2 Animals on Factory Farms

The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate

them, but to be indifferent to them: that’s the essence of

inhumanity.

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, THE DEVIL’S DISCIPLE (19 0 6)

A

lthough we have the closest bonds with companion ani-

mals, they constitute only about 2 percent of the animals

living in the United States. The other 98 percent are the

cattle, sheep, hogs, and poultry raised for food. According to the

U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), ten billion such animals

are raised—and killed—for food every year.^1 The conditions under

which most of these animals live make them extremely vulnerable

in disasters, and they pose serious environmental and public health

risks under normal circumstances. Disasters highlight the confl ict

between consumer welfare and animal welfare. In this chapter, I

suggest a way to reconcile the two sides.

While companion animals live on the borderland of the human-

animal boundary, assuming a nearly human status as family mem-

bers, farmed animals occupy the “animal” side, and have done so

for centuries. Anthropologists point to the domestication of ani-

mals for food as a turning point in human-animal relations. As

Elizabeth Lawrence puts it, “It is impossible to overestimate the

importance of mankind’s change from hunter-gatherer to domes-

ticator of plants and animals.”^2 The term domestication refers to