while conveyor belts bring in water and food and carry away the eggs. They are kept in environs with semi-darkness to prevent stress-induced behaviors, and the ends of their beaks are cut off using hot blades but without pain relievers. Rollin (161) postulates that the cage wire mesh rubs their skins and feathers off as well as crippling their feet while artificial lighting is enhanced to keep them eating as often as possible.
Secondly, cattle raised in factory farms are shielded from nursing curves and sun-drenched pastures. They are fed on unnatural diets with high bulk including expired cat and dog food, leftover restaurant food and poultry feces. Additionally, they are dehorned and castrated without the use of pain relievers while they are inflicted with branding wounds. According to William (383), calves are taken away from their members only to be chained in stalls and fed on milk substitutes since their mothers’ milk is used for human consumption. Thirdly, pigs in factory farms live individually thereby displaying signs of stress and boredom. Their piglets are taken away from them three weeks after birth and packed into their pens until they get singled out for meat or breeding. They are pumped with drugs making many to be crippled by their weight making them lead to cannibalistic ways. As a result, farmers break off the ends of their teeth and cut off their tails without pain relievers (Bourlakis 171).
According to Williams (380), when the animals eventually grow large enough, those raised for human consumption are crowded onto trucks and then transported over long distances through all extreme weather conditions. Additionally, they are given little or no food or water during the transit to the slaughterhouses. Besides, the animals that survive this nightmarish journey end up with their throats slit while still unconscious. At the slaughterhouses, the animals are raised upside down by their hind legs and then the humans proceed to dismember them. Moreover, most of them remain conscious as they are plunged into the scalding hot water for de-feathering, into hair-removal tanks, or while their bodies are being hacked apart or skinned (Rollin 89).
In addition, factory farms pose both health and environmental concerns. They produce billions manure that do not find markets thus ending up in the rivers and lakes thus endangering aquatic lives. In the U.S, animal farming and grain growing occupies 80% of the total agricultural land. As such, this represents almost a half of the total land mass of the lower 48 states. Still, pigs, cattle, chicken and other animals are the primary consumers of water in the country. For example, one pound of wheat flour production takes about 180 gallons while the production of one pound of cow flesh takes more than 2400 gallons of water. On the health front, studies have found out that an estimated one cow out of four cows taken to a slaughterhouse may uffer from E. coli. Additionally, the consumer studies involving 525 chicken supermarkets in the U.S found 81% having campylobacter while 15% of them had salmonella. Moreover, there were up to 84% of them had bacteria resistant to antibiotics. Finally, eggs have been observed to pose a salmonella threat to one person out of every fifty people yearly (Schroeder, Naugle and Schlosser 113).
In Michael’s book “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” Pollan alleges that humans are too busy viewing animals as commodities thus allowing commodity fetishism works to hide most of the production involved in the industrial food system. For example, if an individual views a nicely plastic packed cut meat with only the price tag on it in a grocery store, they will totally be unable to express the social aspect of the product. They will totally forget about the poor living conditions of these animals as well as the brutality involved during slaughtering. Therefore, the social terms upon which the commodity has arrived on the individual’s plates become irrelevant amongst its artificial superiority. Additionally, Pollan explains how the reality of the industrialized food system is concealed while being critical of the American consumers by accusing them of being “ignorant eaters.” Michael postulates that the industrialized food system capitalizes on keeping the customers in the dark despite being a vital part of the industrial food chain. As a result, the American food culture is full of anxiety and confusion thereby necessitating the need for investigative journalists to make the users aware of where their food comes from.
Just like Pollan claims, factory farming survives only on people’s ignorance; therefore, the industrial violence that animals are subjected to must change. The spectacle that humans c...