Opposing Viewpoints
It is understandable that not everyone will agree with my arguments against factory farming. There are many different counter arguments and opposing viewpoints which I hope to refute, in order to prove my main point, that we should stop factory farming.
One opposing viewpoint as written by Carl Cohen is that animals don't have any rights because they don't have the mental capacity to make moral claims, or make moral judgement, or have any inner conscious or free will. Cohen is arguing against my claim that animals are sentient beings, however he has no grounds to back up his claims that animals are not sentient beings. He does state that if animals were somehow sentient beings, it doesn't mean they get the same consideration as human beings do. I agree with his argument that while animals have sentience, it doesn't mean they get the same consideration as humans, but even Cohen admits that humans have an obligation to animals to not treat them badly. Even from the viewpoint of someone who says animals have no rights, without any grounds to prove it, he still admits that animals should not be treated badly by humans.
Another opposing viewpoint comes from Tyson Foods, one of the main meat providers in the United States. They make a claim stating that the animals on their farms are treated well, and this is a claim that many of the meat providers who raise their animals on factory farms make. Tyson states that the members of their company "follow the company's core values," and that there is a program in place called FarmCheck in place to make sure the animals are being treated properly. Tyson states that a third-party farmer audits the treatment of the animals to make sure they are being treated well. There are many problems with this argument, including the fact that there is undercover video evidence proving the mistreatment of the animals on the factory farms. In the documentary Food Inc., it states that not only did Tyson refuse an interview for the film, but that out of the dozens of farmers asked, only one allowed them to view the chicken farms and interview her. The other dozens of farmers would have gotten in trouble with Tyson for showing their chicken farms, just like the lady who agreed to an interview was fired after it came out. There should be no reason Tyson wouldn't want their chicken farms to be shown unless there was something ethically wrong with them, which there was. In the interview with the woman who agreed, we saw the abuse that happened to the chickens on her farm, proving that FarmCheck and any other programs Tyson and other companies put together doe not work, or are not enforced well enough.
Another opposing argument is that there are many laws put in place to prevent such animal abuse. These laws include the Humane Methods of Livestock Slaughter Act (HMSLA), passed in 1958. This act was designed to decrease the suffering of animals during slaughter. There were to be inspectors at slaughtering plants to assure animals were treated properly. There was an update in 1978 stating a plant could be shut down if there was cruelty observed until the problem was fixed. It was also improved in 2002 to ensure it would be fully enforced. This argument sounds valid, until one inspects the HMSLA. The act only includes cattle, calves, horses, mules, sheep, and swine. It is missing birds, meaning chickens and hens and turkeys. This means that there is no law regulating the treatment of birds. Another problem is that the update made in 1978 stopped being authorized by the USDA because if the farms had to stop slaughtering, it would cost too much time for the industry, meaning that this law values the time of the industry over the lives of these animals. The improvement in 2002 stating the HMSLA would be fully enforced, is also not effective. The documentary Food Inc. demonstrates the harsh environments livestock have to live through, and the documentary was produced in 2009, seven years after the act was supposed to be in full effect.
Factory farming is a problem, no matter what arguments can be made against that, which is why we should do everything in our power to stop it.
Factory farming is a problem, no matter what arguments can be made against that, which is why we should do everything in our power to stop it.