Impacts of Factory Farming

The Factory Farm Industrial Complex

The harms behind the United States’ “food” production system

Nyala Carbado

October 21, 2024

What comes to mind when you imagine animals on farms? Perhaps you think of grassy fields and sprawling land. Or your mind’s eyes might take to you to a large red barn inside of which roosters roam freely. You may even see cows (and then think: Got Milk?). Chances are, whatever image comes to mind, it is at the very least benign and likely to be positive.

But those positive images and the stories they tell do not capture the reality of modern factory farms. Yet, those are precisely the images that persists in our collective imagination. The question is: Why? There are at least three plausible answers.

First, people may genuinely be unaware of the negative externalities of factory farming. Second, to the extent that people are aware of those negative impacts, they may not see themselves as the root cause of the problem. “What does it matter whether or not I eat meat?” people might tell themselves. Third, grappling seriously with factory farming would requires us to fundamentally change our relationship to food, animals, and the environment, which people may be reluctant push for. Corporations play a role in shaping each of the preceding realities. Before I explain how, it may be useful to describe the realities of factory farming. That description will focus our attention on the images of factory farming the public rarely sees.

One place to begin is the National Resources and Defense Council statement on the harms of factory farm lagoons. It focuses on a dimension of factory farming that for many people is entirely abstract—the dangerous gases that populate the air from decomposing manure. These gases include ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, and methane. Gases of the preceding kind have been linked to serious health concerns—such as seizures, comas, and even death—for people who live on factory farms and those who live nearby.

Factory framing intersects with other environmental and health-related problem. To begin, the waste produced through factory farms seeps into water sources. The creation of “lagoons” on factory farms is largely to blame for this contamination and its ecological and health effects. Lagoons are large manure storage systems found on or near factory farms. The waste and contaminants from lagoons enter into the ecosystem of nearby communities in a few ways.

First, farmers intentionally and routinely spray manure onto their fields. Individuals living near factory farms become collateral damage when wind redirects the manure onto their homes and property—sometimes quite literally “hitting” them in the process. The second way in which these contaminants reach communities is via runoffs from the lagoons. This “runoff” gets into the water supply, making the water undrinkable or unusable. Third, natural disasters or poor infrastructure cause the lagoons to overflow and burst. When this occurs, it produces significant environmental and health consequences because that overflow then floods nearby land and water systems. In particular, studies have shown that when “manure from the lagoons [] leach[es] into groundwater,” it can cause “nitrate contamination that prohibits residents from drinking the water” and the toxins in the air as a result of these lagoons are also linked to some of the “highest rates of emergency room visits for childhood asthma.”

“You can smell the blood and feces in the air…You can almost feel it.”

Of course, were one to ask the average person whether they think water contamination and dangerous gases are hazardous to both our health and the environment, they would say yes. The problem is that people don’t link these health, safety, and environmental concerns to factor farming. None of this is to say that there is an uncontroversial link between factory farming and the health problems I have outlined. Some studies are inconclusive on that matter. But there is certainly growing empirical evidence pointing to these higher levels of asthma, allergies, and cancer in communities near factory farms.

Quite apart from the foregoing health and environmental impacts of factory farming is the smell—the vile and pungent odor—of animals suffering, neglected, and living in overly crowded spaces. One animal rights activist, Christopher Eubanks—founder of APEX Advocacy—describes that odor, which he experienced while attending the animal vigils organized by the Animal Save Movement, this way: “You can smell the blood and feces in the air…You can almost feel it.” This sense of smell which one “can almost feel” is all the more salient on factory farms where there are more animals and more animal waste.

As you might imagine, all of the preceding harms exact an emotional, psychological toll on people as well. Imagine having to worry about whether a matter over which one may have little control—where one lives—exposes your family members, including your children, to serious health hazards and possibly even death? Imagine waking up day after day knowing that this day is potentially life-altering; this day is one where my child will develop cancer cells; this day is one where my son’s asthma will kick in; this day is one where my mother’s lungs will begin to fail her. Imagine knowing that when one of your family members becomes sick, their health precarity derived from the place you call home. For far too many people, those imaginings are not thought experiments. They are par for the course—the realities of living next to and being impacted by the harms of factory farming.

“These factory farms are typically in low income, Black and Brown, and marginalized communities. They aren’t near country clubs.”

Importantly the harms of factory farming are not shared equally. As with other social problems, people of color and low-income individuals are more likely than others to live in communities that are exposed to the harms that are incidental to factory farms. This demographic reality is precisely why many scholars and activists, including Eubanks have framed the harms of factory framing as a form of environmental racism. Eubanks describes the strategic placement of these farms to put this into sharp relief: “These factory farms are typically in low income, Black and Brown, and marginalized communities. They aren’t near country clubs.”

At this point, it’s helpful to think back to the thought experiment with which I began. Note the stark difference between the images that comes to mind when one thinks about factory farming and realities of factory farming (of which I have only discussed a few). The question becomes: What accounts for the disjuncture between the image of factory farming, one the one hand, and the realities? Corporate power provides an explanation.

Big Agriculture corporations and the associations that represent and support them rarely, if at all, engage in, let alone address the problems associated with factory farms I have discussed. Some corporations deny these harms altogether. For example, the North Carolina Pork Council explicitly contests the findings of studies that foreground a nexus between factory farming and environmental and health risks and maintains that that claims of environmental racism are “patently false.” Their report denied any disparate impact and even denied many of the studies’ claims regarding the harms caused by the farms generally.

Other corporations justify not only the way factory farms function, but also their negative impacts, employing cost-benefit analyses to do so. The nature of that cost-benefit analysis is such that when there is tension between the economic bottom line for these companies and the welfare of the people most affected by the externalities of factory farms, corporations routinely prioritize profit over people.

Moreover, when corporations perform their cost-benefit analysis, they do not fully internalize (in fact they minimize) the costs of factory farming and exaggerate their benefits. On the exaggeration side is the claim that factory farming plays a significant role mitigating food precarity. There is no meaningful evidence to support this claim. Andrew Stawasz, Legal Fellow at The Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law, argues that if we really did took seriously cost-benefit analysis, that could require a complete change to our current system.

The nature of that cost-benefit analysis is such that when there is tension between the economic bottom line for these companies and the welfare of the people most affected by the externalities of factory farms, corporations routinely prioritize profit over people.

The irony here is that factory farms take up a significant amount of land in the United States, land that could be used to produce crops and grains that would feed many more people than factory farmed animals could. It bears noting as well that food precarity is not simply or even most significantly a problem of food shortage. As Dinesh Wadiwel, a social political theorist, professor, and current Harvard Animal Law & Policy Fellow has stated, it is a problem of food distribution and the various global forces that ensures the maldistribution of food. The larger point is that the assertion that factory farming can help combat world or domestic hunger is not grounded in facts. It is a way for factory farms to “green wash” and “welfare wash” their industry in ways that obscure the degree to which factory farming privileges profits, not people.

Wadiwel has also done work linking the profit over people dynamic that characterizes factory farming to “intensification”—the process by which factory farms significantly expand their operations to maximize their profits. This expansion includes an increase in livestock production, an increase in the density of the facilities, and an increase in the numbers of workers moving in and out of farms. This intensification exacerbates the health and environmental problems previously discussed—including by producing larger quantities of waste, and larger varieties of pathogens that then spreads across farms and into local communities.

Intensification and profit maximization show up in other ways as well. As Wadiwel notes, intensification inevitably brings the diminution in workers’ rights—namely, “the lowering of wages with worse conditions for workers.” Intensification also shapes how workers interact with animals and incentivizes workers to view animals as things to kill (as many as one can) and by any means necessary.

This pressure to kill the maximum number of animals and make them available as meat often results in sick animals being sent to slaughter. It is precisely this practice that produced the spread of, among other diseases, mad cow disease. The largest recall of ground beef in the United States occurred when a worker on a Westland/Hallmark Meat company farm was found kicking and pushing a cow that could not walk to the transportation truck to be slaughtered.

The moment of a sick cow being coerced to walk to its own death was a powerful one. It revealed how the abuse of workers (being forced to deploy violence against another living being) normalizes violence against animals; how the abuse of workers and the abuse of animals impact the health and safety of society; and how all of this occurs against the backdrop of an industry driven by profit maximization. The episode was so striking that it was covered in the New York Times and became a rare moment in which at least some people in the general public became aware of some of the realities of factory farming.

It is not hard to imagine how intensification and profit maximization plays itself out in other ways as well, including but not limited to, the poor management of waste disposal processes, the improper handling of animals in the context of slaughtering them, and the low standards of care exhibited towards animals while they are on the farms. When employees are disempowered, treated poorly, given low wages, forced to work long hours, and forced to engage in work that psychologically harms them, it is almost inexorable that serious waste, contamination, and pollution concerns follow.

As factory farms compete with one another, they engage “race to the bottom” practices that undermine product quality, workers’ rights, and the health and safety of people and their environments.

Importantly, the foregoing consequences are not simply a matter of an individual corporation’s decision-making. Instead, they derive from the fact that, as factory farms compete with one another, they engage “race to the bottom” practices that undermine product quality, workers’ rights, and the health and safety of people and their environments. To put this point in its starkest terms, profit maximization techniques, exploitative working conditions, and violence against animals are all part of what some have called the Factory Farm Industrial Complex.

Readers will likely be familiar with the terms like the “Prison Industrial Complex” and the “Military Industrial Complex.” Both have been used to describe how systems of power merge and exert tremendous force on and shape the organization of society. Factory farming might also be understood as an industrial complex that exerts pressures that shape the organization of society. As I will now describe, the factory farm industrial complex uses corporate power not only to obscure or deny the realities of factory farming, but also to make it difficult to challenge or abolish factory farming.

Shaping the Narrative. The corporations behind factory farming have spent millions of dollars to control the narrative of factory farming through claims that (1) the animals on factory farms are well treated and (2) factory farming is crucial to our food supply and helps to combat food insecurity. For example, in various interviews and promotional videos, Smithfield farmers and Tyson farmers maintain that “the wellbeing of [their] animals is [their] top priority.” Commenting specifically on their chickens, one farmer remarked that what a “good feeling” it is to have such a “beautiful” and “healthy” flock of birds.

Moreover, the corporate interests behind factory farms often argue that their impact on society is largely positive because they are feeding the country. The basic premise is that without their factory farms, there would be a food crisis and millions of Americans would not have access to food.

Another way in which corporations shape the narratives is by individualizing the problems of factory farming. The relatively few moments in which the negative impacts of factory farming receive media attention, the industry responds by treating that episode as an exception—an aberration in an otherwise healthy industry that protects workers, animals, and consumers. For example, when Tyson managers at an Iowa plant made bets on how many employees would get COVID at their locations, the CEO of Tyson ordered an investigation and argued that he would remove anyone who was found to have engaged in that type of behavior. This “bad apple” approach does little to address the broader structural features of factory farming.

Deceptive Advertising. Corporations also employ deceptive advertising to cover up the violence and harms of factory farming. I remember the first time I attended one of the Animal Save vigils. These vigils are organized for activists to gather at a designated slaughterhouse. They are timed so that activists are there when the animals are transferred from the trucks to the slaughterhouse inside. We set up stands with information about factory farms and slaughterhouses, we wait for the trucks to stop at a light or stop sign so we can provide water to the incoming animals that are confined behind the truck’s bars, and then we say goodbye to them as they are sent inside. Even writing about this is hard. Being there is harder still.

Painted on the steel walls of this slaughterhouse are images of pigs playing beside a beautiful lake with a child playing under a tree. The juxtaposition of these images is jarring. On the one hand you see this idealistic depiction of a farm—implying that these are the farms the animals are coming from. On the other hand, you see animals cramped in cages, barely able to move, covered in filth, entering the slaughterhouse.

Advertisements of the preceding sort create a wall—literally and metaphorically—around the truth. The slaughterhouse is not some idyllic space. It is a space of violence—for humans and animals. It is a space of cruelty—for humans and animals. And it is a space of degradation—for humans and animals. Nothing in the advertisements corporations put out reveals these realities, which makes it all the more likely that people will not push back against the industry.

A “downed” cow being dragged to be slaughtered

Photo taken by Farm Sanctuary on flickr.com

Trading on and the Weaponization of the legal system. Corporations behind factory farming both trade on and weaponize the legal system in ways that help to legitimize factory farming and make it difficult to expose and challenge the harms factory farms produce. Consider, for example, the degree to which factory farming is exempted from ordinary environmental regulation. In 2016 the United States Department of Agriculture Farm Service Agency (FSA) created exemptions to certain environmental laws, such as NEPA review, for factory farms. These exemptions allow this industry to pollute on a massive scale with little to no accountability.

Corporations behind factory farming both trade on and weaponize the legal system in ways that help to legitimize factory farming and make it difficult to expose and challenge the harms factory farms produce.

One such exemption is for concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs). By way of context, “CAFOs account for 72% of poultry, 42% of egg, and 55% of pork production.” This means that NEPA is not reviewing the environmental impacts of an industry that plays a significant role shaping our food supply.

What is particularly surprising about the exemption for CAFOs is that NEPA’s review is not especially strenuous. NEPA is required “to take a ‘hard look’ at environmental impacts and alternatives,” but it does not define what taking a “hard look” means. Nor is NEPA clear on precisely what level of harm violates its standards. These features of the review process mean that NEPA could conduct a review, find significant environmental impacts, but conclude that such impacts are within an allowable limit.

The removal of this relatively thin regulatory regime means that many factory farms effectively have a full license to degrade the environment in ways that causes harms to both animals and people. Even if factory farms don’t intentionally exploit the exemption, the existence of the exemption disincentivizes factory farms from exercising care with respect to their waste and disposal practices, which in turn means they are disincentivized to ensure that they minimalize environmental and health consequences.

A similar exemption exists for large CAFOs under the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act. Without getting bogged down into the detail of this regulation, the point is that it, too, creates exceptions for CAFOS (from certain reporting requirements), and these exceptions, too, confer on certain factory farms a kind of carte blanche with respect to how they manage the environmental impacts of their companies.

In addition to trading on existing laws (that corporations aggressively lobbied for), Big Agriculture also pushed for laws that target individuals who speak out against the harms that factory farms produce. The Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA) and the “ag-gag” laws found across many states are examples of such legislation. Congress enacted the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act in 2006. This legislation creates criminal liability for anyone who “interfer[eres] with the operations of an animal enterprise.” This covers “damage or loss to any real or personal property and intentional threats of death or serious bodily injury against individuals (or their family members, spouses, or intimate partners) who are involved with animal enterprises.”

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) drafted the original AETA and was one of the most prominent lobbyists for the bill. ALEC is funded primarily by large corporations—many of whom benefit from animal agriculture. Additionally, ALEC has significant legislative and political influence because its members include over 2,400 state lawmakers and has included over 80 members of Congress. Post 9-11, ALEC used the “War on Terror” hysteria to pursue their pro-animal agriculture interests. This bill was their most successful campaign.

Not only did the AETA effectively label most forms of animal rights activism as terrorism, it also served to deter future actions, protests, and whistleblowing. The statute’s vague and overly broad provisions potentially reach just about any form of protest against factory farming. To put this into sharp relief, my act of helping provide water to the animals inside the slaughterhouse trucks, under the act, be construed as an act of terrorism. Arguably, I helped slow their production of animals for consumption which affects their profits (albeit entirely negligibly and only if we were found to have held up the trucks for even a moment longer than the stop sign or light would have kept them there). This interpretation of the act is not that far-fetched. Animal activists have been found guilty of AETA for engaging in other benign forms of activism.

The documentary Animal People details how the FBI engaged in a dubious investigation of six activists and members of the Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) organization who were engaging in non-violent protests and letter writing campaigns against animal exploitation. Despite the fact that no human or animal was ever injured by SHAC, James Jarboe, the domestic terrorism chief of the FBI at the time, compared SHAC and other animal and environmental rights organizations to the Aryan Nations and dubbed some of these animal and environmental rights organizations more of a threat than white supremacist terrorist groups. Indeed the animal and environmental rights organizations were the FBI’s “No. 1 priority.”

Ag-gag laws have a similarly problematic and chilling effects. The ASPC defines ag-gag laws as “dangerous bills [] designed to silence whistleblowers revealing animal abuses on industrial farms.” These laws raise serious First Amendment concerns. And some courts agree. At least five ag-gag laws have been struck down by state courts as unconstitutional. But more keep popping up. The rate at which states are still proposing and implementing these laws is nothing short of alarming. At least six states have some form of ag-gag law on the books and more are on the way. Amanda Hitt, whistleblower attorney and Harvard Animal Law & Policy Program Fellow, has carefully examined the proliferation of these laws. She notes that each iteration of these laws is less vulnerable to constitutional challenge. Specifically, she describes the way corporations allow their ag-gag laws to fail and then they revise the content of the laws so that they survive litigation in the future.

In Iowa, “the lead actor was not JDS or one of the meat industry folks. It was Monsanto.” “There was a coordinated attempt here from Big Ag and all of its vertically integrated friends” to try to stop this reporting.

Hitt noted not just the dangerous nature of these laws, but also the way that corporate power interacts across industries to influence the promulgation of such legislation. In one case she worked on, Iowa proposed a new ag-gag legislation which was supported both by the meat industry itself and by other corporate interests as well. In Iowa, “the lead actor was not JDS or one of the meat industry folks. It was Monsanto.” “There was a coordinated attempt here from Big Ag and all of its vertically integrated friends” to try to stop this reporting.

These types of laws have a chilling effect—not only on one’s ability to speak out against the cruelty inflicted upon animals by the animal agriculture industry, but also on one’s ability to speak out against the harm those farms are committing against the neighboring communities.

The story I have told about factory farming is bleak. Factory farming causes numerous health and safety concerns, produces environmental degradation, is exploitative to workers, and causes violence against animals. The public is largely unaware of all of this, and corporations employ their power to keep things that way by controlling the narrative about factory farming and criminalizing resistance to the industry.

What can we do then? Mobilize through grassroots organizing, make changes in law and policy, and continue expanding the scholarship and public education in this area. Each of these actions can make a difference.

Grassroots organizing remains an important avenue for challenging factory farming. Through community mobilization, advocacy groups, and grassroots campaigns, citizens can at the very least raise awareness about the adverse effects of factory farming on animal welfare, public health, the environment, and neighboring communities. By organizing protests, circulating petitions, and staging outreach events, grassroots activists can make factory farming a matter of public concern.

The more factory farming becomes a matter of public concern, the greater the likelihood that legal challenges to factory farming will be successful. These challenges can take a variety of forms. Consider, for example, California’s Proposition 12, which establishes minimum space requirements for farm animals. By no means is this a radical reform. But by enacting laws and regulations that prioritize animal welfare and public health, lawmakers can incentivize farms to adopt more humane and sustainable practices. Legal victories like Proposition 12 could be replicated across sets to produce a broader cumulative impact on the factory farming industry. This broader effect would not only help the animals, but also the people living near factory farms because it would slow down the process of intensification and limit the number of animals on any given farm. Over time, this could lead to the end of factory farming.

Through community mobilization, advocacy groups, and grassroots campaigns, citizens can at the very least raise awareness about the adverse effects of factory farming on animal welfare, public health, the environment, and neighboring communities. By organizing protests, circulating petitions, and staging outreach events, grassroots activists can make factory farming a matter of public concern.

Scholarship in this area could also be helpful. The point is not that the public at large reads law reviews or other scholarly publications. But increasingly social movement ecosystems are emerging in which lawyers are talking to social movement actors who are talking to media experts who are talking to academics. Scholarship is thus essential to this kind of cross-sectoral organizing. Scholarship is also a way to connect students to the ideas. When I think about my own journey into social justice advocacy, scholarship played (and continues to play) a critical role.

And then, of course, there is the broader public education campaigns, which might be framed as a shifting mindset project. Needless to say, scholarship remains important here as well, since scholarship is one of the mechanisms through which to disseminate accurate information, produce new understandings, and debunk myths and misconceptions surrounding the factory farming industry. But I am also thinking about documentaries, music, plays, and movies as avenues through which to teach the public about the environmental degradation, animal cruelty, and health consequences associated with factory farming.

I don’t want to leave you with the impression that it is my view that change is just around the corner. But, nor do I believe that the factory farm industrial complex is impervious to change. All of us can play a role shaping the proverbial arch of the universe. My hope is that this article lays out some ways in which we might do so.