Over 10 billion land animals are killed for food in the United States each year. I can't even picture a billion, much less 10 billion. Some scholars refer to the system required for converting these animals into food as the animal industrial complex. This builds on the term military industrial complex, which was used by President Dwight Eisenhower as a warning about the close relationship between the government and the defense industry. Eisenhower was concerned that the alliance of the military and related government departments with defense industries would influence government policy. The agriculture industry has a similar set of alliances today. It involves the large-scale agricultural corporations, the government, and science. It has economic, cultural, and social dimensions. It's within the system through which animals are transformed into livestock, in which they're bred reared, transported, slaughtered, marketed, and consumed, that the cultural ambivalence about animals and their place in society is perhaps most clear. You can see ambivalence at work when people say that they love animals, and they also eat them, knowing that animals raised for food suffer greatly under current systems of production. It's within this current agricultural system that we find the most oppressive aspects of our relationships with animals. It might be tempting to think that people's appetite for meat comes from a natural craving for protein. But the kind of meat eating that many people engage in, in industrialized nations today, where some eat meat several times a day, can be explained by the market economy fueled and maintained by state policies. Let's look at the United States as an example. During the 1930s, American farmers were desperate. In the depths of the Great Depression, farm incomes were so low that many family farms simply could not survive. In response, a series of government policies attempted to solve the problem of overproduction and low prices. The Agricultural Adjustment Act use a two-pronged approach. The government would guarantee minimum prices for certain commodities including grain, if farmers with limit production in terms of acres. As it turns out, it did increase farmers incomes, but it didn't solve the problem of overproduction of grain. Instead, it gave farmers the incentive to produce as much as they possibly could. In addition, new agricultural technologies, such as fertilizers, pesticides, and hybrid seeds were introduced, making it possible to produce more grain on less land. Another solution to the problem of the oversupply was proposed, feed the extra grain, especially corn, to livestock. They would basically turn the grain into meat. This would allow farmers to produce more corn rather than limiting production. But if you're limiting acreage, you can't keep increasing the numbers of animals. The government went to work on the question of how to raise more animals on less land. The solution was through the use of concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs. These are large-scale operations in which extraordinary numbers of animals, particularly pigs and chickens, are confined in barns for their entire lives. You might have heard of them referred to as factory farms. CAFOs not only reduce the amount of land required to raise the animals, they also reduced the cost of other resources, such as labor and feed while increasing production. To be successful, CAFOs require the involvement of a variety of enterprises and practices. For example, raising animals in close proximity increases the risk of disease. So the administration of antibiotics and vaccines was introduced. This gave the pharmaceutical industry a stake in livestock production. Some medications were incorporated into feed, creating a link between feed producers and the pharmaceutical industry. Profitable CAFOs require animals to reach their market weight quickly. Breeders gained an important role, introducing animals who could get bigger, faster, while benefiting from specific feed and medications. Slaughterhouses had to accommodate greater numbers of animals. As they employed technologies to speed up production, they had a greater interest in ensuring that animals would be of a consistent size, which led to a link with particular breeders and feed producers. Along the way, various government agencies are involved too. For example, in inspection and price regulation. To remain competitive, farmers entered into contracts with the companies that provided the feed, the medications, the barns, and even the animals themselves. Farmers lost a say in how they would raise their animals. Through what's known as vertical integration, individual corporations controlled every stage of meat production from birth to slaughter. The connections along the way involving government, science and technology and other players make up the animal industrial complex. Let's consider what maximizing production means for the animals. The conditions in CAFOs are as far from natural as you can imagine. There are many good films that give you an inside look. Although I won't go into a lot of detail, you should know something about it. Although conditions vary for different species, two points apply overall. First, to limit the amount of land required and thus reduce the cost of production, animals are closely confined. In some cases, as for female pigs, this means not even being able to turn around. Second, and related to this, animal's in CAFOs have limited ability to move. This often requires modifications of their bodies. For example, chickens would normally establish a pecking order, which would mean they chase away other birds who get too close. To keep them from injuring one another in CAFOs, the growers as chicken farmers are known, debeak the chickens or cut the tips of their beaks off when they're very young. Once piglets are born, they often undergo a battery of painful procedures. They have their tails dock to prevent littermates from biting them, their teeth clipped to prevent injury to their mother, the sow, and their ears notched for identification. The industrialized animal agriculture techniques I've described are standard in the United States, and they're increasingly used in other parts of the world. There's a lot to learn about the animal industrial complex and what's involved in having cheap meat, eggs, and dairy products.
