Animals on Factory Farms / 41the process by which the care, diet, and breeding of a species come
under human control. Traditional hunter-gatherers considered ani-
mals their equals, and in some instances thought animals possessed
religious or magical powers. That relationship changed with domes-
tication, and, James Serpell explains, “for the majority of species
involved, this loss of independence had some fairly devastating
long-term consequences.”^3 The changes that have occurred within
livestock farming over the past fi fty years have intensifi ed those
consequences.
The latter half of the twentieth century marked what schol-
ars call the “third agricultural revolution.”^4 The fi rst revolution
involved the development of seed agriculture, along with the use
of the plow and draft animals, such as oxen. The second revolu-
tion brought the large-scale use of fertilizers, agrochemicals, and
animal feed, purchased from suppliers off the farm. The third rev-
olution brought industrialized agriculture, also called factory farm-
ing. Although the term factory farming currently has negative
connotations, the agricultural industry itself introduced the term,
preferring it because it implies effi cient production. Factory farm-
ing involved a rapid increase of production from fewer and larger
farms, as well as closer corporate involvement. For the cattle, pigs,
chickens, sheep, and turkeys that we domesticated from their wild
ancestors, the third revolution has meant lives deprived of the
capacity to express every natural instinct. In industrialized agri-
culture, pigs are confi ned in crates that do not allow them to turn
around, much less wallow in the mud or root for their food. Chick-
ens who lay eggs do not even have the space to spread their wings.
Many authors have already described the horrors of factory farm-
ing, so I will not go into detail here. However, I want to emphasize
that as we humans have learned how to “grow” animals faster and
more economically, we have engineered creatures useful to us only
as commodities. To justify our treatment of them, we deny their
cognitive and emotional capacities; more accurately, we deprive
ourselves of seeing and understanding these capacities. To be sure,
there are still some small farms and ranches in which farmers have
frequent contact with their animals and see them as individuals.