Just Think Of Factory Farms As Cities For Livestock

James McWilliams, criticizing production agriculture:

But I think Bill misses a critical point. True, even without subsidies, there might indeed be economic advantages to raising animals under intensive conditions. But we should never fail to overlook the psychological implications of something as emotionally charged as killing animals for food. And when it comes to this endeavor, scale and density of production accomplishes something essential for all factory farming: it severs the emotional bond between farmers and animals. In the bluntest terms, it allows my friend Bill to kill thousands of animals a year and remain a happy person.

Understanding this phenomenon requires going back to the nineteenth century. Before 1850, when most animal husbandry happened on a relatively small scale, farmers viewed their animals as animals. That is, they saw them as sentient beings with unique needs that, left unaddressed, would result in an inferior product. Agricultural manuals from the time routinely instructed farmers to speak to their animals in pleasant tones of voice, to make sure that their bedding was soft and spacious, and to shower them with affection every day. Farmers never referred to their animals as objects. They knew better.

The reason they knew better was because the system of mixed pastoralism they practiced was defined by close physical proximity. This intimacy ensured that farmers interacted daily with their animals, developing an emotional sense of their individual personalities and quirks. The personal scale of animal husbandry made the slaughter—which farmers also tended to do themselves—a solemn occasion at best. No normal person, even on the hardest settlement frontier, would have been indifferent about killing an animal he spent years nurturing. Nobody could have doubted that he was taking the life of a sentient being with wants and needs.

After 1850, things changed. American agriculture fell into the grip of scientific farming. Agricultural scientists, followed by farmers, began to conceptualize farming as a strictly quantifiable venture. Beginning with plants, and then moving to animals, they became less concerned with individual idiosyncrasies and more concerned with collective evaluations of productivity.

I think lots of farmers in the 1850s would have raised thousands of animals for slaughter if they could have fed them:

No normal person, even on the hardest settlement frontier, would have been indifferent about killing an animal he spent years nurturing. Nobody could have doubted that he was taking the life of a sentient being with wants and needs.

Think about that.  The same frontier farmer who wanted the government to kill all the Indians, didn't want to kill an animal he spent years nurturing.  The same Southerner who kept slaves didn't want to butcher a hog.  Sure, farmers often got attached to their breeding stock and their draft animals, because they kept them around for a long time.  But most of the litter of pigs got butchered or sold to butchers.  If feed got low in the winter, one of those cows would have to go. 

I personally am ambivalent at best when it comes to battery cages, gestation crates and veal crates.  But in a world of nearly 7 billion people, either you don't have meat, or you raise it in an industrial manner.  I feel kind of bad about shooting the raccoons who eat my chickens sometimes, but I do it anyway.  I question a world where people buy health insurance for their pets, but are opposed to subsidies to pay for health insurance for poor people.  Anyway, I digress.

I'll take a stab at what made people different in the 1870s than they were in the 1850s.  I don't think it was agricultural scientists leading folks to making people hard-hearted, I think it was the Civil War.