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Jacqueline Tawney
Engineering Ethics
Professor R.J. Magyar
March 2, 2015
An Ethical Engineering Disaster: The True Face of Factory Farming
Humans, especially those residing in U.S. America and many other industrialized
countries, live in a state of constant denial when it comes to the food they eat. What
happens behind the scenes stays behind the scenes out of sight, out of mind. One
can deny the horrors of factory farming for an entire lifetime, but no one can truly avoid
the ramifications of this all-consuming, torturously destructive modern technology. On
the surface, factory farms provide much of the world with relatively cheap animal
products (beef, poultry, pork, dairy, eggs, etc.), but at what cost? What ethical issues
arise from such a convenient solution to food production? In addition to the absurd
amount of animal cruelty that results from industrial farming, major global health issues
have surfaced and will continue to rise, and environmental concerns unlike any other
harm everywhere from rural areas near the farms to the entire planet itself.
To understand these ethical issues of factory farming, one must first understand
what it is, who participates in it, who it affects, and why. Factory farming, also known as
intensive animal farming or industrial livestock production, is the combination of modern
technologies such as refrigeration, assembly lines, antibiotics, artificial hormones,
artificial sunlight, artificial insemination, and much more that allow such a massive
amount of living creatures to inhabit relatively small areas while producing considerable
amounts of food at a comparatively low monetary cost. The typical conditions of a

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factory farm include but are not limited to: cage and crate confinement of the animals
and a lifetime indoors; harmful flooring; restriction of natural behaviors such as exercise,
foraging, exploring, and even maternal nesting; lack of daylight; poor indoor air quality
and no access to fresh air; social stress, injuries, and other health problems due to
overcrowding, selective breeding, and an absence of veterinary care; reduced lifespan;
debeaking and other mutilations; and inhumane and ineffective slaughtering. According
to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), 10.379 billion land animals in the U.S.
alone lived and died for the sole purpose of human consumption in 2007. This accounts
for 25 percent of the total non-aquatic animals killed for food worldwide (Pluhar). These
animals are the main stakeholders for the ethical dilemmas of factory farming, but
unfortunately they have no voices and no way to seek their main interest, which is to
live, or at least be treated better while they are alive. Other stakeholders include the
factory farm corporations, its regulators, those who endorse the industry such as the
USDA, and the consumers, which in The United States, represents essentially
everyone.
Not too long ago, the human-animal relationship was much different than it is
now. Humans provided safety and nourishment for the animals, and when the time was
right, the humans killed the animals for food and nutrients. Now, humans are taking a
vast number of lives with nothing for the animals in return; there is no trade and no
balance. According to the article Constructing Consumables and Consent: A Critical
Analysis of Factory Farm Industry Discourse, Cathy Glenn reasons, For the factory
farm, as in other corporations, the bottom line is profit. Animals welfare can be traded
off when production rates remain high regardless of the animals poor health and living

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conditions, (Glenn). Ethically speaking, this is unacceptable. It is not virtuous to
willingly cause so much pain to another living being. Also, Kantians would argue based
off the universality principle that these actions could never be justified by law, as no one
would want his or her own animals to experience this type of pain. To evaluate the issue
of animal suffering clearly, numerous scientists have conducted studies that prove
animals are very aware of their being, their mistreatment, and their pain. Based off
research provided by numerous neuroscientists, The Cambridge Declaration on
Consciousness was signed on July 7, 2012 at the prestigious Francis Crick Memorial
Conference. The declaration affirms:
Convergent

evidence

indicates

that

non-human

animals

have

the

neuroanatomical, neurochemical, and neurophysiological substrates of conscious

states along with the capacity to exhibit intentional behaviors. Consequently, the
weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the
neurological substrates that generate consciousness. Nonhuman animals also
possess these neurological substrates, (Low).
This proves that no one should question or doubt the heinous levels of violence and
cruelty experienced by billions of animals everyday, but the question still remains, how
much does it matter, if it matters at all? Is there an ethical means for justification?
Consumers, a vital stakeholder in the issue of factory farming, have an interest in
paying less for tastier food, but other interests such as health and environmental
safety are, often times unknowingly, at a dangerously high risk.
Human health has plummeted since the rise of factory farming, particularly that of
U.S. Americans. Heart disease and stroke are more common than ever before, the

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number one and number three main killers of Americans, and this is heavily related to
the ever-growing massive amounts of meat consumption. Unfortunately, The USDA is
responsible for informing citizens about the nutritional importance and value of all types
of food, but at the same time they take the roll of advocating for the food industry, which
is entirely based around factory farming. This unethical conflict of interest makes the
USDAs job easier, since it can easily mask the detrimental health side effects of factory
farming, as society has typically put trust in the information provided by government
agencies and the recommendations of the all-sacred food pyramid. Even though the
governmental structure is skewed, maybe if people tried a bit harder to understand what
they eat, they would decide against it. Although these effects are still worth mentioning,
maybe ultimately that responsibility lies in the individuals hands, not the hands of
factory farming technology and methods. Still, the horrifying and very real concept of
food-borne illnesses, antibiotic resistance, and a superpathogen is entirely a fault of
the industry.
Meat, especially poultry, is nearly always infected by pathogens. This is because
no matter what state the animal is in (sick, drugged, deformed, covered in feces, etc.)
they will be cleaned up and packaged to be sold to citizens across the United States
and even the globe. A study published in Consumer Reports claims that 83 percent of
all chicken meat (including organic and antibiotic-free) is infected with either
campylobacter or salmonella at the time of purchase. This fact proves to be the cause
of the 76 million cases of food-borne illness that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control
estimates occur yearly (Foer 138). In addition to the vast amount of illnesses connected
to factory farming, it has become clear that the industrys excessive use of

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antimicrobials is contributing to the quickly growing number of antimicrobial-resistant
pathogens.
A typical factory farm feeds its animals drugs with every meal. Rather than
accepting less-productive animals or altering their conditions to create a healthier
environment, the farms use feed additives to compensate for the animals compromised
immune systems. Only counting nontherapeutic use, the Union of Concerned Scientists
calculated 24.6 million pounds of antibiotics fed to farmed animals each year, over half
of which would currently be illegal within the European Union. This is over eight times
more than the amount given to humans yearly. Studies have proven time and time again
that this sort of behavior could put human beings at a huge risk to drug-resistant
pathogens, in which case society would have no defense. The point of that matter is
factory farmers and their complacent and equally corrupt regulators are trading the
safety of all current and future societies for an effortless way to raise profits. The people
truly do not have a reasonable means to give informed consent because factory farmers
and those who financially benefit from the industry never mention these devastating
risks.
The same factors that lead to these horrific conclusions could bring society, what
Jonathan Safran Foer in his book Eating Animals, describes as, the superpathogen of
all superpathogens, a hybrid virus that could cause a repeat, more or less, of the
Spanish flu of 1918, (Foer 138). He notes the points presented by the Council for
Agricultural Science and Technologys 2005 report by explaining, Breeding genetically
uniform and sickness-prone birds in the overcrowded, stressful, feces-infested, and
artificially lit conditions of factory farms promotes the growth and mutation of pathogens.

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The cost of increased efficiency is increased global risk for diseases, (Foer 142).
Even now society pays the price, because according to Scientists at Columbia and
Princeton Universities, six of the eight genetic segments of the currently most feared
viruses in the world can be traced directly to U.S. factory farms. Even a utilitarian would
argue that this is ethically unacceptable. The financial gains of corporations involved
and the benefits of cheap meat, dairy, and eggs (which are all unnecessary elements to
a human diet) clearly do not outweigh the price society pays for millions of cases of
food-borne illnesses, deadly diseases, and a potential superpathogen outbreak. In light
of John Benthams utility principle, this does not amount to the greatest happiness for
the greatest number of people. In addition to this, the distribution of any resulting
happiness is skewed to the industrys side, which goes against John Mills no harm
principle that allows one to pursue happiness as long as he or she does not hinder the
happiness of others.
Factory farms are costing humans a great amount of suffering, whether they
know it or not, but the destruction does not stop with human health. Planet earth is
certainly paying a high price, another growing risk to humans, and another reason the
current methods of animal product production bring about daunting ethical issues. The
local areas suffer in immeasurable ways, from nitrate polluted groundwater water that
can potentially cause miscarriages and other detrimental side effects, to literal feces
coating the surrounding towns. According to the research article How Sustainable
Agriculture Can Address the Environmental and Human Health Harms of Industrial
Agriculture; The manure output from these factory farms overwhelms the capacity of
local croplands to absorb it. The USDA has estimated that animals in the U.S. meat

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industry produced 1.4 billion tons of waste in 1997, which is 130 times the nations
volume of human wasteor 5 tons of animal waste for every U.S. citizen, (Horrigan).
Some factory farms are known to use a specifically designed hose to absorb the
manure from enormous outdoor pits and turn the feces into mist, causing it to cover
surfaces of the town it occupies. This clearly affects the health and wellbeing of those
living in the area as well as the local environment and ecosystems. On a global scale,
the destruction is equally shocking and disturbing. Jonathan Safran Foer summarizes:
Recent and authoritative studies by the United Nations and the Pew
Commission show conclusively that globally, farmed animals contribute more to
climate change than transport. According to the UN, the livestock sector is
responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, around 40 percent
more than the entire transport sector cars, trucks, planes, trains, and ships
combined. Animal agriculture is responsible for 37 percent of anthropogenic
methane, which offers twenty-three times the global warming potential (GWP) of
CO2, as well as 65 percent of the anthropogenic nitrous oxide, which provides a
staggering 296 times the GWP of CO2, (Foer 58).
Factory farming methods are not sustainable. The energy conversion from massive
amounts of grain to far less amounts of flesh, the maintenance of these facilities, and
the waste they produce provide society with less amounts of lower quality food at higher
costs to the animals, to human health, and to the environment. This industry is unethical
on so many levels, from the point of view of those in action, the actions themselves, and
the consequences.

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Solutions to the ethical issues of factory farming exist, but some are less optimal
than others, and all would require certain levels of cultural adjustments. This is not an
entirely black-and-white problem. Creative alterations to the factory farming system
could potentially be made to treat animals with less cruelty and more dignity, to end the
excessive use of antimicrobials, and to lessen the environmental impacts, but sadly the
industry has never felt a push to endorse these solutions. Truthfully, righting one wrong
will not right them all, and society does not have time to wait for engineers to develop
new solutions to these truly devastating and quickly intensifying risks. Another solution
would be to end the animal product industry all together, but this would entice an
unnecessary extreme cultural backlash. The best solution would be to backtrack to
before factory farming existed, to find a way to resurface the local family farms that have
done society so well for so long. Putting an end to factory farming is the only solution
that will allow all ethical issues to subside. Family farmers are typically virtuous in that
they truly provide care for their animals, whether or not that reason is based off morals
or based off the idea that a healthy and happy animal provides better quality meat, most
likely both. The consequences will be a higher monetary cost for animal products, but
this will benefit society in ways it may not acknowledge at first, as less meat
consumption will result in less diseases. There would be less risk of food-borne illness,
of antimicrobial-resistant pathogens, and of a new virus outbreak. The environment
could recover, and farmers would care for the land they reside on and the people who
surround them. One of the most important aspects of all engineering codes of conduct
is concern for the safety of the public, and if one truly wishes to endorse that, one must
stand against the unethical disaster that has already harmed so many innocent and

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unknowing lives. If society is to return to a purer, happier, healthier, safer, and more
ethical place, it must put an end to the suffering, to the fear, and to the unnecessary
damage to this planet. It must put an end to factory farming.

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Works Cited
Scholarly Sources:
Glenn, Cathy B. "Constructing Consumables and Consent: A Critical Analysis of Factory
Farm Industry Discourse." Journal of Communication Inquiry 28.1 (2004): 6381. Drexel University Libraries. Web. 8 Feb. 2015.
Horrigan, Leo, Robert S Lawrence, and Polly Walker. How Sustainable Agriculture Can
Address the Environmental and Human Health Harms of Industrial
Agriculture. Environmental Health Perspectives 110.5 (2002): 445456. Print.
Pluhar, Evelyn B. "Meat and Morality: Alternatives to Factory Farming." Springer Link.
Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 18 Dec. 2009. Web. 03 Mar.
2015.
Other Sources:
Foer, Jonathan Safran. Eating Animals. New York: Little, Brown, 2009. Print.
Low, Phillip. The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness. Cambridge: n.p., 7 July
2009. PDF.